HomeVestors anticipates Microsoft technology will bring 'wow' factor to its franchise sales and retention efforts.

REDMOND, Wash., July 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that HomeVestors of America Inc., recognized nationally for its slogan 'We Buy Ugly Houses,' has chosen Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to provide a common platform for all its corporate and franchisee applications.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides powerful, role-based customer relationship management capabilities and will be especially valuable to HomeVestors in its efforts to track a three-way sales cycle. Headquartered in Dallas, HomeVestors has 65 corporate employees and 240 franchisees who buy homes in need of repair, rehab the houses and sell them to consumers. The company must first track leads from the Internet and other sources and the purchase of those houses by its franchisees. Then it needs to track the rehabbing process. Finally, it must track the sales to home purchasers.

'No other single platform could do all that,' said David Hicks, vice president of operations at HomeVestors.

The company will use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to integrate a number of specialized Web-based applications for functions such as evaluating property, determining repair estimates and distributing leads to franchisees. Until now, recording information in those systems required multiple entries and manual processes.

Moreover, the company's franchisees had developed a variety of systems on their own to handle their tracking requirements, and the corporate organization could not communicate with those systems directly.

'We needed a solution that would enable us to have all of our franchisees on a similar platform to train them, to work together and to give us in corporate a way to help them be more effective in their markets,' Hicks said.

HomeVestors will integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the company's current Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Office solutions. All of its franchisees use Outlook and Office.

According to Hicks, 'One of the biggest reasons we chose the Microsoft Dynamics solution was its ability to integrate with our other Microsoft tools. As our franchisees were familiar with Outlook, we felt they could pick up Microsoft Dynamics CRM very quickly.'

To determine its needs, HomeVestors and its consultant developed a list of 15 potential solutions, which was narrowed to three that HomeVestors considered in detail. The two finalists were Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SugarCRM Inc. open source software.

'We knew that Microsoft Dynamics CRM, rather than open source, would be a world-class solution for us,' said Paul D'Angelo, director of IT at HomeVestors. 'There is a lot of competition in the house-buying market, and we are always looking for additional tools that will convince potential franchisees to join our network.