Grand & Toy honors legacy of excellence with future-proof innovations and Dynamics 365

Shredding old ways

In Canada, the Grand & Toy name is synonymous with reliability and transformative thinking, products, and services. Its brand loyalty extends not only to customers, but to employees as well. Decades of success haven’t diminished the company’s spirit to continually improve or stalled its drive to innovate. In fact, it was in this spirit that Grand & Toy undertook an extremely ambitious digital transformation to create a single source of truth for its sales, sales operations, customer care, and marketing teams in the name of customer and employee satisfaction and business growth.

With its customer relationship management (CRM) tools due for reassessment and upgrades, Grand & Toy recognized an opportunity to start fresh. The company wanted to replace its disparate solutions with a single system that would provide a 360-degree view of its customers, reduce inefficiencies, increase productivity across its sales, marketing, and customer service departments, and improve customer experience and satisfaction. Instead of simply renewing three separate solutions for sales, marketing, and customer service, the team decided to take a holistic approach to its digital transformation. Replacing the aging CRM solution pieces with a single cloud-based platform was a perfect place to start.

Grand & Toy appreciated the value of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for its seamless delivery of end-to-end capabilities and the investment that Microsoft makes in updates and new features. The ability to use AI out-of-the-box enroute to future functionalities put Dynamics 365 ahead of its competitors.

Focusing on the way forward

True to the can-do spirit that made it a household name in Canada, Grand & Toy flawlessly migrated the sales team to Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service by collaborating with internal business partners and implementation partner Hitachi Solutions—in just three months. The team was small, but precise; focused, but open to feedback.

The tight team managed the transformation with transparent two-way communication to cement buy-in and offer support. Video testimonials from early users conveyed sincere excitement for the new system. Training allowed newly minted Dynamics 365 champions to become trainers in their local offices. The business partners’ dedication to the project engendered a sense of ownership that resonated throughout the sales, sales support, and marketing teams.

Project manager Rod McLeod praises the capabilities that Dynamics 365 provides out of the box. “Dynamics 365 provides everything we need. We were able to work with the business to adapt our processes to match the streamlined flows in Dynamics 365 rather than create cumbersome customizations.”

Eduardo Fajardo, CRM Product Owner, Grand & Toy, agrees, “Taking the long view, we want to remain flexible with configurations and be able to scale leveraging Microsoft releases. Simplifying processes with Dynamics 365 lets us stay nimble.”

Phase I September 13, 2023–December 13, 2023: Dynamics 365 Sales

Complex integrations in the former CRM system resulted in problems with the quality and timeliness of data—which significantly reduced the reliability of the data—and led to inconsistent use across teams.

Thanks to the precision of the transformation team, Grand & Toy quickly and successfully deployed Dynamics 365 Sales after manually migrating pertinent data from the prior CRM system. What used to run daily now runs hourly. Now, says Jason Myles, CE Solutions Architect, Hitachi Solutions, Grand & Toy sales teams can trust the data. “The users were skeptical of the data in the legacy system because it staled quickly and was only coming from one direction,” he explains. “But with Dynamics 365, the data is bidirectional and fresh”—and, most importantly, reliable.

Sales data is also more accessible. With the Dynamics 365 mobile app, Grand & Toy’s sales teams can engage with data in CRM, Outlook, and Teams while they’re on the road—an advantage over the legacy system, which didn’t provide a mobile app. Today, the sales organization manages leads, opportunities, cases and their entire sales pipeline in one place, whether they’re working on a computer in the office or on a mobile device.

At the same time, Grand & Toy uses the Dynamics 365 Customer Service module to provide support to the sales team, so they have easy access to customer interaction history in one application. Fajardo explains, “We leverage the sales support team to complete work like setting up a new account, so that sellers can focus their time on selling. Having everything on the same platform drives customer service and productivity by enabling sales managers, sellers, and sales support to always have a clear and consistent view of account activity.”

