Lincoln Waste Solutions Achieves 40 Percent Customer Service Efficiency Increase With Sage CRM and Sage 100 ERP Integration

SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(Marketwire - Sep 19, 2012) - Sage North America today announced Lincoln Waste Services, a waste disposal brokerage service for U.S. and Canadian clients, has integrated Sage CRM with its Sage 100 ERP system to achieve front- and back-office data sharing and a 40 percent increase in customer service efficiency.

Lincoln Waste Solutions' brokerage service serves as a middleman, connecting multi-site businesses in the U.S. and Canada with waste disposal specialists for deals that benefit all parties. The company's 30 percent year-over-year growth prompted moves to bigger offices and an upgrade of its Sage accounting system to Sage 100 ERP. Its sales team used Sage ACT! successfully for several years and found growth also warranted migration to Sage CRM for complete integration with Sage 100 ERP.

"We wanted all communications generating from one database," said Jay Lentz, client development executive for Lincoln Waste Solutions. "Simplifying workflow across the organization has created a natural transition of prospects becoming customers in our Sage business systems, and the ability to work quickly with large volumes of data supporting automated reporting, marketing and customer service activities."

"Being able to customize CRM was always a big part of our plan," continued Lentz. "Sage CRM was an easy decision in this sense because it has the best customization capabilities among the systems we considered."

A carefully managed training program gave employees the ability to use Sage CRM in advance of rollout so their feedback could be incorporated.

"Someone suggested a different way of organizing and searching data that aided communication with primary and secondary waste specialists, so we dropped in customized templates. Sage CRM was the most successful IT project we've undertaken," said Lentz.

Onsite and remote Lincoln Waste Solutions personnel now have centralized access to 11,000 customer records, with information moving between its Sage CRM and Sage 100 ERP systems.

Incoming customer queries could previously only be dealt with by looking through disconnected spreadsheets, documents and billing software. The integrated Sage system enables thorough business processes for Lincoln Waste Solutions with customer histories, event triggers and reminders built in. Hyperlinks and customized tabs within Sage CRM ensure the right suppliers are quickly identified when needed. All data is in one place so customer issues can be resolved in a single call and sales representatives can broker both sides of business instantly -- workflows contributing to the company's 40 percent customer service efficiency gains.

"Sage CRM drives efficiency, which is the same as profitability for a business like ours," added Lentz. "Centralized information gives us a level of reporting and detailed snapshots for each aspect of our business we simply didn't have before."

Lincoln Waste Solutions next plans to make Sage CRM and Sage 100 ERP data available for employees on smartphones.

About Sage
Sage is a leading global supplier of business management software and services for small and midsized businesses. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and now employs more than 12,600 people and supports more than 6 million customers worldwide. For more information about Sage in North America, please visit the company website at NA.Sage.com. Follow Sage North America on Facebook.com/SageNorthAmerica and Twitter.com/SageNAmerica.

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