Northern Trust builds the future of its CRM with Microsoft Dynamics 365

What was the challenge?

“Prior to our cloud-based CRM and workflow platform, our sales and operations teams worked in silos across disparate legacy systems, creating a consistency challenge that impacted our clients. We wanted to build a 360-degree view of client accounts that could help modernize our business, and we sought a platform that could support and unify daily processes from the front to back office. This was the first time our business conducted a digital transformation of this scale, and the momentum was clear — our people were committed to setting a new, enterprise-wide standard for efficiency.”

Describe the solution delivered by the PwC community of solvers?

“PwC supported us through a three-part digital transformation focused on improving productivity, reducing operational risk, and curating a better employee and client experience. First, we used Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) products to build thorough sales and case management solutions — including automating opportunity identification, call insight reports and a client query intake and tracking process. Then, PwC helped us centralize our sales and servicing processes which helped reduce off-platform, redundant communications and offered a more efficient way of working.”

How does the solution blend the strengths of technology and people?

“Our teams have access to real-time insights and more visibility to better service our clients with a unified system and custom reporting. Relationship managers can see the various interactions a client has with its service and delivery team and how often teams are meeting their service level agreements. Microsoft technology helped us achieve our goal, but the teamwork between Northern Trust, PwC and Microsoft teams is what truly made a difference in helping drive change. PwC worked with stakeholders to understand the ‘why’ behind our processes and used Microsoft D365 to improve our ‘today’, while supporting our goals of tomorrow.”

Where or how did innovation and unexpected ways of thinking come into play?

“PwC’s multi-disciplinary group of problem solvers and technical advisors had the appropriate experience to meet our needs. Rather than building off of existing processes and previous ways of working, the team challenged our thinking to form new solutions and expand our growth potential — and that was a critical factor to our success. It impacted all areas of our business, helping our Partners overcome technical hurdles so that they could focus on serving our clients.”