User Story: Inform Training

When Inform Training  took a strategic decision to move to a new business model, they knew that customers were at the centre of their business, and they needed a true CRM system to manage their customer relationships. After evaluating several contact management and CRM solutions, Inform chose Commence for their CRM System. 

Inform Training and Research Pty Ltd (www.informtraining.com) is at the leading edge in application of behavioural technology. There are two main streams to the business, Public  Professional Development Courses and Corporate Training programmes tailored to specific corporate requirements.

Both these streams are aimed at the Executive, Management and Functional Levels, covering such topics as  Executive Relationship Management, Coaching and Mentoring Skills, Presentation Skills, Leadership Wisdom and Sales Skills. 

Managing all of their customer information is critical to the operation of Inform Training and to maintaining satisfied customers. Inform had found that their previously separate Filemaker databases really were not up to the task and they realised that a proper CRM solution was needed.

Advanced User Systems worked with Inform IT staff to transfer all of the data from the Filemaker System into Commence. While Commence solved 90% of Inform's requirements out-of-the-box, with a small amount of consulting from Advanced User Systems additional features were easily added to meet particular Inform requirements.

The two separate databases were unified into one database, while still tracking contacts interested in public seminars and those interested in corporate training. This resulted in immediate benefits in handling duplication, where clients had attended public seminars and were also interested in corporate training.

Inform uses MYOB for all accounting information, and AccountLink was purchased as  part of the Commence solution. AccountLink will allow Inform to synchronise their Commence data with MYOB, so they can always see the invoice history for a client, have credit verification on hand, and avoid time wasted with data entry duplication.

"Commence is an enabling technology in our new organisational model", said Ben Reeve, Director at Inform. "We now have a process  to handle enquiries, send out information and track all notes and correspondence associated with our clients. Commence alerts our consultants when a follow up is due, and helps us to manage opportunities and the reporting process."

The flexibility of Commence was key to allowing Inform to set up business processes and workflows to suit their operation. "Every client can be categorised by one or more areas of interest, or tagged once they have attended one of our courses," said Reeves. "The next step is to look at further automating the process of creating a quote and the transition to an invoice, as well as more advanced reports to analyse the performance of the business and forecast future business and resource requirements. "

"Working with people is our business. We needed to find a way to offer our customers and prospects the level of professionalism and relationship management that we demonstrate in our training environment. Commence is now the technology platform on which we can do this, from a public enquiry through to ongoing account management of our major corporate customers."