Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Analytical-Instruments Firm Uses CRM
Solution To Help Measure Up with Its
Customers
Overview
Country or Region: North America and
Latin America
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
JASCO Inc. provides analytical instruments
to biotech, scientific, and academic
communities in North and Latin America.
Business Situation
Differing and incompatible software
systems prevented JASCO’s sales force and
customer service personnel from efficiently
sharing key information relating to
customer accounts. Manual entry
processes increased labor costs and
errors.
Solution
JASCO adopted Microsoft® solutions,
including Microsoft CRM and Microsoft
Windows® Small Business Server 2003, to
centrally manage its customer
relationships.
Benefits
 Lower costs
 Increased revenue opportunities
 Improved collaboration and
communication among teams
 Significantly reduced data entry errors
 Increased revenue opportunities
 Improved tracking of customer sales and
service cycle
“Microsoft CRM has provided our service engineers
with the ability to review case histories and more
effectively manage their workloads.”
Frank E. Mason, Chief Executive Officer, JASCO
JASCO Inc. is a leading provider of analytical instruments to the
biotech, scientific, and academic communities in North America
and Latin America. JASCO needed a system that allowed its
employees to get an integrated and accurate view of its global
customer base across sales, service, and distribution. The company
also needed help automating many of the manual processes
required to service customers optimally. With these requirements
identified, JASCO turned to Avrio Group, a Microsoft® Certified
Partner, for Microsoft CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™)
solutions to manage its customer relationships throughout the
sales and customer service cycle.
Situation
Keeping track of more than 13,000 accounts
and 23,000 contacts is a daunting process
for any company. But for JASCO Inc., which
provides analytical instruments to the
biotech, scientific, and academic
communities, the company’s biggest
challenge was having eight disparate
databases track sales, customer service
calls, sales forecasting, and shipping orders
from around the globe.
“To support our company’s expansion, both in
personnel—dispersed throughout the U.S. and
Latin America—and in market focus, we
required a system to support a rapidly
changing demand for efficient and integrated
workflow, real-time analysis of our sales and
service activities, and access to critical up-todate information as needed,” says Frank L.
Gunsallus, Vice President of Operations at
JASCO. “Our old system did not support this
requirement, and as we began growing, the
error rate within our inherent work processes
increased. Clearly, we needed a system that
we could trust—both short- and long-term—to
support our growth.”
Solution
To help improve customer management,
JASCO chose to implement a new customer
relationship management (CRM) solution for
its business. The company selected
Microsoft® CRM to give both the sales and
customer service staffs a single, integrated
tool to manage all customer activity.
By using the Microsoft CRM workflow feature,
JASCO’s sales department automated many
tasks that were previously done manually.
Order acknowledgement letters, for example,
are now automatically generated. After an
invoice is generated and the product ships,
Microsoft CRM automatically notifies sales
representatives, customer service employees,
and customers. The new system also tracks
warranty and service contracts for every
analytical instrument the company sells.
“Now that we have all the data in a single
place, we can focus on cross-selling and
upselling products to generate additional
sales,” says Cathy McFadden, Office Manager
at JASCO. “Microsoft CRM gave all
departments within our organization the
ability to share customer information and
manage accordingly with a 360-degree view
of our customer needs.”
JASCO’s management team is enthusiastic
about the improvements. To make the system
run even more efficiently, the company
bought a new server. From a cost
perspective, it made sense to adopt a
Microsoft server solution—the Microsoft
Windows® Small Business Server 2003
operating system—instead of purchasing
components separately. Small Business
Server 2003 provides JASCO with a reliable
and dependable software solution on which
to run their business—eliminating the
frequent and costly work stoppages that
occurred when the old server crashed.
Furthermore, Small Business Server 2003
has helped save the company money,
because it doesn’t require an IT professional
to keep the system running.
“The server system has been very stable
compared to the previous solution, and you
don’t need to be an IT professional to
manage the Small Business Server,” says
Gunsallus. “Before we had the SBS, our
servers were going down every week, and
we’d lose valuable staff time while we waited
for service calls. The SBS is already proving to
be a great value.”
Benefits
JASCO now provides its customers with
improved and more responsive service,
because the Microsoft CRM solution can now
store and manage all customer data in a
central location.
Lower Costs, Increased Revenue
Opportunities
For Frank E. Mason, Chief Executive Officer of
JASCO, the benefits of adopting Microsoft
CRM are striking.
“Microsoft CRM has provided our service
engineers with the ability to review case
histories and more effectively manage their
workloads. The ability to review other
engineers’ findings has decreased our
onsite labor time,” says Mason. “We are also
able to track service warranty periods more
accurately, letting us communicate renewal
and expiration dates to customers and more
easily determine which service calls are
covered under warranty and which are not.”
Improved Collaboration and Communication
Implementing Microsoft CRM has also
prompted JASCO to document its business
processes. This exercise has helped
departments collaborate and communicate
more closely with one another on customer
orders and service requests.
JASCO officials say that businesses need to
think through their operating processes, find
ways to streamline workflow, and take
advantage of Microsoft CRM software.
Jasco also recommends that other small
businesses that are considering using
Microsoft CRM take the time to define the
types of reports and metrics they need to
keep their operations running more
profitably.
For More Information
Microsoft Dynamics
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
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Canada. 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
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 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.
For more information about Avrio Group
products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.avriogroup.com
For more information about JASCO
Inc.products and services, call (410) 8221220 or visit the Web site at:
www.jascoinc.com
For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
Software and Services
Hardware
Microsoft Dynamics
 3 Dell Power Edge Servers; 2.8
− Microsoft CRM
 Microsoft Windows Small Business Server Partners
2003
 Avrio Group

© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, the Microsoft Dynamics logo,
and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective
owners.
Document published July 2005