Microsoft Corp. today announced that SPY Optic Inc., a Carlsbad, Calif.-based designer and manufacturer of action sports and fashion eyewear and accessories, has selected Microsoft Dynamics GP for its new, overall enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution and Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage its customer and vendor relations. The company, which has 125 employees, will also leverage the technology to streamline interactions with its European headquarters in Lombardo, Italy. SPY Optic distributes to more than 5,000 retail locations in the U.S., with plans to expand to markets in Australia and Europe.
The combination of a recent public offering and the welcoming of a new chief information officer (CIO) provided SPY Optic with an ideal opportunity to re-evaluate its approach to production, inventory, sales and customer data management, all of which were previously distributed throughout various nonintegrated IT systems. The new combined Microsoft Dynamics solution will work in tandem with Microsoft® SQL Server™, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office and other key, familiar products on the Microsoft platform.
"We expect the adoption of a holistic solution based upon Microsoft Dynamics to be a day-and-night change for this company," said Erik Quade, CIO for SPY Optic. "Our goal is growth. From increasing the effectiveness of our sales and customer relations efforts to drastically improving order fulfillment and business analytics on the back end, a mix of Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM was unquestionably the right choice to take us to the next level."
The company will leverage the full functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP's data management solutions to move to a paperless model, which it projects may reduce order processing and SKU setup time by up to 50 percent. In addition, the company anticipates that new credit card automation functionality may potentially save up to 30 labor hours per month by reducing data entry of cash receipts by approximately 30 percent. SPY Optic will also leverage the new solution in its warehouse facility, where integration with handheld scanning technology may increase inventory management and distribution time proficiency as much as 90 percent.
SPY Optic chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM for its customer and vendor relationship management functionality, as well as the way in which the solution provides a natural way to add these capabilities for employees already familiar with Microsoft Office Outlook® and other programs. Sitting alongside these familiar products, the solution will provide every customer-facing employee with the information they need to provide the best service, while also capturing the greatest depth of transaction data for reference in subsequent interactions. Spy Optic expects this to further empower its employees to make sales decisions, market products, solve problems and get strategic views of the business.
"While Microsoft Dynamics provides the flexibility to integrate with a variety of products, users see the full power of the solution when it's in a comprehensive Microsoft product suite," said Jon Pratt, senior director of product marketing for Microsoft Dynamics GP at Microsoft. "Each component seamlessly interacts to process real-time information, providing a dramatically deeper level of strategic insight across a business and enabling smarter decision-making. Having Microsoft Dynamics GP as the cornerstone - especially combined with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and other key Microsoft products - could play a significant role in helping SPY Optic reach its aggressive growth goals in the coming years."
The Carlsbad, Calif., office of FMT Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, will work to design and implement SPY Optic's new solution. The company, which was awarded the Great Plains® Excellence Award during the 2005 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, will apply its deep knowledge of both products to best tailor the implementation to SPY Optic's unique needs. SPY Optic evaluated other vendors' products, including SAP Business One, but FMT Consultants worked closely with the eyewear designer to demonstrate the value of building a solution on the Microsoft platform.
"In our view, the value of Microsoft Dynamics solutions centers around two key advantages: empowering people within a company to function at their best and allowing businesses to turn information into actionable insight," said Felipe Jara, senior account executive for FMT Consultants. "When we are able to demonstrate through our proposal process how this can potentially translate into real-world savings and efficiencies, Microsoft Dynamics often becomes the obvious choice - which results in FMT Consultants winning new business and delighting our clients with the results of our implementations."
August 11, 2006
Microsoft | Customer Relationship Management | Enterprise Resource Planning