Aptaria helped a major financial services company replace 3 CRM products with 1 and gain a streamlined view of its customers by implementing Salesforce.

Problem: 3 CRM Systems for 1 Company

With $8 billion in assets, Minnesota-based AgStar is one of the country's largest providers of financial services for agricultural and rural clients. Yet until recently, the company had a cumbersome system for managing its 23,000 customer relationships.

Different AgStar business units used different customer relationship management (CRM) products. The AgriBusiness unit used Microsoft Dynamics, the Rural Financial Systems unit used Goldmine, and other units used a homegrown .NET solution. This meant that:

• Different interactions, applications, and products for the same customer were often captured in 3 different CRM systems. Farm loans could be in one, crop insurance policies in another, and machinery leases in yet another.
• AgStar faced high hardware costs and required substantial IT staff – with unique skill sets – to administer and customize its different CRM applications.

In addition, sales agents and client service officers lacked mobile access to customer information, a critical constraint given that staff do 44,000 farm visits a year.

Action: CRM Consolidation and Salesforce Implementation

AgStar decided to create a consolidated, cloud-based system for all customer data, and hired Aptaria to implement a custom Salesforce CRM solution. Aptaria ...

• Migrated data into Salesforce from the previous 3 CRM products;
• Integrated Salesforce with AgStar's enterprise software, including Microsoft BizTalk;
• Customized the new CRM to capture all historical and ongoing business as well as customer touch points – provided mobile access for AgStar staff.

Result: Reduced IT Costs and 360 Degree View of Customer

AgStar is realizing large operational cost savings from retiring its previous CRM applications. More importantly, with Aptaria's Salesforce CRM in place, the AgStar team now has a central 360 degree view of the customer. An AgStar insurance agent can see, for example, a client's insurance policies, a recent farm loan application, and calls with a lease service agent from last year – all on the same screen and from a mobile device. This makes AgStar's agents much more effective at capturing new clients and cross-selling and retaining existing clients.