Marek Brothers Construction

MAREK BROTHERS CONSTRUCTION GENERATES REAL-TIME SALES PERFORMANCE DATA AND PROVIDES ACCESS ACROSS CORPORATE AND BRANCH OFFICES 

WESTERN COMPUTER DEPLOYS DYNAMICS 365 SALES TO CONSOLIDATE SALES DATA SILOS AND ACCELERATE BID-CREATION WORKFLOWS 

THE SOLUTION 

With seven branch locations providing commercial and residential customers with 13 distinct construction service offerings, Marek Brothers Construction stores a vast amount of sales information. This includes data on prospects, customer accounts, opportunities, bids, various scopes of work, architects, and third-party vendors. Adding to the details of the data, many commercial customers with regional operations conduct business with more than one Marek location. 

All of this data provides valuable information as Marek sales personnel interact with customers and as estimators and project managers work on proposals and determine resource availability. But the data previously existed in various silos—such as Excel, SharePoint, Outlook, and the company ERP system—which were not easily accessible to personnel within each branch and at other branches. Executives at the corporate office also could not readily access the data to evaluate key sales performance indicators.  

To solve this challenge, Marek appointed an executive sponsor, Dennis Yanowski, the past president of the San Antonio branch, who championed the effort to select and deploy a consolidated CRM system that would bring all the information together and make the data easily accessible across the company. Another key internal resource assigned to lead the CRM initiative was Sherin Kuriakose, Director of the Project Management Office at Marek. 

For both Yanowski and Kuriakose, selecting the right technology and the right deployment partner was crucial to the success of the project. “We needed a solution that would provide foundational CRM capabilities that could be used across all of our offices,” Kuriakose says. “We also wanted the flexibility to tailor the system to the unique needs of the construction industry and to give each of our branches the flexibility to accommodate their requirements—which vary since each branch focuses on a varying set of construction services.” 

Adds Yanowski, “Dedicating internal resources was important, but we also knew we would require a partner with CRM best-practice expertise and knowledge of the construction industry. Trying to take on the deployment of a major enterprise application like CRM is risky without the help of a partner. Those that go it alone often find their projects never reach successful completion.” 

The CRM project team at Marek found the answers to their challenge by partnering with Western Computer to deploy Dynamics 365 Sales in the cloud. “We also considered a CRM solution designed specifically for the construction industry,” Yanowski points out. “But the Western Computer team knew how to speak our language, using construction terms that resonated with us. And they demonstrated how Dynamics 365 Sales can be easily customized to meet our requirements.”  

Western Computer conducted exploratory sessions with Marek to determine the required changes that needed to be made to Dynamics 365 Sales, such as creating entities specific to the construction industry.  

Western also set up scope entities for each of the service lines Marek sells. This enables sales reps and estimators to create bids against multiple scopes. 

“We now have separate entities for opportunities that can turn into bids and then into contracts, with each entity having its own set of fields but also some common fields,” Kuriakose says. “Western also created unique entities for budgets, which are similar to bids but have variations as our sales process has a lot of nuances to accommodate. Western Computer applied an Agile development approach to keep the project moving forward.” 

THE BENEFITS 

After customizing Dynamics 365 Sales to meet Marek’s needs, Western Computer trained a set of end-users who in turn trained the other 180 end-users of the system across all Marek offices. The Marek CRM project team visited and rolled out the solution to one branch at a time.  

“As we provided feedback during each branch implementation, Western Computer made additional changes to conform to the unique needs of each branch,” says Kuriakose. “But they were also careful to let us know if any changes would impact the solution foundation, which we wanted to avoid so that the software can be maintained efficiently going forward.” 

With Dynamics 365 Sales fully deployed in the cloud, personnel at all seven branches and the corporate headquarters can now review all sales activity in just one system—rather than having to track information down across multiple systems. “Executives and branch managers receive a link every Monday that takes them to a dashboard showing all the key sales numbers for each branch,” says Yanowski. “With a quick glance, they can see how well our sales teams are performing—from new contacts to bid opportunities and the number of bids we have won. Having access to this information in real time helps us make faster decisions when we need to adjust how we interact with customers.” 

For the Marek personnel on the front line—from sales to estimators to project managers—Yanowski says access to customer information is proving vital in responding to customer requests and closing on more business. Personnel can now easily see what Marek has done for a customer in the past, if one of the other offices has worked with that customer, and if teams from two or more service lines are bidding on the same contract.  

“That is powerful intelligence to have when working with a customer and trying to win their business,” Yanowski adds. “We can respond faster and provide a higher level of customer service. We are also more likely to win business and accelerate the time to close.”  

Marek also benefits from a 360-degree view of contacts and accounts using the Dynamics 365 Sales connections feature, which brings together all the data required to keep tabs on bids. In addition, the system facilitates collaboration on bid status by identifying everyone who is working on each bid.  

Other key benefits come from streamlined processes for determining which opportunities to pursue and for creating bids so Marek can react fast to customer RFPs. Dynamics 365 Sales also provides access to calendars to check resource availability and generates automated workflows to notify who needs to follow up on each task.  

“Western Computer exceeded our expectations on this project,” Yanowski concludes. “We wanted to take our time and get it right, and Western helped us get there—they never wavered in stepping up to the plate, with continuous follow-up and by reacting to our needs. Without a doubt, we chose the right solution and the right partner.”