The Challenge

CCN Matthews is Canada’s pre-eminent distributor of corporate news to media in Canada and around the globe. The company’s clients rely on CCN Matthews to ensure that their all-important announcements reach the media and the people most likely to use each story.

However, CCN Matthews had outgrown the capabilities of their client information management system. It was slow, requiring processing by several different applications, with the result that time lags on data replication could stretch to 2 days. In addition, orphaned data repositories were creating errors.

The time had come to upgrade. As a user of other Microsoft applications, including Great Plains accounting software, CCN Matthews was particularly interested in a Microsoft CRM solution and had already held preliminary talks with their customary vendor.

The Solution

In unrelated discussions about their telecommunications needs, a TELUS Account Executive informed CCN Matthews that TELUS has CRM solutions capabilities, which he felt could prove useful. Appreciating this proactive approach, Lida Sadrazodi, Chief Financial Officer at CCN Matthews, requested a proposal.

TELUS recommended taking full advantage of the cross-platform integration capability of Microsoft CRM, a proposal CCN Matthews had no hesitation in accepting.

TELUS configured the CCN Matthews solution to allow all processing of client information to be handled by one application – Microsoft CRM – instead of several different ones. TELUS also enabled real-time data replication between Microsoft CRM, the company’s in-house order processing system and its Great Plains solution, with the result that time lags have been all but eliminated. 

In addition, a simple user interface and built-in business rules make it easy for sales staff to enter data and process orders. Because they have access to all client information in a single place, they can easily recommend the best fit for each project – and  because they own the data and only have to enter it once, its integrity is assured.

Since the implementation, user adoption rates have increased dramatically – and so has the service CCN Matthews provides to its customers. “I feel that TELUS is very professional, very approachable and down-to-earth,” says Sadrazodi. “They’re really willing to take care of their customers.” In fact, CCN Matthews is so pleased with the solution that it is currently being implemented in their offices in the United Kingdom and is under consideration for other global locations.