As a provider of professional cloud-based VoIP communication solutions via Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Deutsche Telefon Standard AG (DTS) is perfectly aligned with the pulse of the digital age. It is therefore no surprise that the company’s order situation has been very strong in recent years and continues to improve.

However, with all these new customers, customer and partner support quickly reached capacity limits. DTS was working with a variety of internal standalone CRM solutions as well as ticketing systems for development and technical service. This resulted in significant management effort to keep data records consistent and offered very limited opportunities for automation. This patchwork system urgently needed to be replaced by a single, modern solution.

In addition, nearly all DTS customers have individual requirements, and partners and resellers use different models, each requiring customized processes. This made order processing highly complex. However, large-scale standardization – aligning dependencies between individual work packages – was unavoidable.

A smooth transition

Given such specialized requirements, a highly flexible and scalable CRM solution was needed. After the selection process, Sugar ultimately prevailed. The decisive factor was Sugar’s adaptability, which – unlike the overloaded solutions offered by competitors – provides maximum customizability and a wide range of precisely tailored modules.

This enables different departments and processes to be mapped within a single, consistent system in which only the necessary features are used and displayed – resulting in optimal and elegant usability. By eliminating silos and duplicate data records, time-consuming processes could now be handled across departments and partially fully automated.

As the integrator, Sugar partner provalida handled the targeted customization of Sugar and supported DTS with expert know-how during implementation and go-live. The implementation – including mapping the partner model and initial data import – enabled a smooth transition from the legacy systems to Sugar. Since its introduction, additional departments have been integrated every one to two months.

And that’s not all: provalida also provided custom-developed modules that tailored the solution even more precisely to DTS’s requirements. The “PV-View” plug-in allows users to preview linked data records with one click and display all relevant information clearly within Sugar. A CTI module integrates the telecommunications system with Sugar, enabling calls to be displayed directly in the CRM and initiated with a single click.

Saving time and reducing errors

By consolidating internal systems, DTS not only solved its challenges but also laid the foundation for further optimizations. Since all processes now take place entirely within Sugar, duplicate data entry across multiple databases is a thing of the past. This saves time and reduces errors in data transfer.

Within approximately three months, order throughput doubled while processing time was reduced by up to 50% – with the same level of resources. Without Sugar, the company would have needed to hire 30% more employees to achieve this growth.

During quote creation in accounting, the previously mentioned “View” function allows invoices to be reviewed within the same workflow. As a result, the invoice verification process now requires only one-third of the previous time.

With provalida’s PV-Guide module, customer calls are handled even more efficiently. Using a standardized call tree, service staff can quickly identify issues and either provide appropriate solution suggestions immediately or create a support ticket directly.

This reduced the average ticket creation time from ten minutes to three and a half minutes. The structured, standardized setup also simplifies and accelerates onboarding of new employees. In addition, the standardized ticket structure in Sugar enables the development department to analyze tickets automatically and identify sources of errors early, thereby optimizing product development.

In terms of partner, personnel, and campaign management, the end-to-end view in Sugar provides a significant advantage. Sales managers can plan, execute, and monitor targeted campaigns for all 800 or selected partners. KPIs are more transparent, making employee management significantly more efficient.

What’s next? Soon, one of the business-critical core processes – number porting – will be fully automated in Sugar. Additionally, the efficiency of order processing is expected to increase tenfold. In this way, DTS is keeping pace with the continuous scaling of the market.