The Electoral Commission improves data accuracy and customer service with CRM

Here is a great case study for anyone thinking of improving data accuracy, cutting admin and improving customer relations...

The Electoral Commission is a body set up by the United Kingdom (U.K.) parliament to regulate party finance and set election standards. To improve decision making through more accurate data, the organisation deployed customer relationship management (CRM) system Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Now, employees are more productive, enhancing both stakeholder relationships and customer service.

Business Needs

Maintaining records for more than 9,000 stakeholders—including 400 political parties and their officers—was both challenging and time consuming. There were approximately 25 different sources of information to keep up-to-date and combining them to see the big picture was difficult.

Phil Tucker, Head of ICT, The Electoral Commission, says: “There was a lot of data duplication and inaccuracies because staff didn’t have access to a single, authoritative source of information.”

Staff found it a challenge to service customer requests efficiently or prepare for customer meetings, because there was insufficient information to hand. Tucker says: “The legal department had a small case management system, but other staff had a variety of uncoordinated data sources and we felt managing stakeholder relationships could be improved.”

Solution

After a thorough investigation into CRM systems, The Electoral Commission opted for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

“We saw that Microsoft Dynamics CRM was easy to use and implement. We also needed to integrate it with PEF Online—our Party Election Finance system—and we were confident that Microsoft Dynamics CRM would do this cost effectively,” says Tucker.

Based on its expertise, IMGROUP was selected to design and implement the system. And as a result of its success it has been the partner of choice for The Electoral Commission ever since. Tucker says: “It responds promptly to issues, is knowledgeable, and provides good service levels. The solution was delivered well and IMGROUP continues to provide consulting expertise and support for our ongoing development.”

Benefits

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a single source of stakeholder information, authorised users can manage contact and case information and have a single view of customer communications. The Electoral Commission PEF Online system allows party administrators to manage registrations and contact details. These flow seamlessly into Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which means the organisation sees the most up-to-date details. Workload is reduced and data accuracy is increased.

To find out more about the benefits, please read the full story on our case study page.

Posted by Howard
Content and Communities Manager, Microsoft Public Sector