Based in Columbia, S.C., and formed in 1991, the Department of Commerce is South Carolina's lead agency for the growth and development of business and industry. The agency's role is to locate new, quality investments, and expand existing investments to create wealth, jobs, and to help achieve the highest quality of life for all South Carolinians. In 2005, the South Carolina Department of Commerce played a role in the creation of over 12,000 new jobs and capital investment of over $2.5 billion within the state. Under mandate of the new secretary of commerce to choose a CRM system within a tight timeframe, the Department of Commerce researched several tools and chose Maximizer.
"We feel we've increased our competitiveness by focusing on delivering a very high-quality customer experience to the companies investing in our region," said Mandy Kibler, director of administration, South Carolina Department of Commerce. "As we pass through our first six months of Maximizer use, the biggest gain is our ability to provide confident reporting with hard numbers. We now have the ability to utilize data and deliver more information as we work to attract new investment."
Having made the decision to implement a standardized process for managing new investment projects and embed that process in the agency's CRM software, South Carolina Department of Commerce had very tight timelines for implementing the technology. Working with Maximizer Software's professional services organization, the agency delivered the new system into the hands of its project managers, complete with training in less than 30 days.
Today, South Carolina's customer-facing project managers have a single, universally accessible system for capturing important details from each interaction with current and prospective investors in the state and its businesses. Project managers can track phone conversations, in-person meetings, e-mail exchanges via Microsoft Outlook and easily report on the status of each investment project. Using the Maximizer CRM Web client, traveling project managers can easily log in to check on the status of their ongoing projects from any Internet connection. By breaking down the sales process into concrete steps within Maximizer, it not only reinforces the process in the minds of the team and organization, but allows the system to send reminder pop-ups for follow-up contact and other critical action steps. As a result, managers save time in completing and assigning tasks while clients receive more proactive, consistent service.
