The Company

Tokyo Electron is one of the world's leading companies in the semiconductor industry. It has nearly 80 offices in 16 countries that engineer, manufacture, sell, and service wafer-processing or semiconductor production equipment (SPE), as well as flat panel display (FPD) equipment. As the world market share leader in several product lines, TEL plays a key role in the evolving global semiconductor industry. Additionally, TEL provides customers with superior electronic components and computer networks from around the world. Technological expertise, combined with creativity and progressive thinking has earned TEL an excellent reputation with customers around the world.

The Business Case for CRM

Tokyo Electron's activities revolve around its Business Units (BUs) which focus on unique product lines. Each BU has multiple functions such as R&D, manufacturing, sales and marketing, and field support. The products that TEL develops have a high level of complexity from the technology perspective. The sales cycle for these products is a long drawn one involving constant change in terms of customer requirements, price offering and competitor management.

The key to succeed in such a dynamic business environment is to always be on top of all the processes that involve customer interaction. This starts with knowing the customer in terms of his market and his business. Each opportunity to do business with the customer has many variables. Capturing all of these divergent elements and developing a harmonious strategy is of paramount importance.

TEL is a large company with many product lines and a spread out sales organization. Sharing knowledge within the sales teams results in pooling of ideas and this allows TEL to make the best possible offering to the customer. The market that TEL works in is a very specific and focused one. Competitor awareness is something that cannot be overlooked. An important input to developing a winning sales strategy is to be aware of what the competition is doing in any business deal. This, in addition to closely tracking the progress of business opportunities serves as the cornerstone to success.

Improving Customer Focus - iBaan CRM - Enhanced Value with e-Emphasys.

iBaan CRM made it possible for sales to have a uniform image of the customer. The very fact that you have a system that allows sharing of pertinent customer information across the sales organization means that you have an edge in any interaction with the customer.

TEL with its divergent BUs has many touch points with the customer. Very often sales works with customer contacts without knowing their role with respect to the various business units. iBaan CRM provides for sharing a common contact database across the organization. The software was enhanced in order to include BU relevant indicators for company contacts. This contact information could be updated by the sales staff and immediately the latest data set would be available to the sales teams.

Opportunities represent value and having a structured and scientific approach to managing opportunities goes a long way in enhancing your chances of success. iBaan CRM allowed TEL to devise sales strategies to work with different opportunity types. Every business chance has its own peculiarities and having iBaan CRM made it possible to account for the unique challenges posed by every opportunity. This included recording product interest shown by the customer and details of the competitor strategy for the deal.

Henry Kondo, The TEL CRM project Manager said "Knowing your competition is the key to devising a winning sales strategy. This was an area that TEL wanted to focus on, given the dynamics of the industry they are operating in. Each opportunity for TEL involves a complex and long drawn sales cycle to sell an extremely sophisticated piece of equipment. This requires the sales staff to have a constant hold on where the competition is headed vis-à-vis TEL. e-Emphasys enhanced iBaan CRM functionality to include key competitive elements to reflect the overall direction of the opportunity. I am very happy with the e-Emphasys team that worked with us. The team was very proactive and responsive to our requirements. e-Emphasys' in-depth knowledge of the iBaanCRM solution and their business focus helped us in achieving our business objectives"

Keith Arima, the e-Emphasys Program Manager said" The semiconductor industry has its own special data set that needs to be worked with. This data is relevant for opportunities, products, contacts and competitors. All of this information was added to make iBaan CRM relevant for the semiconductor market. We are happy to provide a solution that met Tokyo Electron's requirements."

CRM tasks allowed the users to model their activities aimed towards opportunity closure. Additional features such as task specific details as well as feedback from team members allowed collaborative execution of tasks.

Sayam Bagade, President e-Emphasys Ltd, Japan said "Our aim was to maximize value delivered to the customer via the iBaan CRM solution. Useful insight into customer and opportunity status was provided by key reports such as the 'Blue Sheet', 'Lost/Won Reports' and 'Task Report'. The 'dashboards' within CRM were enhanced to display TEL specific information that was added to the application.

Knowing how your product lines are faring in your customer base provides useful pointers towards planning product specific strategies. An enhancement to record product line specific performance (across BUs) was implemented in the application. This meant that the sales force had access to key indicators about which products to focus on (in terms improving sales) as well as highlight the better performing products for the company.

Overall, iBaan CRM with e-Emphasys provided a perfect fit for the requirements of a global leader in the semiconductor market.