The challenge

Becoming property centric 

HRV’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution is used to record and store all of their customer information. It is central to the way they do business. HRV wanted to shift from having a customer centric database to a property centric approach. This meant they would be able to retain the historical linkages from a person to a property along with that persons relationship towards that property. 

CRM cloud migration 

When HRV sought to move its CRM solution first to on-premise Microsoft Dynamics 365 and then into the cloud, it was hindered by two applications originally written in Microsoft Silverlight. 

 Steven Feng, IT Manager at HRV explains the rationale behind the shift to the cloud: “We are eliminating the need for large upgrade projects in the future and [with Dynamics in the cloud] will now have access to new features immediately as they are released by Microsoft.” 

Legacy applications 

The legacy applications, resource calendar and commissions are all critical to HRV’s business and were deployed in an on-premise architecture. The inability to use the application on any device and any browser significantly impacted user productivity and because it interacted closely with HRV’s legacy CRM solution, it was an obstacle to the company’s implementation of Dynamics 365.  It couldn’t work with the on-premise version, let alone the cloud version to which HRV ultimately wanted to migrate. 

Furthermore, with Silverlight decommissioned in 2013, the application was resting on unsupported legacy technology. 

The solution

App modernisation 

HRV engaged Lancom Technology to modernise its legacy application. Our team deep dived into the problem statement and outlined an architecture that would render the application cloud-ready.  The brief asked that the modernised app be sustainable, in support, accessible from any device, and built using the latest Microsoft cloud technologies. 

After assessing the applications, our team opted to use a modern application stack of Angular, C#, .Net Framework, SQL Server 2016, Microsoft Azure hosting web/application servers and Microsoft Azure Application Insights to provide telemetry. 

Roadmap to the cloud 

Modernising the resource calendar and commissions would also enable the upgrade to the Dynamics 365 on-premise package, outlining the roadmap for the ultimate destination, a migration to the cloud for the CRM solution. 

The results

A wealth of data 

The best indication of success is in the numbers. Today, HRV’s information assets includes a wealth of data with 1.6 million properties and 1.2 million contacts. All its business operations are built on Dynamics CRM and the supporting custom application delivered by Lancom Technology, which integrates to various parts of the business. 

Automation 

These integrations include automation for diallers that pick-up campaign data and connect HRV agents to humans, data warehousing, business insights, commissions platform, and integration between Dynamics CRM and the company’s Dynamics NAV solution via Scribe. 

Accessible from anywhere and reduced technical debt 

The successful application modernisation project facilitated the move to cloud Dynamics 365 for HRV. It also provided mobility and browser independence, allowing the company’s nationwide team to easily access the information required to do their work on the go. 

This outcome has relieved HRV of technical debt while providing better tools for employees. “And we now have a scalable platform which provides us with greater speed to market,” concludes Jeff Hart. 

Property centric CRM for sale of additional services 

Reconfiguring HRV’s CRM to make it property centric has enabled HRV to more easily expand the product range they take to market. HRV can now easily sell separate service types across properties with unique sales territories relating to franchised sales areas. For example, HRV is able to offer filter changes or heat pumps to Primary Owners/Occupiers.