Phase II February 19, 2024–April 22, 2024: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys

Grand & Toy’s digital transformation cast a wide net to improve processes and efficiencies throughout the organization. As such, its legacy marketing tool, which was complex, was ripe for an overhaul. The old system required multiple resources to create a marketing campaign, and marketers were limited in their ability to target customers based on a single, complete view of their interactions. McLeod describes Grand & Toy’s marketing team as hungry for improvements.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys replaced the former marketing automation software, streamlining the customer acquisition process and unifying the newly reliable sales and marketing data. Its user-friendly capabilities gave marketers unprecedented control over their campaigns.

For instance, when wildfires raged in western Canada, the marketing team was immediately able to meet the situational need, putting together a campaign and a package of products to aid businesses that were dealing with the emergency in real time. The team quickly identified a target group of 20,000 affected customersand saw an 18% engagement rate.

Angela Kommissar, Senior Manager, Marketing, describes the new process as robust. “With Dynamics 365 we’ve gained access to rich customer data, allowing us to personalize the buying experience and collaborate with our Sales colleagues for better customer journeys. In the B2B world, relevance and customization are essential, and Dynamics 365 helps us deliver on those values,” says Kommissar. The Marketing team has quickly embraced Dynamics 365 she says, adding that the system’s “flexibility fits our fast-paced environment perfectly.” Fajardo seconds that adding, “Dynamics 365 Customer Insights gives the team the tools to accomplish whatever they want to accomplish faster and in a more reliable way.”

Advanced features such as Automated Journeys, Lead Forms, Smart Segmentations, and improved email content have all added to enhanced operational capabilities, and with the increase in productivity and efficiency over the former complex marketing automation solution, Grand & Toy has seen its marketing costs fall by 82%.

Phase III May 6, 2024 - August 9, 2024: Customer Service

Grand & Toy’s global customer service team is spread across Chennai, Manila, Moncton, and Sri Lanka and provides support across three channels: email (with automatic case creation), omnichannel chat, and voice via Webex Contact Center, the latter of which was made possible by the hallmark flexibility of Dynamics 365 to integrate with third-party systems.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service workspace equips agents with an easy-to-use, browser-like, single workspace within which they can work in multiple cases seamlessly. Access to real-time insights for agents and managers using dashboards and reports along with the time-saving power of Copilot in Customer Service chat summarizations, email creation, and sentiment analysis positions Grand & Toy to provide the exceptional customer service its customers deserve.

Customer Service Workspace simplifies processes, endowing Grand & Toy with a more elegant way of serving its customers. Susan Perri, Manager, Customer Service, Customer Care, Customer Experience, explains, “Implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Service Workspace has been a game-changer for us by increasing visibility across different departments as it relates to customer interactions. With a comprehensive view of customer data, sales, marketing, and customer service teams are aligned to provide more personalized and timely responses, ultimately driving enhanced customer satisfaction and retention.”

Staying agile and innovating with Dynamics 365

Looking back on its successful year-long project revolutionizing Grand & Toy’s CRM approach, the company is energized for the future.

"Our CRM platform is used by every customer-facing function within Grand & Toy,” says Alnoor Jiwani, Group Head, IT and Ecommerce at Grand & Toy. "We now have total alignment and a holistic understanding of our customers and their interactions with Grand & Toy. The Dynamics 365 portfolio enables us to build stronger connections with our customers to better understand their needs, provide exceptional service, and uncover new business opportunities for overall growth." And, “the transparency and insights provided by Dynamics 365 empower us to make more informed decisions and drive process efficiencies in a more cohesive and efficient work environment,” added Perri.

Fajardo is looking ahead to an AI-powered future with Microsoft Copilot-generated summaries, chats, translations, and sentiment analysis. The company is eager to use these tools to further improve customer service and increase employee satisfaction.

“Dynamics 365 is opening a new way of operating for us, and we plan to leverage it for its security, stability, and scalability to stay ahead of the curve. As AI develops, Dynamics 365 will keep the company equipped with the latest and safest tools,” Fajardo said.

Dynamics 365 provides Grand & Toy sales, sales support, marketing, and customer service teams with actionable insights to help grow the business and—perhaps most importantly—offer customers the finest service experience. Grand & Toy is ready to take its 360-degree customer insights to unprecedented heights, driving innovation and solidifying its position as an industry leader.