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The German Press Agency (dpa) has been the leading German news agency since 1949 and one of the world’s most respected independent news agencies. The company employs correspondents in more than 80 countries and delivers news and information to media, businesses and organizations worldwide.
After years of using an old solution, dpa needed a new and future-oriented CRM system to best map and control the current sales process, thereby creating transparency and being able to offer sales teams worldwide a professional organizational tool.
When implementing and developing the old CRM solution, the goal was to implement all user wishes within the system control, which made the procedure unclear and thereby reduced user acceptance. The system therefore only served as an administration tool.
The requirement for a new CRM system was to perfectly map the sales processes and only make user-specific adjustments if these increased user acceptance and the functionality of the solution. The introduction of a new system within a company structure is always associated with changes and carries the risk that it will be rejected by existing users. Change management is therefore particularly important and must be planned in advance to prepare users for the change. It is important to avoid users turning away when the new CRM system is introduced.
To select a suitable CRM system that enables all the desired functionalities, the project managers at dpa tested and compared tools from more than 20 providers. Together with FELLOWPRO AG (formerly Fellow Consulting AG), SugarCRM’s sales partner, the choice ultimately fell on SugarCRM, whose platform promised to meet all requirements.
The collaboration with FELLOWPRO AG (formerly Fellow Consulting AG) was based on clarity, openness and transparency, which made it easier to carry out the project together. The management and IT decision-makers were involved in the project from the start. In order to make the transition to the new CRM as compliant and easy as possible for all users and to achieve user acceptance, the dpa has already provided various offers for users during the implementation phase: consultation hours, workshops, regular status reports, early bird tests, video tutorials , training and a communication channel for questions and answers ensured continuous exchange and prepared people for the use of the new CRM.
However, there are of course differences in the workforce as soon as a new system is introduced certain fears as familiar work processes are replaced by new ones. The visibility of individual employees within the new system presented a particular challenge.
With SugarCRM, the dpa achieved the goals it had set for switching from the old to the new CRM system.
Sugar’s platform has been in daily use for two years now and is used extensively as a sales tool. The sales teams showed interest in the new system, asked numerous questions and therefore accepted it favorably after implementation. The dpa continues to make specific adjustments to the system as long as these do not require too much effort or deviate too far from the standard.
dpa
Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
Press
Berlin, Germany
Digitize and automate incoming order forms, as well as generate an item number.
for the automation and processing of incoming documents
