In January 2022, ANS merged with UKFast to form the industry-leading company it is today. As part of this process, Project Omega was launched.
Project Omega was the plan to unify these separate sales teams onto one unified CRM system.
As ANS is in the top 1% of Microsoft experts and has won the Microsoft Inner Circle Award for many years in a row, it made sense to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales.
Why ANS decided to move to Dynamics 365 Sales.
At the time, ANS already used Dynamics Customer Service for customer support teams and Dynamics Project Service Automation (PSA) for professional services teams. Many everyday business applications were Microsoft-based too, so expanding the Microsoft ecosystem was very attractive.
As a key Microsoft Partner, ANS also understood the benefits that Dynamics 365 Sales would provide.
Some of the key benefits of Dynamics 365 Sales include:
- End-to-end visibility of customer experiences
- AI & CoPilot integration
- Seamless integration with Microsoft 365 including Teams, Outlook and Sharepoint
- Native embedded Power BI & Power Apps capabilities
- Built-in automations to improve productivity
- Advanced customer insights
- Centralised top-down view of customer data, updated in real time
- Greater scalability & flexibility
- Cost savings compared to Salesforce (in many cases)
Moving the sales team into the Dynamics ecosystem meant that all of ANS’s customer-facing teams were working on one single integrated platform, sharing the same underlying data and making the full customer lifecycle management much easier.
“Dynamics CRM will lead to improved customer satisfaction through more responsive and informed service, thanks to the alignment across departments. I anticipate increased productivity, more cohesive team collaboration and, ultimately, a stronger competitive edge in the market.”
Mark Bartlem, Account Management Team Manager SMB, ANS
The 5 challenges of ANS’s Dynamics 365 migration.
Migrating segments of the newly combined business from Salesforce to Dynamics made sense for the newly formed version of ANS, but it was not without its challenges.
1. Building the plane while flying the plane.
Some of ANS’s teams were already using Dynamics 365 Sales at the time of the merger. As a result, moving the entire new company to this system meant making a lot of changes on a system that was already in use.
To get around this problem, ANS created a brand-new sales app to allow existing Dynamics users to continue to operate unaffected until the new unified sales app was migrated and ready to go for the whole company.
2. Expecting things to be exactly the same.
Many of the ANS team were used to Salesforce’s UI and functionality, so they wanted to recreate it in Dynamics. This wasn’t always possible due to the quirks of each CRM.
To combat this, ANS gathered user stories from the teams and asked them about the ‘why?’ behind their existing CRM processes.
This helped dig deeper into the underlying requirements behind the existing processes and design a new CRM in Dynamics that would tackle these needs from the ground up.
Rather than replicating the Salesforce CRM, ANS designed something better in Dynamics.
3. Merging two huge sets of data.
Merging two businesses that have been operating for 20 years means merging two very large sets of data. ANS had to find the safest and most methodical way to do this.
Data was a critical stream from the beginning of the merger, so the technicians found ways to simplify the process. This included:
- Flagging duplicates from both pre-existing systems
- ‘Data cleansing’ non-customers or former customers
- Using the data platform to pull in relevant data from pre-existing systems
- Compiling all relevant data into one new unified CRM
Despite the challenges, ANS was able to merge both data sets successfully.
4. Communicating a lot of changes across departments.
During the migration to Dynamics 365 Sales, the sales team were heavily involved. However, many departments and key stakeholders in ANS were affected by these changes and leaders needed to communicate the new processes to them effectively.
As well as giving regular company-wide updates, ANS included stakeholders from relevant departments on project calls. For example, Finance leaders may be consulted on commercial reporting in the new Dynamics system.
5. Training people on a new system.
Merging to Dynamics required a lot of training, especially for those who were brand new to Dynamics. However, training staff presents a lot of challenges.
Everyone has different ways of learning, and for a company with hundreds of employees, it’s hard to get everyone in a room at once.
As a result, ANS tackled training in different ways.
ANS produced a combination of live demos, video guides and written guides on Dynamics. However, the most successful strategy was using product champions.
At least one member of each team who would be using the new sales system acted as a production champion for Dynamics 365 Sales.
These champions received:
- Early access to the testing environment
- More in-depth system training
- Access to architects of the new Dynamics system
This strategy helped the champions to familiarise themselves with the platform and raise potential issues before they arise upon launch.
On go live, those champions were then on hand to help guide members of their team through how to use the system. This freed up the ANS configuration team to focus on bugs and phase 2 development rather than answering questions on how to use the system.
Who better to train people on a new system than a member of the team who is already invested in that department’s workflow and needs?
Outcome and benefits of moving to Dynamics 365 Sales
As a result of Project Omega, the ANS sales teams are better connected than ever, with end-to-end visibility of the client experience helping to improve customer relationships and solve problems faster.
The automation and CoPilot AI integration in newer versions of Dynamics has also freed up a lot of time and improved productivity, helping teams to focus their time on higher-level tasks rather than mundane data entry.
“Moving to Dynamics CRM will significantly enhance the AM’s day-to-day role by streamlining tasks, improving data accessibility, and enabling more efficient customer interactions. With centralised data and the automation of routine tasks, the team will be freed up to focus on higher-value activities, such as personalised customer engagement and strategic decision-making.”
Mark Bartlem, Account Management Team Manager SMB, ANS
Salesforce and Dynamics 365 are both powerful business solutions, but many companies are finding that Microsoft’s suite offers more flexibility and forward-looking features when it comes to operations.
How ANS can help you to migrate to Dynamics 365 sales
ANS’s experience in Dynamics 365 migration provides insight into the pain points that many organisations face when migrating to a new CRM system.
This experience, combined with the team’s Microsoft knowledge and Microsoft UK Services Partner of the year 2024 award, makes ANS the perfect company to help migrate your data to Dynamics 365 Sales.
Book in a call to find out more.