Rapid growth can be both an opportunity and a threat for architecture firms. It’s great to expand the client base and increase revenues. But efficiently managing prospect pursuits and proposal opportunities—to make sure the firm does not lose any business—becomes more difficult as marketing and business development teams also grow and new offices open.

It’s become easy for critical information to get isolated in individual spreadsheets. Internal teams can’t share data and tap into up-to-date information to know what’s going on in real time with a particular pursuit or opportunity. Even though the firm is doing well overall, it’s not growing at the rate it’s capable of.

To solve these challenges, Cushing Terrell turned to HSO’s aec360, built on Microsoft Dynamics 365.

In addition to tracking and automating contact, lead, opportunity, proposal, and customer relationship activities, aec360 integrates with the existing Cushing Terrell ERP system as well as Microsoft Outlook and the firm’s OpenAsset digital asset management system. The ability to customize aec360 was also critical—Cushing can add any new functionality the marketing and business development teams require.

Access to information was another key benefit. aec360 provides dashboards with quick views into reports and runs in the cloud with a mobile interface so the marketing and business development teams can tap into the CRM system from anywhere they work. Having all the data in a central CRM system makes it easy to search for information—rather than checking multiple spreadsheets. The internal teams also know the information won’t move—it’s always in the same place.

Cushing Terrell uses aec360 to analyze prospect pursuit data, proposals, requests for qualification, project information, and project closeouts. The business development team tracks lead communications, who last talked to a prospect, and whether leads are worth pursuing. They can also track when leads are promoted to opportunities and when opportunities are promoted to projects. aec360 keeps all the records in one place.

The go/no-go workflows in aec360 have been a big hit. HSO built a field that calculates the likelihood of a project closing, which is based on the answers business development team members give to a series of questions. Each question has its own calculated weight, and if the total number equals a high percentage, Cushing Terrell knows they will pursue it. If it’s a middle grade, they consider bringing in a third party. And for the lower grades they don’t want to pursue, they note the reason, which is helpful for future qualification efforts.