Crystal Capital Fund, an investment fund that provides debt and equity funding to middle market companies, has adopted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 to centralize its customer-related data and make it easier for employees to query information and create reports.

Crystal Capital Fund, based in Boston, with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles and Stamford, CT, worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Harvest Solutions of Waltham, MA, in developing the data centralization and management solution. The end solution was a joint development effort between Harvest Solutions and Crystal Capital Fund that kept the Crystal Capital Fund team very involved in the design process.

Crystal Capital Fund already had Microsoft Exchange Server running on Windows Server 2003. It wanted a solution that would help it integrate and better manage its data while leveraging its existing technology investment.

The solution involved integrating technology from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 provides the method for accessing up-to-date versions of customer information that was moved to Microsoft SQL Server. Dynamics CRM tied together portfolio management, sales and customer service data and gave the firm’s management better business intelligence for planning its portfolio management, marketing and sales efforts. It also enabled reports to be generated from a common integrated database.

With the new system now in place, the time it takes to create reports has been cut to just a small fraction of what it was previously, and CCF staff can do it themselves, rather than wait for administrative personnel to do it for them.

Previously, administrative staff was responsible for keeping the majority of the records up to date, and manually updated various storage locations and distributed data through email, spreadsheets, network file shares, and other methods. Now, with data now being entered only once, and with all reports and views being generated from the same current information, updating data and forecasting has become more integrated and efficient.

Portfolio management and tracking are also stronger, allowing for industry concentration, borrower exposures, risk ratings and financial performance to be tracked in real-time. Joshua Franklin, director with Crystal Capital Funds, says the system exceeded the firm’s expectations.