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Microsoft Online ServicesCustomer Solution Case Study

Communications Broker Expects to Double Growth and Revenue with Online Sales Portal

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Professional services—IT services

Customer ProfileConcierge Communications is a communications broker that helps businesses identify the best solutions for their needs. Concierge is based in Tempe, Arizona, and has 22 employees.

Business SituationTo continue its rapid growth, Concierge Communications needed to streamline its sales cycle, centralize many information sources, and get sales-support materials to salespeople as quickly as possible.

SolutionConcierge Communications replaced more than 40 document repositories with a sales portal built with Microsoft SharePoint Online. Employees can now easily collaborate, access resources, and schedule meetings.

Benefits Rapid deployment, easy administration Anticipated doubling of revenues Salary avoidance of U.S.$50,000 Increased peace of mind Greater competitive advantage

“We expect that our SharePoint Online-based sales portal will allow us to double our independent agent network and revenues in 2011. Sales agents perceive the portal as a huge competitive advantage.”

Clark Atwood, Vice President, Concierge Communications

To beat the competition, communications services broker Concierge Communications needs to get sales materials into the hands of salespeople as quickly as possible. That was tough, with information saved in dozens of locations. Concierge Communications implemented Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite to gain cloud-based email (Microsoft Exchange Online) and collaboration (Microsoft SharePoint Online) services. On her own, the company’s office manager used SharePoint Online to build a comprehensive sales portal where salespeople can find everything they need. With this new portal, Concierge expects to double its sales staff and revenues in 2011, avoid U.S.$50,000 in sales-support salaries, and save $300 a month in productivity and capital savings. The company plans to use Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud services to further slash costs and boost competitiveness.

SituationThe business communications landscape has become so complex that many organizations need help negotiating a maze of ever-changing technologies and providers. Concierge Communications helps companies identify the best, most cost-effective communications devices and services for their needs. As a communications broker, it represents more than 40 communications and technology providers, including landline, Voice over IP (VoIP), and wireless service and phones, data services, mobile fleet management software and services, telecom expense management software, and many other innovations. In addition to its own team of 14 sales and sales-support staff members, Concierge uses a growing network of independent sales agents to sell its portfolio of products and services—95 and growing.

Success in this business depends on identifying and packaging the best suite of products, services, and prices for a customer before the competition does. The sales support team had to help salespeople and independent agents manually slice through reams of documents from dozens of vendors to quickly find a match for each customer’s needs. As Concierge Communications grew both its provider portfolio and its sales network, it was finding it harder and harder to make these matches quickly.

“Communications brokers that can efficiently support the consultative sales process are the ones that are growing and successful,” says Clark Atwood, Vice President of Concierge Communications. “We’ve been very successful, but it was

getting more difficult to scale that success with the sales-support processes we had in place and the quickening pace of business. Customers expect quick, accurate responses and we found ourselves getting bogged down with more and more requests.”

Concierge Communications had sales materials located in dozens of internal servers and provider websites. When a salesperson requested information, the Concierge Sales Support Team had to look in multiple locations to find resources, and then spend time sifting through dozens or hundreds of documents to ascertain their relevance and timeliness. The lack of centralized tools in a single platform to support independent sales agents hurt the company’s effort to recruit these agents. Also, as Concierge expanded its agent network, it had to expand its internal Sales Support Team at an uncomfortable rate because of the very manual process.

The company had internal collaboration and communications inefficiencies, as well. It stored documents on file shares and used a rudimentary online document library, but had no way to intelligently organize and search documents or set automatic expirations for older documents. Concierge used iMail Server messaging software, but iMail did not offer shared calendars or other advanced features, so setting up meetings required flurries of email messages and phone calls. Again, employees ended up overcoming these deficiencies with hard work, but hard work alone would not be enough as the company grew.

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“Communications brokers that can efficiently support the consultative sales process are the ones that are growing and successful.”

Clark Atwood, Vice President, Concierge Communications

SolutionIn April 2010, Concierge Communications acquired a company, which dramatically increased the number of providers and associated documents that the Concierge staff had to manage. “We ran up against our scalability limitations all at once with that acquisition and knew that we needed a better way to organize and distribute information—and we needed it quick,” Atwood says.

Cloud vs. On-PremisesBecause its 14 sales staff members worked in the field and its independent sales agents were located all over the United States, Concierge Communications was reluctant to invest in an on-premises communications infrastructure. “I was very familiar with on-premises installations and did not want to support email or file servers all over the country and maintain hardware, applications, and a complex directory infrastructure,” Atwood says. “We were convinced that a cloud-based service would best fit our needs, and we wanted to work with a company that had a long-term strategy. If cloud-based communication and collaboration worked out, we wanted to investigate putting other applications in the cloud.” Cloud computing refers to running applications in a third-party data center and having users access them over the Internet.

Because Concierge Communications used Microsoft software on its desktop computers and for many business functions, it investigated the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, part of Microsoft Online Services. This collection of finished services includes Microsoft Exchange Online for messaging,

Microsoft SharePoint Online for collaboration, Microsoft Office Live Meeting for web conferencing, and Microsoft Office Communications Online for instant messaging. These programs are hosted by Microsoft and licensed as a monthly per-user subscription.

