CNH boosts customer loyalty with Microsoft Dynamics 365

CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNHI) is a global leader in agriculture and construction equipment. It designs, produces, and sells machinery and services that help farmers and builders work sustainably. Founded in 1842 as the Racine Threshing Machine Works, today CNH Industrial (CNH) is a multinational company with 10 brands, including New Holland and CASE Construction Equipment, and more than 40,000 employees at 43 production facilities, 40 R&D centers, and 170 locations on five continents.

“For us, the move to Dynamics 365 was a momentous change. We transformed CRM from a mere tool into a real business strategy, using forecasts shared with dealers to predict sales orders in the immediate future.”

Manuela Bozzo, ICT Sales, Brands & Commercial Services Manager EMEA, CNH Industrial

Planting seeds for success

To stay ahead of the competition, CNH wanted to put its customers at the heart of its business strategy. To do that, it needed to standardize its customer relationship management (CRM) systems and processes across its diverse and distributed sales organization of about 11,500 distributors and retailers.

Manuela Bozzo, ICT CRM & Sales, Brands & Commercial Services Manager EMEA at CNH, explains that until a few years ago, the company’s customer database wasn’t consistent across different brands and sales functions. “There was a need to unify the customer database, an ambitious goal considering our geographically distributed organization, made up of different brands and businesses. It was essential to build a high-quality database to improve the efficiency of the sales process and monitor our KPIs." 

CNH also faced challenges on the enterprise resource planning (ERP) front: "We felt the need to standardize systems," says Marco Ruella, ICT Corporate Functions & MS 365 F&O Manager at CNH, "and improve and optimize the collaboration with dealers, the management of spare parts, product warranties, the purchasing process, accounting, and financial controls.”

To do all that, CNH chose Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Transforming CRM into a business strategy

CNH decided to adopt Dynamics 365 Sales as its CRM solution for the EMEA and LATAM regions with plans to expand it to other geographical areas (Australia and New Zealand by end of 2024). Dynamics 365 Sales allowed the company to design its sales process according to the "lead to offer" paradigm. This included the entire journey from collecting prospect data to activating leads to closing deals with the help of a product configurator.

Bozzo says, "For us, the move to Dynamics 365 was a momentous change. We transformed CRM from a mere tool into a real business strategy, using forecasts shared with dealers to predict sales orders in the immediate future.”

Dynamics 365 Sales helped CNH support the sales activities of its brand managers, area managers, CRM specialists, and dealers. It also gave visibility to the marketing team, which used it to manage interactions with customers through digital channels like email marketing. As Bozzo explains, the goal was to activate forecasting capabilities by collecting timely information that becomes valuable data. The company uses Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to carry out all marketing activities.

Dynamics 365 Sales launched in 2020 with good results. Adoption was a success, with about 1,500 dealers. More than 1 million accounts were created, and tens of thousands of opportunities won. With processes tailored to market needs, CNH got closer to its customers and dealers.

“Until a few years ago, CRM was seen as a mere tool. Today, thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365, it has become the heart of the group's Customer First strategy.”

Manuela Bozzo, ICT Sales, Brands & Commercial Services Manager EMEA, CNH Industrial

Making ERP the core of the organization

CNH started its ERP journey with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management in its APAC region, where markets were dynamic and greatly fragmented. Ruella says, “We liked [the idea of] a unified ERP for the entire company worldwide, but one that would be less complex than the classic systems used by multinationals.”

CNH gathered the best practices of all the markets and chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 for its easy and flexible implementation. Thailand and South Africa were the first countries adopting the solution.

One of the main benefits of using Dynamics 365 was the significant cost reduction. By using the available tools and taking advantage of the suite's flexibility, CNH optimized time and resources for business-critical activities. Another benefit was the integration of dealers’ activities, which were previously performed in separate systems that didn’t communicate with legacy ERPs. Finally, continuous updates and the use of DevOps tools made the activation of new business processes more effective and allowed CNH to standardize its IT departments.

Constructing a scalable future

Ruella is proud that the company achieved its goal of a flexible system that can quickly adapt to the different legal entities that make up the company. Reflecting on the company’s success, Bozzo added, “Until a few years ago, CRM was seen as a mere tool. Today, thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365, it has become the heart of the group’s Customer First strategy.” But the innovation continues, and CNH has an ambitious vision for the future, including using Microsoft Dynamics 365 in other markets.

CNH is working to extend the implementation of Dynamics 365 CRM solutions to other countries in Europe and is activating new features to further improve lead nurturing and marketing activities. On the ERP front, it’s exploring new ways to use Dynamics 365 to enhance its operations and performance.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365, CNH has found a reliable partner to help it grow its business and deliver customer-first solutions.