Chicago-based investment banking boutique Duff & Phelps is to implement CRM tools from Interface Software in a bid to consolidate relationship data scattered across its four offices nationwide and concealed in staff Palm and Outlook contact books.
The new InterAction suite will replace an older heavily-customised CRM package. "We had made so many changes to the software we could no longer upgrade when new releases came out," says Lee Bloom, managing director of Duff & Phelps.
The firm also wanted to extract valuable CRM data from Microsoft Outlook and staff Palm devices. Failure to integrate with individual user contact books "created many problems," says Bloom. "Sending out mailings and holiday cards was a nightmare. The data was everywhere, and we knew that duplicates would be sent. It was an enormous waste of resources and threatened to impact our image."
He says InterAction was the only package which had the right combination of features and usability, and was fit for purpose. "We needed a system that our high-level professionals could use without much training or ramp-up time and that could be maintained by our small IT staff," says Bloom.