We recently interviewed our client Tim Horsch, President of Pioneer Sales Group. 

Here’s what Tim had to say about his company’s challenge, the CTC solution, and the results:    

Challenge 

One of our key resources, a 17-year veteran, was retiring from our company. We hired someone to learn her job and the current workflow. However, after 18 months on the job, she was still having issues following our systems. In addition to our hire’s individual struggles with our system, things kept falling through the cracks, even with veteran employees on our team. Team members did not have a good system for tracking follow-up work, so our customers periodically had to remind us that they still needed an answer on something. This was not acceptable, and we needed a way of being more proactive.  

Upon further reflection, we decided that we needed a new, more intuitive system. This was largely in part due to the productivity and customer service issues; however, it was also causing incredible frustration among our team members. Making matters worse, because of our employees’ frustrations with the systems and the issues that were arising, our team members assumed that they were not good at their jobs, which was negatively affecting morale.   

In addition, we were, at the time, using a hybrid technical solution that combined tools from Google and Microsoft. Every 3-6 months Microsoft or Google would run updates that caused the two systems to stop functioning together. This added to the team’s frustration and productivity struggles. We knew that unless we did something about it, we were just going to keep fighting this same battle with our technology. We decided that we needed to consolidate our toolset onto one platform.   

Because we had been growing increasingly concerned about security on the Google platform, and because Microsoft 365 came highly recommended by our peers, we opted to make the switch to Microsoft 365.   

We hoped to institute a more effective way of running the business so that new resources could be productive from day one, and we could spend less time and frustration in the training process and beyond. 

Solution: 

After making the decision to switch to Microsoft 365, we knew we needed to leverage experts to help us. We decided to bring in CTC Productivity to guide us in setting up the new system and helping us to solve our workflow issues.   

CTC Productivity’s technical team migrated the entire system from Google to Microsoft 365. Their business application experts identified a better process to manage follow-up and task tracking by leveraging the Microsoft suite of tools.   

Once the system was set up and optimized, CTC Productivity’s team recommended 1:1 training to supplement the group training. The goal here was to help with system adoption and provide a deeper understanding of the tools. This proved to be highly beneficial. It allowed individuals to ask questions about the new system and ensured that each person understood the tools fully and had the necessary confidence to follow the new workflow.   

We originally thought the entire process would take 3 months, but we ended up doing much more than originally planned. For example, we had been having issues with Verizon where live calls would be put on hold as incoming calls were coming in. Verizon could not solve the issue for us.  When we mentioned our frustration to the CTC team, they recommended we migrate to Microsoft 365 Business Voice, which is a cloud-based VoIP phone system. This was not part of the original scope of what we were planning to do, but it was a huge win for our team and saved us a lot of frustration and embarrassment with our customers.  

This new process and our work with CTC have provided tremendous value to our team. We didn’t realize how much we were in the dark ages, not taking advantage of the available technology. You don’t know what you don’t know until you dive in, and it was well worth it.  

Results:   

The overall investment was larger than we had anticipated as we didn’t account for some of the extra services and features, we could leverage. However, without a doubt, I would do it again. We are very happy with the results we have seen.  

Since rolling out the new system very few balls have dropped! We have happy customers that get their answers on the first call/email and don’t have to follow up with us to check on statuses. Plus, we now have an easy process for leaders to take over quotes when necessary.    

In terms of personnel, we recently onboarded two new people and without the new system, we would have been devastated. Our new technical environment is easy for new and existing employees to understand and follow, and our employees’ stress levels are much improved. We have seen an increase in job satisfaction since the switch.   

We used to frequently have issues getting on Teams calls, but there are now zero issues with our new technical environment.  

Microsoft’s VoIP solution, Business Voice, was also well worth the investment. Not only did it stop the call issues we were having, it costs less than Verizon and we don’t have to buy company phones for some of our employees.  We rely on chat, posts, and video meetings for communication.   

The security concerns we were having with Google also went away when we switched to Microsoft 365. Our Microsoft Secure Score went from 29 to 65. From what I understand, for a company like ours without strict compliance needs, the goal is to reach a score of 60-70. This score is important as it can affect cybersecurity insurance costs and peace of mind.  

We are thrilled with the results we have seen since bringing CTC on to help us streamline our workflow. We plan to bring CTC back for more training in the future to help us continue to leverage Microsoft 365’s suite of tools. 

Project Cost, Timeline, & ROI  

One-Time Project cost $9k

Ongoing cost $0

Project timeline 3 mos

ROI:  Without the new system in place, we would have had to onboard an additional inside sales rep. That would have been an added cost of $60k – $ 100k annually.