Farm Credit Services Success Story

Since 2010, Farm Credit Services of Illinois has learned there are few things that produce more happiness than a bushel basket of pleasant surprises. That was the year when the farmer –owned cooperative teamed up with Hitachi Solutions to install and train its employees on how to use Microsoft Dynamics® CRM to update Farm Credit’s services to more than 8,600 stockholders and customers. The results have been like “the difference between night and day,” compared to the company’s experience with an earlier CRM provider according to James Fielder, Vice President of Information Systems. Fielder goes on to say, “Our first provider wasn’t as experienced, didn’t respond to our needs and didn’t understand our business,” This was not the case when Hitachi Solutions came in. Fielder adds that the time that Hitachi Solution’s team took “to learn our business, become an extension of our staff and train our people was invaluable to us; a contribution I don’t think you can calculate.” Farm Credit Services of Illinois’s business is twofold, offering both farm financing and crop insurance. Its 195 employees provide these services to farmers and other agricultural customers in 60 counties in southern Illinois. Managing customer relationships is especially important as Farm Credit Services of Illinois has some families who have been customers for as many as four generations. Mindy Miller, one of Farm Credit’s sales and service specialists says, “We really needed to capture, all in one spot, how many acres they farm, what type of operation they’re running, and the amounts of their loan balances and crop insurance. The current CRM system has made that possible.” Microsoft Dynamics CRM has also provided important unexpected benefits. For example, Farm Credit had its own eight-year-old homegrown loan origination system, called Insight. Hitachi Solutions was able to integrate the loan origination system with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, “a kind of value-added that we didn’t see going into this,” according to Fielder. “To be able to cross seamlessly from CRM to Insight, that was a ‘WOW!’ for our end users,” he adds. “And to pull that customer’s loan information from one place instead of having to go to two or three different places was a huge leap for us.” Farm Credit will soon integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with its document management and other systems. According to Miller, another added benefit of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is

HITACHI SOLUTIONS GROWS BUMPER CROP OF PLEASANT SURPRISES FOR FARM CREDIT SERVICES OF ILLINOIS

CUSTOMER PROFILE Farm Credit Services of Illinois is a farmer-owned and farmer-directed cooperative dedicated to delivering competitive and flexible farm financing and crop insurance expertise. They serve more than 8,600 customer stockholders with $3 billion of farm and agribusiness loans in addition to crop insurance that covers more than 1.8 million acres. With a service area that includes the southern 60 counties of Illinois, Farm Credit employs 195 full-time staff who provide farm families, rural landowners, and agribusinesses with a dependable and competitive source of financial capital and risk management services.

INDUSTRY Agriculture/Finance

LOCATION

Mahomet, Illinois “We really needed to capture, all in one spot, how many acres they farm, what type of operation they’re running, and the amounts of their loan balances and crop insurance. The current CRM system has made that possible.” Mindy Miller Sales and service specialist

Dynamics CRM Customer Story

the Dashboard, “This allows us to see visually, by means of graphs and charts, the data we are putting into the system in a different format as well as in the original.” Farmers, who are the company’s stockholders and customers, can also access their data in graphic form, which sometimes makes it easier to understand. Training Farm Credit’s non-technical personnel how to use the system and also how to teach the system to other employees was another unexpected plus. “Mindy’s not a technician,” Fielder notes. “Hitachi Solutions taught her and another sales and service specialist how to manage and implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how to train others to use it, all without intimidating anybody and in a very short period of time.” Self-sufficiency in training one’s own people is key, Fielder says, because “I don’t like being attached at the umbilical cord to a consultant.” Another added benefit comes from attending conferences sponsored by Hitachi Solutions. These conferences are attended by companies who also use Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This has enabled Farm Credit executives to swap information. “To hear from others how they’re using CRM is amazing to me,” Fielder says. More than once he’s found himself thinking: “I didn’t realize we could make it do that.” Farm Credit Services of Illinois plans to continue working with Hitachi Solutions. Fielder says other farm coops in their area are “modeling what we’ve done with CRM, and some that haven’t yet installed Microsoft Dynamics CRM expect to do so.”