Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia modernizes to drive auto club member service with Dynamics 365

Heading toward a breakdown

Every year, the organization’s 500 member services representatives respond to millions of calls, and hundreds of thousands of breakdowns and insurance claims. They take care of everything from welcoming new members and processing payments to answering roadside assistance calls, planning travel, and meeting the diverse auto services, insurance, and financial needs of club members. Their members want a dependable and knowledgeable service, and that's what RAC's member services teams have delivered for more than 118 years.

From custom roadster to jalopy

However, they had some challenges. RAC's customer relationship management system (CRM) was an on-premises, custom-made solution that was 40 years old. It had served the needs of the business, but both technology and business needs had changed over time. The system lacked some essential features. It was becoming impossible to add new products and the modern capabilities members expected. Maintenance and support of the aging system required resources with specific skills and experience that were hard to find.

But the problem wasn't just that the system was outdated. RAC’s legacy system was separate from financial workflows, and member account information was duplicated across disconnected business systems. Account inquiries and updates were time-consuming, and they didn’t have a clear view of overdue membership payments. 

It's the years and the mileage

Outdated and disconnected systems made it hard to support RAC’s 1.2 million members and hampered representatives’ ability to deliver the outstanding service the organization had built its reputation on. Member service teams needed an easy, 360-degree view of their accounts and service activities to provide knowledgeable case management and better engagement with members. Sales teams needed a more efficient, automated lead-to-opportunity process to track, understand, and connect with potential new business partners and members, and a CRM that nurtured loyal membership. The finance team urgently needed a modern billing system, with connected banking and automatic processes to keep up with complex billing and revenue management. And the IT team was more than ready for a full replacement of the cumbersome patchwork of disparate systems.

Simply put, the old solution was no longer sustainable. It needed more than just a tune up. RAC needed to retool its entire business system.

The road to modernization

Multiple IT systems and manual accounting processes were no longer up to the job. With aging systems, extracting data was hard and RAC couldn’t expand with new functionality. They needed a modern, sustainable, robust, and centralized system that was flexible enough to manage every aspect of its business, now and into the future.

In 2018, RAC expanded its member services system with Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service solutions. Later, the club rolled out Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management with order management, billing, invoicing, and accounts receivable.

Together, the Dynamics 365 applications formed a modern, secure, standardized platform that streamlined processes, eliminated many manual tasks, boosted productivity, and provided better experience for employees and members overall. In March 2023, with the full transformation complete, the end-to-end Dynamics 365 solution went into service.

Motoring to a successful outcome

RAC’s implementation team worked with time constraints that seemed impossible. With only a weekend to make the transition, careful planning and flawless execution were critical in rolling out the new system without interrupting any regular processes and transactions. The team achieved a remarkable outcome, and the entire organization is seeing the benefits of a modern, centralized solution.

With Dynamics 365, sales and member service teams now have a full view of the customer journey. From initial contact to sales history, membership, and policy details, teams have all the rich and up-to-date information they need for proactive outreach and ongoing member engagement. Member service representatives are more productive and provide high-quality service more efficiently with a fully integrated system that puts member data, automated processes, and a real-time view of case and billing status, motoring policy information, roadside assistance history at their fingertips.

Finance is driving with the top down

Since the implementation of Dynamics 365, possibly no part of RAC has been transformed more than the finance department.

Finance teams use Dynamics 365 to manage the organization’s products, services, and bundles, such as auto insurance plus roadside assistance. In standard accounting practices, when members pay for an annual membership or bundle once a year but enjoy coverage throughout the year, the membership value must be split over 12 months, recorded each month, and the remaining advance payment deferred. Now, the RAC accounting team uses the Dynamics 365 Finance subscription billing feature to automatically calculate and record deferred revenue.

Accounting managers, too, benefit. With one connected and automated workflow—from monthly subscription billing and streamlined invoicing to accounts receivable processing—and end-to-end integration, member account data is always up to date and accurate. Financial data is current and sourced from one centralized system, and complex pricing and discounts are automatically assigned. With Azure Synapse Link, Power BI, and reports broken out by product, customer, and cost center, revenue reporting is much simpler. And with seamless integration between sales, service, and finance systems, transactions are synchronized, improving revenue and tax accounting.

IT managers weren’t left behind. One of the biggest benefits to them—and the driving force behind the transformation—is that the legacy system has been replaced with a connected, well-documented, and universally supported platform that streamlines every aspect of the business. By eliminating outdated customizations and taking advantage of the functionality available out of the box in the Dynamics 365 ecosystem, updates are easy and seamless. Positive change and continual improvement are the norm.

Adoption and change management are key to any successful transformation. Trainers have exactly what they need to help users manage change, with new employees receiving standardized, user-friendly guides and training manuals. The intuitive, browser-based interface is easy to learn, and new users get up to speed quickly.

Secure and future-ready, Dynamics 365 affords RAC the freedom to focus on what’s ahead.

A roadmap for the future

With successful implementation in the rear-view mirror, RAC is looking ahead to more opportunities. The first priority is a member-centered, unified view of accounts using the omnichannel engagement capabilities of Customer Service. The second priority is a full decommissioning of Oracle and other remaining legacy systems with the migration to Dynamics 365, achieving the goal of moving all processes to one connected platform.