C5 Insight

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of what your company does?

Morehead Associates is in the employee position engagement business. We survey employees and positions of healthcare organizations around the country. Our company aggregates that data and provides access to that data for historical comparisons and normative comparisons to their peers. We’ve been in business since 1979.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main goal or objective going into the project with C5?

We’ve been working with C5 for over 10 years. We needed help with Salesforce.com as and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With their experience in those products as well as SharePoint, they really were a great match for the diverse needs that we have. So it’s been a pleasure to work with them. They take a lot of time to understand your business. They have become an integral part of our team. They’re constantly looking for ways to help us be more efficient and profitable. They’re highly flexible and very easy to work with as well. 

SOLUTION

Can you tell me a little more about the scope of what they do for you?

They currently provide us with technical support for our platform. We’re on a two days per month contract since our environment’s fairly stable. They’re very flexible in their ability to craft an agreement with us for support that adequately met our needs and supported us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How satisfied are you with the work they’ve done so far?

Very satisfied.

When working with C5, is there anything that you find to be unique or special compared to other consultants or vendors that you’ve worked with?

I think they’re very professional. They’re very knowledgeable. Everybody that I have interacted with at C5 has been very professional, articulate, and interested only in what is best for us. It doesn’t matter whether I’m dealing with management folks or our tech support resources. Jason Stefanacci, our technical support resource, has been assigned to our account for about a year. I can only say great things about Jason and his flexibility and his ideas. He possesses innovative thought and has helped us become self-sufficient while still offering aid whenever called upon.

Is there anything that you think they could improve upon or that you would do differently a second time around?

Probably no improvements because we’ve been very pleased. It’s been over 10 years. The relationship with C5 actually started before I arrived at the company. That’s a credit to them as well. Not all relationships are great with all vendors. And I think it’s a great credit to them that in the transition of our management team, we were able to evaluate the work that they have done prior to my arrival. Morehead Associates felt very good about it and were confident enough to extend our relationship through that transition process. My company has not regretted it at all.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of what your company does?

We are a professional services accounting firm. We're the largest in the southeast, so we're in the top 20 national firms. We have been on CRM for seven years, which predates me with the firm. We're currently up to version 2011, and we use it as our main sales pipeline tool as well as for some other uses. We needed support outside of our internal firm technology group, which we have in our infrastructure.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Was there specific expertise that you were looking for?

Yes; the precipice for us getting C5 was that we planned to upgrade from version 4.0 to 2011. However, a peripheral to that is we needed a vendor with expertise. A little history is that we had a partner before I came to the firm, who helped implement the initial version and was a partner going forward. However, that relationship had dissolved prior to me joining the firm, so we really did not have a partner for the first year and a half that I worked in my role as CRM administrator. That was a challenge for me, which led us to the need.

SOLUTION

What was your process for discovering and choosing C5 to work with?

I had been through normal channels: word of mouth, different blogs, Microsoft Convergence, and other venues to pick people's brains and talk with folks. I had initially formed a relationship with another partner here in Charlotte. However, that didn't really progress, and we didn't have the fit that we felt with C5. C5 literally came on our radar – someone had sent me an email that they had come across them as a local firm and asked, "Have you ever heard of these guys?" It probably referred to one of the products that they had on the market. The fact that they have a SharePoint wing and a CRM division was appealing as well. However, it was literally word of mouth that got me to look into it. I reached out to them and forged a relationship; they did a small job here and there, and they earned their way into the role they have.

What exactly do they do for you with regard to CRM?

They were our partner for our upgrade from version 4.0 to 2011. Prior to that, they helped develop a workflow for us – it was a small job, but it helped us do that. They've been an outstanding source of information that's outside of the scope of my abilities where I sit. They have been above and beyond in terms of being a sounding board and offering insight here and there, and not necessarily billing me for every question I asked them. It has just been a very good fit.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How satisfied are you with the upgrade of Microsoft CRM to the new version?

From two angles there: one, the product is great. It's everything I expected. The support from C5 and their role far exceeded my expectations, particularly their CRM practice manager, leader, and director Paul Boyano – that guy is phenomenal. He's really good, and we've been very happy. We've had virtually no issues whatsoever. I expected at least some growing pains in terms of things not working or things of that nature. However, the only issue we've had is the inherent transition going from 4.0 to 2011, the difference in security models, and having to add and tweak here and there. Those are really the only problems we've had.

When working with C5, is there anything that you find to be unique about them compared to other IT vendors that you’ve worked with?

They're extremely accessible, and that's the one thing that really stands out to me. They've been extremely responsive to us. It feels like we're getting big corporate know-how in a very small, intimate business setting. They're a small firm, but I haven't heard, "Well, I don't know how to do that," or "Let me check on that. Let me research that." It's usually, "Boom." I think that's attributable to the people they have. In my mind, that's what differentiates them from their competition.

Looking back on the project, is there anything that you would do differently the second time around or think that C5 could improve upon?

No. Honestly, the only things I would do different refer to our internal resources, not external.