São Paulo, November 29^th, 2006 – With outstanding presence in the main Brazilian cities, shopping malls is a high-figures industry. Abrasce, the entity gathering the biggest shopping malls in the Country, estimates that the segment will finish 2006 with a turnover of R$ 44 billion and an average of 203 million visits per month. It seems quite a lot, but there still is plenty of room to grow. This is what Walter Ferraz, Director of VS – Victor and Schellenberger, the main supplier of shopping mall management software in Brazil, believes. “Depending on the metrics used, Brazil has from 300 to 600 large shopping malls for a population of almost 190 million people. If we compare this with the United States, which have 300 million inhabitants and 40 thousand shopping malls, the Brazilian figure is insignificant", he estimates. Leader in the supply of management software for this segment, with a portfolio of over 180 clients, two of which abroad (in Porto, Portugal, and in Lima, Peru), VS wants more. The company adopted a few months ago a customer relationship system (CRM) to pave the way for expansion. The choice was Columbus Service Desk, a Columbus IT solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.

Not that VS has discovered CRM just now. With 20 years on the road and quite a lean structure (it has 23 employees), the company used for several years a contact management software that was efficient, although limited. The program was used both by the sales team and by the technical support personnel. “But, as time went by, we saw that we needed quicker and more accurate information and a software capable of dealing with a higher data volume”, recalls Ferraz. “We even considered a traditional software for Help Desk automation. However, we made a point that the software should be capable of covering not only case management, but all customer relationship aspects as well. Then, we opted for CRM", he concludes.  In this scenario, Columbus IT offer proved to be the most attractive one. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM is on a price threshold that is becoming accessible for companies around our size”, he points out.

Uncommon challenge, specific solution

Another quality of Microsoft Dynamics CRM that attracted VS's attention was flexibility. “Our Help Desk is not common. We do not have check lists or proposed solutions to be followed as a script. We do not have zero-level assistance; if we compare ourselves to a traditional support scheme, we already start at level two, with persons who deeply know the client and are fully capable of solving the problem”, the Director tells. VS and the market that it serves have other peculiarities. IT experts inside shopping centers are rare, and an active approach by the analyst becomes essential to solve the problem. “The client does not always know what is happening. It is our employee who has to investigate the problem, and for this a knowledge base with information about the client is essential”, Ferraz says.

Knowing the client is exactly the biggest differentiator of VS services, whose shopping mall assistance experience helped to create the software which today is its flagship. “Shopping centers have unique characteristics requiring a solution tailor-made for them”, the executive emphasizes. Among the specificities, there are the administration system, which can be performed by the owner, the condominium or an external administrator; and the relationship with the stores, which are usually rented and comply with agreements determining rental, common expenses and promotion fund apportioning, and a cooperation over turnover. “There also is the aspect that, if you are not a good storeowner, you will be jeopardizing the shopping center's image”, Ferraz tells. Adding the building administration to the foregoing, with aspects of security, cleaning, landscape and architectonic planning and building automation, it will already be possible to have an idea of the business complexity. “All that generates costs and controls. Our software helps shopping malls in these two aspects, financial and operational”.

Growing without losing

Although it has a huge growth potential, the shopping mall segment size is still small. For a company like VS, retaining customers becomes much more strategic than conquering them, and that was the reason to invest in CRM. “We have clients with us for 19 years now. In order to serve them in a customized way, we have to know their profiles and their peculiarities. Keeping this information updated has always been a critical factor for us", Ferraz tells. For VS, knowing the client in person is not a mere force of expression. At least three times a year, the company gathers its clients for immersion and certification courses. “We created an efficient, specialized and personalized communication channels”, he says. “We know that, besides the software, the CRM concept brings a set of practices and norms that take time to be assimilated. But we had to start”, he remembers.

For VS, the Columbus Service Desk implementation was surprisingly quick. In three weeks, the system was already in operation. The training took two days. The facts that Columbus IT uses templates (models based on ITIL processes that can be adjusted) and that the solution can be used from a web browser helped a lot. But Ferraz observed in the partner an even more defining quality. “The study process that Columbus IT carried out about our business was fundamental”, he recalls. “They were patient enough to understand our case”. The executive points out that a CRM flexible tool is important, but it is not everything: it is necessary that the supplier knows how to listen to the client, as Columbus IT did. “As listening to the client has always been part of our culture, we were able to build a two-way lane. The experience was so rich that we decided to assess internally what we could learn with this change of positions, from supplier to client”, he assesses. “The process was very rewarding”.

The analytic view potential 

With the CRM data base loaded with data about clients and their cases, the analysts can act more and more proactively. They are capable of, when discovering a problem with a given operational system, helping all other clients that have the same system, without having to wait for the problem to arise. Ferraz admits, however, that the tool analytical part is still little used. “We know that the system marketing and sales tools are strong, but our commercial rules are quite simple", he says. “The operational part, with customer service, was the starting point, but we want to start using soon other controls and management tools, such as marketing campaigns”.

Another goal for the future is to integrate the newly-purchased CRM to the management system of VS itself, as it is used internally (“the shoemaker's son never goes barefoot”, Ferraz jokes). “There are some contact points between the two systems that we would like to see integrated, such as the customer reference file, for instance". With so much to do, the novelty could not undergo a strict analysis of return-on-investment yet. Even so, Ferraz is already celebrating. The customer retention goals were achieved, which was the company's absolute priority – no clients left VS after the CRM was installed. Informal comments were likewise positive. “At the last trade fair that we attended, in September, many customers said to have noticed service improvements. That was exactly what we wanted”, he tells.