HomeVestors of America Inc. will begin using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 in its corporate offices and all 240 franchise offices in an effort to improve tracking of its three-way sales cycle across the company.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help HomeVestors track leads and purchases when HomeVestors is buying houses, monitor repairs on the houses and track the resale of the houses. HomeVestors can also use the Microsoft system to help evaluate property, estimate repair costs and distribute leads to franchisees. HomeVestors executives cited the need for an integrated platform across offices as one reason for choosing Microsoft.
“We needed a solution that would enable us to have all of our franchisees on a similar platform to train them, to work together and to give us in corporate a way to help them be more effective in their markets,” David Hicks, VP of operations, HomeVestors, said in a statement.
The company considered fifteen different CRM systems, with the final choice coming down to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SugarCRM Inc. open source software. The offer of system-wide sharing of information — such as statistics and franchise best practices — helped Microsoft win out. HomeVestors already uses Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server, Office and Outlook, so it believes that its employees will be able to use Microsoft’s CRM program easily. Synching all offices to the same system will allow the corporate office to better track franchisees and allow franchisees to share information.
It also said that it was drawn to the way the system automates data entry processes. Previously, HomeVestors employees were entering data manually.
