Integration project: Data warehouse, CRM system, enterprise portal and Web services connectivity to suppliers

Enterprise payback: Single view of customer activity across the company’s multiple business units improves service

IS payback: Users can generate their own reports without relying on IS; applications are easier to maintain and support

Three years ago, Con-Way Transportation Services wanted to get more mileage out of its sales efforts?a hefty challenge for the $1.9 billion transportation and services company. With headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich., Con-Way is made up of multiple business units across the United States and Canada that sell everything from long-haul trucking to logistics outsourcing. But each business unit used (and still uses) an idiosyncratic collection of software to track its operations. So if a customer of one Con-Way business unit expressed interest in another’s services, the latter’s sales reps would have no way of knowing about it.

To make that information accessible, Jacquelyn Barretta, vice president of IS, built a data warehouse that pulls customer information from each business unit’s systems and merges it into a single customer record. She is also rolling out an enterprisewide CRM system that tracks every customer interaction?including a customer’s potential interest in new services.

The data warehouse cost about $700,000 to build, including software, hardware and development time, Barretta says; the CRM tab ran about $1.5 million. The company has already begun seeing the payoff: When Con-Way AIR launched last year, the new business unit pitched to those trucking customers that had already expressed an interest in airfreight, thereby saving millions in marketing costs, says Bryan Millican, executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The data warehouse and CRM system also make it easier for Con-Way to use sales reps from one business unit to sell the services of another business unit. In the past, such cross-business-unit sales efforts would founder because the sales reps would make calls but never know whether they’d been successful (the data was locked up in another business unit’s systems). The data warehouse now gives the reps a window into their sales activity, and that has boosted their enthusiasm?so much so that Con-Way did $300,000 of business in the new service’s first month. "We’re 50 percent ahead of our expectations for this new product line," Millican says. "A big part of it is allowing the salespeople visibility and access to data."

Other integration projects on Con-Way’s pallet include an enterprise portal that’s used by employees and customers, letting them access a variety of back-end applications and information in one place. Con-Way has also developed XML-based Web services that can talk directly to customers’ back-office systems and exchange key account information and deliver customized rate quotes, transit times and status tracking.