Kennametal Refocuses on its Customers to Deliver Real Results
“When you pull together Power BI with Cortana, Office 365, Skype for Business, and Dynamics 365 Sales you get a holistic business solution that no one even comes close to.”
Steve Hanna
Former CIO | Kennametal
Kennametal, a global industry leading manufacturer of cutting tools and advanced materials was early in the shift to a customer-driven business model. In the first wave of B2B eCommerce, Kennametal launched a set of powerful guided selling tools and opened a portal for channel partner/customer self-service. This set the stage for the company to further modernize, enabling double-digit gains in customer satisfaction and internal sales/customer service productivity.
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To gain more customer-facing time, Kennametal VP and CIO Steven Hanna chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales as their Productivity solution to replace SAP CRM. Kennametal has used cloud-based tools for years, ever since it became an early adopter of Office 365 and other Microsoft 365 solutions, “as a way to provide their 14,000 employees dispersed around the globe information at their fingertips, whether in the conference room or on the factory floor”.
A Global Sales Solution
eLogic enabled Kennametal to launch Dynamics 365 Sales globally to thousands of sales reps in a matter of a few months as a single program. This global sales deployment equipped their sales representatives across multiple sales channels to be customer-obsessed, always on and connected with Dynamics 365 Sales as its intelligent, digital selling platform empowering intelligent decisions in action with integrated analytics through Power BI.
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Dynamics 365 replaced Kennametal's SAP CRM, and it was critically important to continue the integration of key data between Dynamics 365 as its new customer relationship management system and SAP as its core ERP system. These data included accounts, products, contact information, order history, and more. eLogic leveraged its proven SynApps™ accelerator to provide the basic integration that was then enhanced to Kennametal requirements. The result is a near real time synchronization that can also work bidirectionally.
Solutions
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Dynamics 365 Sales
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SAP Integration
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Analytics with Power BI
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Global Sales Solution
Kennametal Refocuses on Its Customers
Reduction in
Admin Time
15-20%
Global
Company Sales Solution
SAP
Integration to
Dynamics 365
Delivering Real Results for Their Customers
Ultimately, Kennametal’s seamless environment includes data visualization and analytics, productivity software, communication tools, and specialized business applications. “When you pull together Power BI with Cortana, Office 365, Skype for Business, and Dynamics 365 Sales you get a holistic business solution that no one even comes close to,” says Hanna.
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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales helped to reduce their administrative time by 15-20%. Kennametal has embraced a universe of possibilities by investing in Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. It chose this combination of cloud platforms and solutions because of their high levels of security and availability, along with robust support for running business-critical SAP applications. Through this approach, the company has reduced IT capital spending, while laying a strong foundation for future technological innovation.
“When it comes to delivering results for our customers, our goal is to make the impossible possible,” says Hanna. “We’re achieving that goal with the help of Microsoft cloud solutions.”
Key Stakeholders
Sales Reps
Can focus on customer engagement to deliver results, with less time spent on admin activities
VP of Sales
Have visibility into team performance with integrated Power BI analytics