“The Business Productivity Online Standard Suite gave us a way to grow in any location with no infrastructure support costs,” Atwood says. “The centralized email, calendar-sharing, and collaboration sites would give us a way to make our sprawling employee base a tight, cohesive team again.”

Concierge looked briefly at Google cloud solutions but rejected them because at the time, Google did not allow Concierge to create a backup of its own data. Also, says Atwood, “Their tools were not up to par with the Microsoft tools and we wanted to build on the Microsoft investment we already had. There was no need to rip and replace if our current infrastructure and skills could be leveraged effectively.”

One-Hour Email Switchover To better understand the Microsoft cloud service, Concierge Communications engaged Strategic SaaS, a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Partner that specializes in helping companies move to software as a service (SaaS). Strategic SaaS provided technical direction, advice on connecting smartphones, and some tips on using Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, but Stefanie Long, Office Manager at Concierge Communications, drove the deployment.

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“The single-sign-on tool in Business Productivity Online Standard Suite auto-configured our users, and we were up and running on Exchange Online within an hour.”

Stefanie Long, Office Manager, Concierge Communications

“The single-sign-on tool in Business Productivity Online Standard Suite auto-configured our users, and we were up and running on Exchange Online within an hour,” says Long, who has little formal IT training. Concierge Communications licensed 22 full licenses for employees and to date has licensed more than 20 deskless licenses for independent sales agents. Each week it is adding more licenses for independent agents. The deskless license provides read-only access to SharePoint Online portals and smaller mailbox sizes than those in the full license. Eventually, Concierge will expand its deskless licenses to 100 or more as it completes its conversion to the new tool set and its agent network grows.Employees use the group calendaring function of Exchange Online to quickly set meetings with one another and with independent agents. They are also able to schedule conference rooms, hotel workspaces, demo equipment, and all other shared resources from their familiar

Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client.

Concierge Communications has seen a huge reduction in spam since it began using Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, which is included with Exchange Online and provides multiple filters and virus-scanning engines to help protect against spam, viruses, and phishing scams.

Self-Built Sales Portal and IntranetThe most impressive thing that Concierge Communications has done with the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is in the area of collaboration. With no outside assistance, Long built an intranet and a sales portal by using SharePoint Online. By working with Microsoft SharePoint Designer and the tools and wizards in SharePoint Online, she created two rich, well-organized collaboration portals that employees and salespeople use as their respective, go-to resource for finding a wide range of resources.

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The Concierge Communications Sales Portal gives internal and external salespeople one place to find everything they need to be successful. Stefanie Long, the Concierge Communications Office Manager, single-handedly built the portal in Microsoft SharePoint Online in just two months.

“Our intranet has 13 tabs containing sub-sites for everything we do as a company,” Long says. “We took all the documentation that used to be sitting on servers and put it in the cloud.” This includes policies and procedures, human resources documents, forms, sales performance updates, project management information, help-desk information, organization charts, expense reports, and more. Long assigned permissions to all this information and can easily manage both changing permissions and ever-changing expiration dates to keep information fresh.

“Because the majority of our team works remotely, our intranet really knits the company together,” Long says. Employees can set up collaboration sites on the intranet for storing documents specific to a project and sharing project calendars and discussions.

After seeing the success of the intranet, Atwood asked Long to set up a similar site for salespeople and agents—which she did in just two months. Called the Concierge Sales Portal, this site is essentially a vendor management system that Concierge uses to organize all its provider information for internal salespeople and external agents.

The Concierge Sales Portal includes 14 tabs directing salespeople to a wealth of information. One tab takes them to the Concierge provider portfolio, which contains product and service descriptions, supporting documents, and links to provider websites. Other tabs connect salespeople with current sales incentives, pricing support, purchase orders, information on borrowing demo

equipment, training, vendor logos, and all kinds of sales and marketing materials. Some tabs, such as order submission, include workflows that guide and automate key business processes.

Other Business Processes Slated for the CloudMoving email to the cloud and creating powerful collaboration sites in the cloud have been so successful that Concierge Communications is eager to do more. The company has just licensed Microsoft Dynamics CRM and wants to use this customer relationship management software to replace an on-premises order-automation program. It then wants to connect Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the Sales Portal and move all customer data into Microsoft SQL Azure, a cloud-based relational database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. This move will eliminate expensive on-premises servers and software and provide even richer online capabilities to the sales team.

BenefitsWith its new sales portal, Concierge Communications has streamlined its sales processes to the point where it anticipates being able to double its agent staff and revenues in 2011—without commensurately expanding its sales-support staff. The company has also been able to trim capital and operational costs and looks forward to future savings from migrating additional applications to the cloud.

Rapid Deployment, Ease of AdministrationConcierge Communications appreciates the rapid deployment and easy administration

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“Since launching the sales portal, we’ve added 3 full-time salespeople and 12 new independent agents, with no increase in sales-support staff. That’s a savings of one full-time person, a cost avoidance of about $50,000 a year.”

