IFN Commercial Factors (active since 2002) is a trade name of IFN Finance B.V, which is specialised in administration and financing debentures and remaining working capital since 1962. IFN Finances is part of the IFN Group, a subsidiary company of ABN AMRO Bank NV.

IFN Commercial Factors is specialised in professional services of debtor financing and debtor administration with middle and small businesses as targets.

IFN Commercial factors is working with OpusFlow CRM since April 2003.
 
This case shows how OpusFlow CRM is applied and installed for IFN Commercial Factors and how their own database (BFS: Basis Factoring System) is being used in OpusFlow CRM.

The selection

Even before the split of IFN Finance and the foundation of IFN Commercial Factors, there were plans for a contact relationship management system.

The selection has the following limiting conditions:

• High user friendliness, fully integrated into Outlook ®, low  threshold for user acceptance;
• Data of their database (BFS) have to be converted 1-to-1 to the new system;
• Short implementation period;
• Fast accessibility to all customers-information: documents, correspondence, emails, appointments, tasks, telephonenotes, relations, etcetera.

After a long time of looking at (expensive and complex) CRM-solutions with a long implementation period they finally chose OpusFlow CRM.
“The flexible character and the full integration with Outlook® were the main reasons why we chose for OpusFlow CRM” says Daniel Hakkert.
“Another plus point was the costs of the implementation period which were a fraction of what it had costed with a “big” CRM-solution.”

The inventories

Before the beginning of the implementation some matters had to be inventoried, so that OpusFlow CRM could be implanted seamlessly:

• What kind of documents were used at IFN Commercial Factors?
• How are all documents being archived?
• What data from the BFS database should be available in OpusFlow CRM?

Customer Files

IFN Commercial Factors wanted to create clarifying customer files. All documents that were saved in OpusFlow CRM are visible on the corresponding contact card within OpusFlow CRM and are saved directly into an automatically created directory structure.
Because the settings of OpusFlow CRM were set to store all documents on a network location, all employees have access to files of customers at all times (if the right permissions are set on this particular directory).
IFN chose to archive all documents physically under this structure:
[Customer name] \ [File type] \ [File name].
It was possible to make an extra submap-category but for the customer files this setup with file types was sufficient.

IFN uses the following directories to divide their customer files:

• Completing;
• General;
• Client information;
• Correspondence;
• Debtor information;
• Costs;
• Remaining;
• Verification;
• Absoluteness.

A clear and simple directory structure had been chosen, which is easy and flexible to change.

Connection with the BFS database

IFN works with a self developed application called BFS (Basic Factoring System) in which all customer data is stored.
Through a connection between OpusFlow CRM and the BFS database it is possible to maintain the information at one central place (the BFS database) and yet to still have it available in OpusFlow CRM.
With OpusFlow CRM it is possible to use information from an external (own) database and use different information from OpusFlow CRM.
For example: at IFN the fields “email-address” and “comment” are filled-in in OpusFlow CRM but not at their own database because these fields are not implanted.

Beside general fields as address information, etcetera, IFN uses a few branch-specific items from their database, like:

• Client number;
• Account manager;
• Credit class;
• Branch code;
• Revision date;
• Contract acts.

Also other specific fields are read from the database and are applicable on the OpusFlow CRM contact card as well.

Archiving documents automatically

In OpusFlow CRM there are different ways to connect documents with contact cards:

• By creating the document In OpusFlow CRM (outgoing correspondence);
• By adding the documents through the “Add Documents” button;
• With the scanned documents module: scanned mail can be archived and divided at one screen;
• By creating a document to several contacts through the “Merge” screen.

IFN has its own way of creating documents and saving them:

• Documents and legal acts are created with a separate program (which has a connection to the BFS database);
• The files are saved under their own protocol, for example:
  “9256_off_offerte 2-4-2002.doc”
  In this description “9256” is the client number of the contact, “off” is an abbreviation for offer (file type) and “offer 3-4-2002” is the subject of the document.

OpusFlow CRM has been set up for IFN that to monitor certain directories in which files are stored. When files are stored in those directories with the proper filename, OpusFlow CRM will recognize them and will add this document to the right contact and the proper file type. This also works for incoming (and scanned) mail. If they are stored with the proper filename, OpusFlow CRM will pick them up and archive them automatically.