Over the course of six months, Columbus implemented both Dynamics 365 Finance and the first part of a CRM solution that handles complex business processes. "The collaboration has been fantastic," says Jacob Lego Boye, Schibsted's project manager for CRM and CS.
Project Manager for CRM, Jacob Lego Boye is extremely pleased with the collaboration with Columbus.
Schibsted acquired eBay Classifieds in the summer of 2021. What became Schibsted Denmark needed to move to the group's platforms as early as the summer of 2022, because the company then had to abandon eBay's systems. The project was started in November 2021 and the implementation and integration of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE and Finance was completed in just half a year! And it was a great success that is now in a further development phase.
CRM and Finance on the Dynamics Platform
The Schibsted group has chosen Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance as the financial system for the entire group, as part of the group's "Future Finance" project. A financial solution has been developed that will be used for all companies in the Group in order to achieve a uniform management and reporting system. Columbus has implemented the solution in the vast majority of companies, including Schibsted Denmark.
Alongside the Dynamics Finance project, Columbus completed the implementation of Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service, including three customer service portals. Schibsted Denmark has an extensive offer to the private market through the e-commerce solution dba.dk, with everything from sales of cars, homes, bicycles and clothing, as well as bilbasen.dk and bilinfo.dk which also includes more advanced solutions for car dealers.
Jacob Lego Boye, project manager for Schibsted Denmark, says that they needed two solutions for their customers. A simpler solution where users can place their own ads for free on the websites, but where they can also pay if they want the ad to be prioritized in the listings.
"Both we and the car dealers who use bilbasen.dk and bilinfo.dk need more complex payment solutions to handle subscription schemes, discount schemes based on volume, advertising, value calculations and much more," says Boye.
Advanced CRM solution
Schibsted benefits from using several Dynamics applications that work closely together on a common platform for data, processes and logic.
Customers and contacts are created in Dynamics Sales, where invoices are also created, and Dynamics Finance handles the invoice mailings. Subscriptions, pricing, and discounts are managed in Sales, as well as monthly invoicing. Sales generates all the information that Finance needs to issue invoices, and the follow-up of invoice payment is managed in Sales. All on one platform.
"We get a complete overview of sales and customer relationships, and the solution was up and running quickly, and now it's running like clockwork," says Jacob Boye.
Jacob was delighted with the good cooperation between many people in both organizations, and says he is left with a team and family feeling after they managed to reach the deadline with the project.
"The collaboration has been fantastic. The main reason is that this is an extremely complex project and that Columbus has been good at identifying and explaining the solutions and how we should use them. There has been good project implementation and dialogue about how we could solve the task and build the solution. Columbus has had a dedicated group that really wanted to build the best solution for us," Boye said.
Further Development on Several Fronts
The project is now continuing to work on a number of user stories in both Sales and Customer Service that will improve the user experience, make the solution more robust and increase efficiency in daily use. Digital signature, integration with Schibsted's GDPR tools, Adnuncius, G-mail and various reports are also being implemented, as well as a number of improvements across the entire solution.
"It is important for us to further develop the solution for advertising via our website and thus simplify the processes for advertisers. We are also considering using AI technology to a greater extent to develop the best possible chatbot. It is important to improve the processes for both customers and us internally, says Jacob Lego Boye.
All photos: Schibsted