Clark Atwood, Vice President, Concierge Communications

of Microsoft Online Services. “The fact that we were able to migrate to a new email system in one hour and create two full-featured collaboration portals with no outside help is pretty amazing,” Atwood says. “This software is easy enough to use that our staff has internally developed and maintained new features on its own, and will continue to do so in the future. We know that if we want to do something more sophisticated than our people can handle, Microsoft has a value-added reseller channel with companies like Strategic SaaS that we can turn to for help.”

“It’s quite impressive what Concierge Communications has done with SharePoint Online,” adds Don MacNeil, Managing Partner at Strategic SaaS. “It has created a very resource-rich tool by using standard features, and did it in about 75 days.” Anticipated Doubling of RevenueWith the efficiencies provided by its sales portal, Concierge Communications can now grow without resource constraints. “We expect that our SharePoint Online-based sales portal will allow us to double our independent agent network and revenues in 2011,” Atwood says. “Sales agents perceive the portal as a huge competitive advantage, and it makes our sales-support time much more efficient. We can attribute 7 of the last 10 agents signed to our having the portal. Our providers love that we have the tools to organize their information, and our agents love having everything right at their fingertips.”

Salespeople appreciate the portal’s efficiency. “We now know when documents will expire, so our document stores are leaner and more relevant,” says Elyssa Dull,

Marketing Associate at Concierge Communications. “Agents can get the sales support they need around the clock. This is a great competitive advantage delivering real results: more helpful information delivered to the front lines of the sales effort and faster closings. SharePoint Online helps us accelerate our pace of business to match the new pace of the cloud computing age.”

Cost Avoidance of $50,000 Salespeople and Concierge Communica-tions management alike love the self-serve efficiency of the portal. “The new paradigm is to check the sales portal first, and then contact sales support,” Atwood says. “We figure if we can save one hour of our sales-support team’s time each month, the tool pays for itself, and we believe we are already achieving this.”

Besides paying for itself, the sales portal is saving the company money. “Since launching the sales portal, we’ve added 3 full-time salespeople and 12 new independent agents, with no increase in sales-support staff,” Atwood says. “That’s a savings of one full-time person, a cost avoidance of about [U.S.]$50,000 a year.”Operational and Capital Savings of $300 a MonthConcierge Communications employees are more productive in all areas, not only those related to sales support. Employees can access email messages, critical documents, and one another from any device and from anywhere that they have an Internet connection. They can collaborate and communicate far more easily, so they do so more frequently. “We’ve seen a reduction in email messages and phone calls, which means that people aren’t running around

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”Knowing that our core business systems are running in distributed managed data centers instead of sitting in a closet in our office helps me sleep at night.”

Clark Atwood, Vice President, Concierge Communications

looking for information,” Atwood says. “They’re also saving time searching through documents and managing aging document stores.”

These productivity gains are augmented by capital savings, as Concierge Communications was able to eliminate the server and licensing needed for its older Linux-based project management and ticketing software. Atwood estimates that productivity and capital savings add up to about $300 a month. “We were pretty efficient on our IT spending prior to implementing Microsoft Online Services, but we still found cost savings, which surprised me,” Atwood says. “Plus, having predictable monthly costs helps us better plan and use our financial resources to build the business.”

Increased Peace of MindConcierge Communications also sees huge value in having its communications and collaboration software running in Microsoft data centers and managed by Microsoft. ”Knowing that our core business systems are running in distributed managed data centers instead of sitting in a closet in our office helps me sleep at night,” Atwood says. “I feel much better knowing that Microsoft is managing our Microsoft software. Plus, we are able to leverage a vast knowledge base from solution providers such as Strategic SaaS to make

our Microsoft environment as efficient as possible.”

Greater Competitive AdvantageConcierge Communications sees an endless supply of innovation and possibilities extending from its subscription to Microsoft cloud services. “We are thrilled about the coming features in Office 365 and SharePoint Online 2010 and are already planning how we will use them to enhance our business and sales support,” Atwood says. “With subscription-based software, we no longer need to justify software upgrades; instead, we can get to work figuring out how to leverage the upgrade. It’s great to be partnering with a company that is offering all these cloud solutions and tying them together. We can combine them and know that they all work together, are scalable, and are available at a fixed price. That’s a great model for building competitive advantage.”

Microsoft Online ServicesMicrosoft Online Services are business-class communication and collaboration solutions delivered as a subscription service and hosted by Microsoft. With these offerings, customers can cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies and immediately benefit from streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security features. For IT staffers, Microsoft Online

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Strategic SaaS products and services, call (888) 546-1480 or visit the website at: www.strategicsaas.com

For more information about Concierge Communications products and services, call (888) 353-9900 or visit the website at: www.conciergecom.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published March 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Online Services− Microsoft Business Productivity

Online Standard Suite− Microsoft Exchange Online− Microsoft Forefront Online Protection

for Exchange− Microsoft SharePoint Online

Solutions− Software-plus-services

Partners Strategic SaaS

Services are backed by strong service level agreements and help reduce the burden of performing routine IT management, freeing up time to focus on core business initiatives.

For more information, visit: www.microsoft.com/online

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