ISS is one of the largest facilities management companies in the world. In the UK, the company provides services that include catering, cleaning and security for about 8,000 clients. Many customers take one or two services, but increasingly an „integrated facility service‟ is being requested, which combines ISS’s different offerings. Besides cross-selling services in this way, ISS wanted to increase revenues as a whole.

Avanade worked with ISS to customize Dynamics CRM to their specific requirements and to make it more suitable for a services company. In particular, Avanade created around 50 ISS-specific workflow modifications to tailor the software. In order to leverage existing commercial frameworks in ISS, Avanade were able to partner through ISS‟s outsourced service provider, CSC®.

“Avanade was absolutely professional,” says Mark Brown. “They stuck to the task in hand, kept us focused on what was possible and they delivered a stable and fit-for-purpose solution on time”. In particular, he praises the Avanade team and the way they worked with ISS and CSC. “Quite simply, he says, they were part of the ISS IT team”.

Avanade completed the project and deployment of the solution within an aggressive timeline, splitting the functionality delivered into two Phases. Consequently, ISS were able to benefit from the deployment within the same financial year. Across all UK company divisions, 160 users will benefit from the solution once all the users are granted access. However, the benefits are already clear from the users that have full use of the system, namely:

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   Improved consistency. ISS now follows the same sales cycles across the whole business. This ensures that the company has an accurate and consistent forecast of future business.
  
   
• Better targeting. A benchmarking tool allows sales staff to estimate the likely value of new business based on customer data, such as floor space or headcount. Besides increasing the accuracy of forecasts, this also ensures that the company only goes after appropriate, profitable business.
  
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   Cross-selling. Users can already tap into the customer database to find a list of several thousand existing ISS customers. This allows sales people to approach existing customers with new services without cold calling.
  
   
• Coordinated bids. When the company pitches for a multiservice contract, the new CRM software ensures that there is “an overall lead at the point of delivery rather than lots of individuals bringing individual data to the bid process”, said Brown. The result is a more compelling, timely and coherent bid.