BMI-TechKnowledge enhances internal and external communications with GoldMine

BMI-TechKnowledge, the local supplier of market intelligence and consulting in IT, telecommunications and the Internet, has improved its overall communications with JSE-listed Ixchange`s GoldMine relationship management software.

GoldMine was supplied, implemented and customised by Pro-Formance Software, a GoldMine value-added reseller and certified GoldMine solution provider.

Haydon Saulez, sales and marketing manager at BMI, says GoldMine helped the company to improve its customer service by enabling staff to document each interaction with clients and to ensure they receive one-to-one service at regular intervals. Sales staff and analysts at BMI-T now get an overview of each client`s interests and business. "GoldMine was bought long before it was used throughout the company," Saulez notes. "It was only in 1999, when the company appointed a project leader together with Pro-Formance Software to implement GoldMine across the company, that the benefits of the package, including its ability to automate business processes and procedures, were realised."

Attila Bernauriusz, CRM manager at BMI-T, says: "At first we had only a few staff members supporting the rollout of GoldMine. Only after compulsory training and one-on-one interaction did staff start using the application and experience the benefits of everyone using it to its fullest capacity.

"Apart from the global access to complete customer histories and profiles, the ability to co-ordinate everyone`s diaries without needing to call to ask people if they were available was one of the benefits that sold the company on the product," adds Bernauriusz. "We now have 50 people using the product every day."

The product`s function as a customer contact database for sales and marketing was instrumental in the success of the company`s tele-centre operation, now BMI-T`s central point of contact for incoming and outgoing calls. Saulez adds: "GoldMine has also enabled us to streamline BMI-T`s query and response process."

One of the initial goals of implementing the software company-wide was to use GoldMine`s e-mail facilities. They integrate with many Microsoft products and enhanced BMI-T`s communications and productivity. "This has been a complete success with all staff members adopting this communication medium wholeheartedly, with a noticeable increase in productivity," notes Bernauriusz.

GoldMine also helped the company to centralise its contact databases and to ensure that the database was maintained with relevant, current information. Saulez notes that access to correct information enabled BMI-T to improve its corporate image and to cement better relationships with customers and potential customers.

He says: "BMI-T has moved from fax and phone to using e-mail as its primary contact method and it is concentrating strongly on a Web-centric approach to business, with the assistance of Pro-Formance Software. As a start, we intend to capture personal information collected at www.bmi-t.co.za directly into the GoldMine database without the disruption of needing a staff member to collect and capture data manually.

"Management reporting is also becoming a necessity as the company grows its client base in Southern Africa."

To achieve these aims with the least disruption BMI-T will be moving to the latest version of GoldMine - released in South Africa in January 2000. "GoldMine 5`s improved Web integration features will help us to achieve our Web-centric focus without changing the way employees work or the tools they work with," concludes Bernauriusz.

Ixchange: (011) 808-600020 BMI-TechKnowledge: (011) 803-6412