Today, it's all backed up in the central data center, saving us tremendous amounts of time and eliminating the chance that any one individual will lose or corrupt a critical customer record. Zyznar's telesales partner, Parker Norwood, says he feels the system is saving the reps hours every week in information fire drills brought on by management's frequent requests for mailing lists. Now management can pull these quickly without disrupting our work. Norwood roughly speculates that Outlook is saving 96 reps at least an hour a day. The Outlook solution has helped Microsoft work more closely with partners.
Reps can cut a particular view of an account and paste it into an e-mail message to a partner.
It increases the frequency and accuracy of Microsoft's contact with partners, making them a closer part of the virtual team. It's almost impossible to quantify how much money the system is saving Microsoft or how much additional revenue it's bringing in. Our turnaround time is dramatically faster, and management can access this data as fast as we can. When a competitor makes a play, we need to be able to deliver a fast, accurate response. We can scan our database and quickly find other customers we might use as references.