Jonathan Blackham

Jonathan Blackham is the Valin Sales Operations Specialist whose primary role is to assist the Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service organization with planning, coordinating, and implementing business process workflows in the new Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management System, or commonly known as CRM. CRM historically has received negative representation based on the varying user experience. Cost overruns, unclear vision or use case scenarios, and adopting employee participation are some of the challenges that organizations face when attempting to manage change through the introduction of new tools and processes. Jonathan’s addition to Valin provided a fresh and objective look at the corporation from the ‘outside looking in’ as it relates to all things CRM, both past, current, and future state.

As such, much of Jonathan’s first six months at Valin was diagnosing and essentially implementing long-needed CRM improvements for the user experience. These included the following:

Each of these improvements enhanced the reliability, speed, and security of our current Dynamics environment, while also allowing Valin to explore cost-saving measures in the process. However, Jonathan’s contributions do not stop there. In response to Sales and Customer Service team feedback regarding Data Quality and System integration errors between P21 and CRM, Jonathan identified a third party vendor (Hitachi Solutions) that was a fit for reviewing, revising, and updating the P21-CRM integration software code with zero impact to the active CRM users. Jonathan initiated this project with guidance from the Sales, Marketing, and Information Technology departments, and solicited input from multiple users on the current state integration. This project was initiated in February 2021 and officially went ‘live’ on September 14th, 2021. This required weekly meetings with Hitachi, coordination with IT resources often after hours and weekends, and nearly daily follow-up on unforeseen challenges and impediments throughout the project. The question is, what is the impact? This integration project was necessary to begin Phase 2 of the CRM Project roadmap, which will expand on features and business process workflows that will be introduced in 2022. Examples include enhanced case management, team management, quote to opportunity analytics, and sales forecasting.

Jonathan’s attitude and demeanor managing multiple projects while acting as the go-to “CRM Liaison” for Valin is second to none. He always makes time available for resources as needed. In addition, Jonathan’s external experience having managed Dynamics integrations in the past has introduced Valin to new tools, new partners, and additional resources needed to help realize the vision behind the Digital/CRM roadmap. This includes CRM assisting with Workload Management, Coverage, Sale Force Deployment, and 360 integration with other Valin software solutions/platforms.