"We didn't have a defined global sales process. Our subsidiaries operated with partially autonomous processes and systems. This made it difficult to share knowledge across the companies," says project manager Karina Dall Rasmussen from C.C. Jensen.

This resulted in significant lost synergies for the Danish-headquartered manufacturing company, as Karina Dall Rasmussen explains about the period before implementing the standardized sales system, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: "Historically, we were used to having a good overview of our order books and historical sales figures. However, pipeline reporting was done manually in Excel at a monthly meeting. Getting an overview of the pipeline across the companies was resource-intensive, and we wanted to transition from 'local to global,' where we could see all our master data in one place."

Sales teams also operated differently across the different global customer bases and segments. "This poses challenges when you aim to scale the business and manage it across the board. With many diverse cultures and companies, having a common language for the sales process is crucial," she notes, regarding the value of standardizing work processes.

C.C. Jensen achieved this through using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales with carefully selected extensions. The solution standardizes work processes and customer data, ensuring an updated pipeline without imposing excessive uniformity in sales efforts across markets and cultures. This balance has facilitated collaboration within and outside the organization.

C.C. Jensen's IT foundation is a standardized Dynamics 365 Sales solution with a limited amount of customizations. This simplifies the organization's readiness for Microsoft's ongoing solution updates and contributes to easier solution maintenance.

The solution went live at C.C. Jensen in 2019, with a subsequent focus on user adoption and ongoing solution enhancements in collaboration with Cepheo.

Sales teams get a better overview and free up more time

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales provides the Danish manufacturer with insight into, and control of, the sales process that they didn't have before. Now, the company has an additional dataset when making strategic decisions about the company's future," says Karina Dall Rasmussen, who was responsible for implementing the solution at C.C. Jensen.

"The system creates a single path from lead to sale to upsell and cross-sell. It enhances our overview, providing individual sellers and management with the opportunity to prioritize better and to be more focused and strategic. It also shortens the time from lead to order," explains Karina Dall Rasmussen.

She provides a practical example of a clear improvement in the sales team’s workday:

"Previously, sales teams wasted a lot of time because they had to work in multiple programs and windows, or they needed to contact a colleague to get some necessary information. Now they can primarily work in a single window without switching back and forth. This could be directly in Outlook or in the Dynamics 365 Sales app on a mobile device, where the seller can find all relevant information and data from Dynamics 365 Sales and make calls through Microsoft Teams. This makes the salesforce more efficient and ensures the registration of potential business in the form of leads on the fly," says the project leader.

This has opened up new opportunities for the manufacturing company in the market.

"Dynamics 365 Sales allows us to scale as we need. We can visualize our data, which optimizes understanding and communication. We can also automate the processes surrounding customer follow-up, as well as add more apps over time as we become more proficient in using the platform and our data," says Karina Dall Rasmussen.

The oil filter manufacturer is so committed to gaining better insights into its customer data and sales that they began using Power BI in 2022. This solution helps combine, organize and visualize data from Customer Engagement ‒ as well as the finance and logistics system ‒ in new ways, providing C.C. Jensen with greater insights into its global business.

"Thanks to Power BI, we've been able to track the development of our segmented pipeline on a daily basis in the past year. Going from guessing to knowing adds significant value, and the insight from Power BI provides valuable input for our future priorities," says Karina Dall Rasmussen.

Expansions provide more opportunities

C.C. Jensen has extended its standard Dynamics 365 Sales solution with Power Pages, SharePoint, and Cepheo Collaborate ‒ a knowledge and file-sharing system.

"A portion of our revenue comes from third-party companies in the form of distributors, so we had to ensure that we had the right IT infrastructure in place to collect and share knowledge about our products across the entire organization," says Karina Dall Rasmussen.

The interaction between these solutions enhances our most important activity: customer support. Now, C.C. Jensen's employees and external partners can easily access the same data.

"Previously, we had our files for internal use on a server, and those for external use in a Knowledge Database. With the Cepheo Collaborate solution, we have selected files on our SharePoint sites, which are then shared with partners through Power Pages.

"This means that files only need to be maintained in one place, and our external partners have access to the latest versions of the files at the same time as our employees. This avoids misunderstandings, wasted time and, potentially, dissatisfied customers who haven't received the right advice and documentation," she explains.

Awareness of the need for maintenance and governance of both data and collaboration tools is essential at C.C. Jensen. For example, the company was hesitant to roll out all the Teams features to employees before structures and workflows were in place:

"We prioritize governance highly. If Teams groups are created haphazardly, data and insights are scattered everywhere, and knowledge sharing is lost. By using the app developed in collaboration with Cepheo, we took control of Microsoft Teams creation and lifecycle in 2022. Now, in the midst of the global rollout of MS Teams as a collaboration tool, we can see that this front-end will add significant value to daily cooperation and knowledge sharing across departments and borders."

Strategic consultation creates an exciting future

C.C. Jensen acquired some of the solutions based on strategic consultation with Cepheo.

"We needed a resource who knew the C.C. Jensen team and our business and who was not buried in operational tasks. A solution architect with the ability see the big picture and challenge our solutions and optimize processes. This need is supported by the strategic consultation with Cepheo," says Karina Dall Rasmussen.

The vision for the future collaboration between Cepheo and C.C. Jensen continues to focus on optimizing the manufacturing company's ability to engage in a structured and efficient dialogue with its customers before, during and after sales.

"Above all, there are many more opportunities in Dynamics 365 Sales that we'd like to make use of. Furthermore, we're in the process of upgrading our marketing function. Here, a solution like Dynamics 365 could enable a high degree of marketing automation that leverages interaction with other systems," says project leader Karina Dall Rasmussen.

The next step is a so-called data lake. As more functions are digitized and automated, a stronger data infrastructure will be required. In a data lake, C.C. Jensen's data can be centralized, standardized and made accessible to all systems, which will create the conditions for better knowledge sharing and more qualified analyses.

"However, vision and system implementation aren't enough, so a huge credit is owed to the employees who have had to embrace changes with new systems and workflows. It's been a fantastic journey so far, and we will continue to evolve ourselves and our systems to meet the needs of the market and customers," concludes project leader Karina Dall Rasmussen.