Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Engineering Firm Pumps-Up Sales with CRM
Overview
Country or Region: Australia
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Blakers Pump Engineers designs and
builds pumps for the manufacturing,
mining, and oil and gas industries. It
has 75 staff and offices in Perth,
Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Business Situation
During the tender process, company
staff often duplicated each other’s
efforts because they lacked a
consolidated view of information
across multiple offices including vital
data on sales performance.
Solution
Microsoft® partner Ignia helped the
firm develop a bid management
application based on Microsoft
Dynamics® CRM 4.0 and Microsoft
Office SharePoint® Server 2007.
Benefits
 Boosted sales by A$1 million
 Improved accountability
 Delivered real-time information
 Implemented system quickly
 Retained familiar interface
“We’ve increased our conversion rate by 23 percent
since July 2009 – that’s probably just under A$1 million
in additional sales.”
Colin Bancroft, IT and Finance Manager, Blakers Pump Engineers
Blakers Pump Engineers designs and manufactures pumping
systems for industrial customers across Australia and
internationally. Bidding for large projects was a complex process,
and the company could not easily share tender information with
other staff and offices. The company contemplated building its
own custom tender management application, but was delighted
when Ignia, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, suggested
building an application using Microsoft Dynamics® CRM and
Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The system was up
and running within three months, and in less than a year had
improved the company’s sales conversion rate by 23%, or
around A$1 million. The system gave staff across the company
real-time and comprehensive access to information about all
bids currently underway as well as potential future projects.
“We hooked their Excel
estimation model into
the CRM system using
Web services. They could
keep using the familiar
interface, but it brings
live product and price
data out of the CRM
system.”
Phil Rickson, Managing Director, Ignia
Situation
Blakers Pump Engineers designs and
makes industrial pumping equipment for
manufacturing, mining, oil and gas,
petrochemicals and power generation
companies. Founded in 1979, it has
clients throughout Australia and New
Zealand and 18 other countries
worldwide. It has 75 staff, working at its
headquarters in Perth, offices in Brisbane,
Melbourne and Sydney, and a
maintenance facility in Gladstone,
Queensland.
Bidding for large-scale tenders worth
tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars
is a long and technically complex
process. Coordinating information about
tenders across multiple locations was a
serious struggle for Blakers Pump
Engineers.
“Our head office and branch offices in
Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney each
had their own Microsoft® Access
database to keep track of tenders,” says
Colin Bancroft, IT and Finance Manager,
Blakers Pump Engineers. “Each office
would have to periodically pack up and
send their database to us so we could
consolidate the results.”
As a result, Blakers’ managing director
didn’t have real-time access to quoting
and activities in the sales pipeline.
However, the company was wary of
creating new bidding tools. The
company’s sales engineers used an
intricately designed Microsoft Office
Excel spreadsheet to generate customer
quotes, and did not want to give it up.
“Our quoting procedures are very
technical and that spreadsheet had
20-odd years of knowledge built into it.
It had things like part numbers and
performance curves, which we need for
technical calculations,” says Bancroft.
“We wanted to keep the spreadsheet but
we needed a way for all staff to be able
to get information out of it.”
Because bidding documentation was
developed at different locations, staff
were often unaware of what their
colleagues were doing, leading to
duplicated effort. Compounding the
inefficiency, once Blakers Pump
Engineers won a bid, the contracts
department would have to re-key all the
relevant data into their systems to
generate a legal agreement.
Preparing quotes and tenders consumed
so much time that sales teams – which
included engineers – couldn’t keep up
with demand and the company missed
out on work.
Solution
The company initially looked at
developing a custom application to
manage its sales and bidding process. It
consulted three local technology firms
before selecting Microsoft Gold Certified
Partner Ignia as the best alternative.
Blakers initial plan was to build a
customised bid management application
from scratch, based around the Microsoft
.NET Framework.
“Our technical team took a look at the
project and said it would be very timeconsuming and expensive to develop a
customised .NET system,” says Phil
Rickson, Managing Director, Ignia. “But
they thought there was a better way to
achieve the same result.”
Ignia recommended building a system
based on Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0
and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server.
“It has unified our
company as a whole,
because we aren’t
restricted to operating
like state offices."
Colin Bancroft,
IT and Finance Manager,
Blakers Pump Engineers
The company was greatly impressed with
Ignia’s approach.
