PSG Investment Bank is a leading South African financial organisation, providing a comprehensive range of services including corporate finance, trade finance and treasury trading.

Duplication of Effort
Many of the bank’s profit centres are staffed by small teams people working together and it is imperative that team members are aware of each other’s activities, appointments and contacts with clients to avoid duplication of effort. It is also important that each team understands what the other teams are doing so that new business opportunities can be identified quickly. To date, PSG had relief on Microsoft Outlook and various applications built using Excel and Access to share information about customers. Mich Nieuwoudt, PSG’s IT Manager, decided to look for something which would enable staff to share information more effectively.

Powerful, Quick And Easy
“It was clear to me that we needed to move towards some sort of CRM solution,”Nieuwoudt says. “To get started we wanted something powerful which would be quick and simple to implement and use, and which would work with Outlook.” Nieuwoudt looked at several well known products before being introduced to Maximizer Enterprise by Camsoft Solutions, a leading South African CRM solutions provide and Maximizer Platinum business partner.

Flexible Networking
“Once I had been introduced to Maximizer by Camsoft it was quite clear that the product was exactly what we were looking for,” Nieuwoudt says. “It was more than capable of providing what we needed, it was so flexible that it wouldn’t have to be customised in any way, and importantly it was network aware so we could use it over WAN to link our Cape Town and Johannesburg offices.” Camsoft implemented Maximizer in just two days without any hitches. Following this Nieuwoudt provided Camsoft with a list of 30 users, who Camsoft contacted individually to arrange a one-on-one training on Maximizer and to import the necessary data into the software. The total of the deal was R150,000. I am very happy with Camsoft,” Nieuwoudt says. “They are close to the authors, Maximizer Software, so they know what they are doing, they were very responsive to our needs and they were cost effective.”

Working Smarter For Profit
The benefits of using Maximizer were realized by PSG almost immediately. “Now we are using Maximizer we have been able to consolidate our efforts and work more effectively. Staff now have a much better understanding of what other staff member are doing, so they are able to co-ordinate their dealings with clients.” Implementing Maximizer has been a profitable decision for the bank, Nieuwoudt concludes. “It’s difficult to put an exact figure on how much we have made by using Maximizer, but I could point out some valuable deals we have done already that we were able to initiate at least partly because of Maximizer.”

User verdict:
“Maximizer was so flexible that it wouldn’t have to be customised in any way, and importantly it was network aware so we could use it over WAN to link our Cape Town and Johannesburg offices.”