Onyx 'lights up' ENMAX Energy Corporation's CRM efforts
THE COMPANY
ENMAX Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of The City of Calgary, provides electricity and
value-added services to more than 325,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in
Calgary and surrounding areas. Beginning in January 2001, ENMAX also will provide electricity and
value-added services to customers in Lethbridge, Red Deer and other Alberta communities.
THE VENDOR
Onyx Software Corporation is a provider of enterprise-wide, customer-centric e-business solutions
to large, medium, and small organizations worldwide. The company's mission is to help its customers
achieve a competitive advantage by enabling anytime, anywhere interactions between all their
employees, customers, and partners. Onyx products are used by companies in a variety of industries,
including financial services, health care, high technology, manufacturing, telecommunications, and
utilities.
ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY
The Onyx Employee Portal is a Web-based product line empowering a company's marketing, sales, and
service organizations to work as a team. It provides a single interface for front office employees
to access customer and partner information, relevant Internet content, and third party applications
in order to increase sales and customer loyalty. The sales department can review an account's
complete history, manage
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sales pipelines and opportunities, forecast deals, and review win-loss
data all through a personalized interface. Marketing can plan, create, and implement campaigns
targeted at the right audience; send campaigns to customers using their preferred communication
channel; and measure, monitor, and improve campaign performance. Customer Service can utilize an
extensive knowledge base, resolve online and off line service inquires, and seamlessly manage
service queues and monitor customer satisfaction. Onyx Employee Portal also includes links to
Internet sites integrated directly into the interface, giving front office employees instant access
to company profiles, stock quotes, competitive research, maps, sales coaching, and more.SearchCRM spoke with Scott Rempel, CRM Project Manager for ENMAX Energy Corporation, about the project
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SearchCRM: How are you using the Employee Portal?
Rempel: For the most part, it's a huge sequel-based database where we house all of our customers with the different datapoints that we track--address information, type of business, what type of residence they live in, how long they've been doing business with us, how much they spend on electricity, and tracking preferences on other products and services. Customers call and we record the interaction in our system under a number of different business rules and processes depending on the nature of the call and who's involved.
SearchCRM: What kinds of preferences do you track?
Rempel: In some cases we track standard things like "How would you like us to communicate with you?" Some people are very e-mail dependent, some prefer face-to-face visits, and others are fine with receiving bill stuffers in their monthly invoices. We can also track people's preferences towards our Green Power Program--some people want it, and for others that isn't a high priority. By asking those types of questions and recording the information, we can target out market very effectively.
SearchCRM: Were you using a CRM system before you implemented the Employee Portal?
Rempel: Different divisions and departments within ENMAX had their own databases that they used to track their own customers. For example, our commercial sales group had an ACT database; our energy services group had some Excel sheets. The Onyx solution helps us consolidate the databases between departments and gives us a more holistic view of the customer - so we don't end up in a situation where an employee in Division A is talking to a customer and doesn't know that someone in Division B is talking to him as well.
SearchCRM: What kind of criteria did you use when you were evaluating CRM vendors?
Rempel: We were looking at time to market, the base system architecture, and the availability of local resources - we're not in one of those technology hotbeds, so it was important to find a product that we could get local support on. We also took a look at the levels of service they'd be able to offer and we talked to some references.
SearchCRM: How has the Employee Portal helped you in the deregulated environment?
Rempel: Deregulation in Alberta is very new, but we've been preparing for it for many years. We were in a position where we had deals on the table with some of our customers, and we had to be able to react very quickly to the changing landscape. If it wasn't for a product like Onyx where we could round up those opportunities all into one view, we probably wouldn't have been as successful as we were in terms of managing our relationship with the customers in those tricky times.
SearchCRM: Do you have any advice for companies starting a project like yours?
Rempel: A lot of elements need to be in place for a company to be successful on a CRM initiative. First, you need to know what your processes are. If you automate a bad process, you just have a fast, bad process.
The organization needs to be ready, and that's difficult to assess. Sometimes organizations change so rapidly that employees throw up their arms and say, "Enough already!" People have been "changed to death," and an organization would need to take a look at that.
Linda Formichelli's writing has appeared this year in Woman's Day, Wired, Writer's Digest, Family Circle and Psychology Today. Contact her at linda-eric@lserv.com
This was first published in April 2001
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