is, in part, because it has proved so easy
to use.
“Ignia were the only people who gave us
a full quote, and didn’t suggest open
chequebook development,” says
Bancroft. “They specified it down to
every single part and had great project
managers.”
Increased sales conversion rate
Access to accurate and timely
information about the sales process has
greatly improved Blakers Pump
Engineers’ ability to close deals.
Ignia started working on the project in
February 2008. The bulk of the work was
finished by mid-April of the same year
and Blakers Pump Engineers gradually
rolled out the new system to each office
over six months.
“We hooked their Excel estimation model
into the CRM system using Web
services,” says Rickson. “They could keep
using the familiar interface while live
product and price data were brought out
of the CRM system.”
The new system allows Blakers Pump
Engineers to track each bid through the
entire tender process, with the
SharePoint library acting as a central
document repository. Dynamics CRM
tracks all customer interactions.
“When staff open a quote in the CRM
system, they can see the integrated
estimation model in Excel and the
documents in SharePoint,” says Rickson.
“They have all the documents related to
a quote in one place. Even after they’ve
won a bid, this information carries
through to the contracts department.”
Benefits
The new system based on Microsoft
Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server has saved Blakers
Pump Engineers a significant amount of
duplicated effort and improved the
accuracy of company information. This
“We’ve increased our conversion rate by
23 percent since July 2009 – that’s
probably just under A$1 million in
additional sales,” says Bancroft. “That’s
the effect of changing our sales model in
reaction to the market and because the
system helps us ensure we follow up all
quotes in a timely manner.
“We can also make forward projections
because we’re recording prospects in the
CRM system. We can get a feel for the
projects coming up in the next six, 12 or
24 months, and generate reports on
opportunities coming through.”
Real-time access to information
The major reason behind this success is
having a single system that everyone can
access. It provides real-time information
on all quoting and tendering activity.
“We can see by the minute what’s
happening locally and interstate,” says
Bancroft. “And instead of having to wait
until the end of each month, we can
monitor sales activity in real-time.”
“This allows us to plan resources around
what’s happening in Australia and
internationally. It has unified our
company as a whole, because we aren’t
restricted to operating like state offices.”
Improved accountability
The system allows Blakers Pump
Engineers to keep track of all bids.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics® products and services, call
1800 197 960.
To access information using the World
Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com/australia/dynamics/
For more information about Ignia Pty
Ltd products and services, call 08 9365
8400 or visit the Web site at:
www.ignia.com.au
For more information about Blakers
Pump Engineers products and services,
call 08 9302 1855 or visit the Web site
at: www.blakerspumps.com.au
Microsoft Dynamics
Importantly, the company has the
information to analyse why bids are
successful or unsuccessful.
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of
integrated, adaptable business
management solutions that enables you
and your people to make business
decisions with greater confidence.
Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
Microsoft software such as Microsoft
Office, which means less of a learning
curve for your people, so they can get up
and running quickly and focus on what’s
most important. And because it is from
Microsoft, it easily works with the
systems that your company already has
implemented. By automating and
streamlining financial, customer
relationship, and supply chain processes,
Microsoft Dynamics brings together
people, processes, and technologies,
increasing the productivity and
effectiveness of your business, and
helping you drive business success.
“We can now monitor why we’re losing: if
it’s on price or product or if the bid has
gone overseas,” says Bancroft. “We can
quantify the reasons why we lose bids,
which allows the directors to make better
decisions on pricing, product line and
other things that need to be changed.
As a result, our time is more productive
and more accountable.”
Cheaper, faster development
Building a system using existing
Microsoft software saved a considerable
amount of money in development and
ongoing support.
“Creating a custom .NET system would
have taken longer and been significantly
more expensive,” says Rickson. “In
addition, the ongoing costs would have
been much higher because they would
have needed to maintain complex .NET
source code and do a technology refresh
every five years.”
For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
“The total cost of ownership is much
lower with Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
even discounting the off-the-shelf
features,” says Bancroft.
Software and Services

This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published March 2010
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007

Products
− Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Partners

Ignia Pty Ltd