B & CE Benefits

B&CE is one of the UK's largest provider of financial benefits to construction industry employers and individuals. As industry specialists, B & CE has created a range of financial products to try and help meet the needs of everyone working in construction, including a stakeholder pension, employee accident cover, employee life cover, employee healthcare and holiday pay.

Situation

B&CE Benefits (B&CE) currently deals with approximately 500,000 individuals and 6,500 employers. About a quarter of a million people use B&CE’s products and it has approximately £1.6 billion under management in its pension arrangements. B&CE also deals with a number of trade federations and trade unions, some of whom are tied into using B&CE products so offer help and support in communicating with their customer base.

It had become very difficult for B&CE to manage its legacy database effectively because it contained the records of 500,000 individuals. This made it slow, unwieldy and too complicated to extract meaningful data. The key challenge for B&CE was to ‘split’ a CRM database from the unwieldy legacy data so that it was manageable from a day-to-day sales perspective. 

B&CE also found that it was very time-consuming just trying to maintain the accuracy of the data. One contact could have information spread across several databases and each update had to be adjusted manually in several locations.

Solution

Through implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, B&CE can now ‘split’ the CRM database and the legacy database yet keep them fully integrated so that any amendment to either database is updated in real-time

Neil Murdoch, Project Manager at B&CE explains, “This ‘split’ allows the sales team to have a manageable CRM database that is not cluttered-up with lots of unnecessary administrative information. However, they still have the ability to view the legacy data, if required, for a complete view of the business history or perhaps any recent service issues or complaints. This means the sales team is always well-informed and fully prepared to conduct business with our customers. We can also run campaigns with confidence knowing that the data is accurate and without any potentially embarrassing errors such as the duplication of contacts.”

Dean Leggatt, Customer Intelligence manager at B&CE explains “Knowing the data is completely accurate is a God-send going forward as it’s my team that is responsible for this part of the process. Having Microsoft Dynamics CRM means far less time is spent on administrative tasks leaving us more time to focus on finding new sales opportunities.”

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides everyone at B&CE with one up-to-date source of customer contact information. For example, B&CE regularly invites people to events and anyone in the business can track the progress of the respondents. 

Benefits

“B&CE now has a 360 degree view of its customers” says Dean Leggatt, “This allows the business to analyse its performance and build internal management information (MI) reports that provide real value across the business to the senior management team, sales team and customer services team.”

B&CE can now easily view each opportunity to see what potential customers are buying and where they sit in the sales process, which also indicates potential for cross-selling. B&CE also tracks opportunities according to product lines on the system to keep abreast of the expected revenue that might come in to the business.

Leggatt continues, “It is a big advantage to be able to track sales performance versus sales targets and then produce measurement reports that are easy to understand by senior managers. B&CE has always done this but it used to be difficult to track the information and it would inevitably create a great deal of administrative work for the team.”

B&CE can also ‘base-line’ its results to look back to the start of an opportunity to assess how much it actually sold versus what it originally believed it would sell.  B&CE can also record if the opportunity was ‘lost’ to a competitor and so keep a very valuable record of competitor performance.

Another benefit of the CRM system is regarding trade federations with whom B&CE works very closely. The challenge for the communications team was in guaranteeing that the contact data was accurate and up-to-date. The new system allows B&CE to connect direct to the federation data to ensure it is using the most up-to-date list.

Why eBECS?

Neil Murdoch, Project Manager at B&CE explains, “We looked at a few potential partners but we chose eBECS because they took the time to get to know us inside-out, including our people and our software applications.  eBECS obtained a very good understanding of how we operate and so could recommend solutions that would fit our business.”

B&CE were taken through a hand-holding exercise every step of the way. eBECS made sure there was a consultant on-site throughout the implementation rather than just at the end of the phone.  eBECs also did some prototype work for B&CE and were able to advise on ‘case management’ so that B&CE could handle customer queries and complaints far more effectively.

Murdoch concludes, “eBECS has introduced big changes into the business, and probably much bigger than many of us realise. We are really delighted at how the implementation has gone and we look forward to learning more about what it can do for us in the future. I believe Microsoft Dynamics CRM will shape the way the business operates going forwards.”