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National Basketball Association’s New Orleans Hornets have selected Microsoft (News - Alert) Dynamics CRM to gain insights about the fans who fill New Orleans Arena and the prospective players who will perform on the court.

The organization initially integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Ticketmaster and its systems to elevate customer service and marketing efforts.

The Hornets took the capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM one step further by building an application that will enable scouts in the field to manage player performance information.

“We had some low-level CRM capabilities through our previous ticketing software, but we wanted a more full-featured solution, a more intelligent approach to how we were selling tickets, to be more effective in our process,” said Tod Caflisch , vice president of information technology, Hornets, in a statement.

Caflisch said that Hornets looked at Salesforce.com (News - Alert), but it didn’t have the flexibility it wanted.

“With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we could modify it to meet our specific needs,” he added.

Officials with Microsoft said that the team’s initial use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM allowed an agent to quickly access a customer’s history in an effort to better serve the customer’s specific needs when it comes to purchasing tickets.

Company officials said that this information gave Hornets’ management the ability to understand in which geography they sell the most tickets, so they can establish successful sales operations.

From that original implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Caflisch worked with Transech, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, based in Houma, La., to create the application for smartphones that would enable scouts to store information on the players they were watching in real time.

Scouts in the field record information about each player based on specific formulas that take into account competitive statistics and a player’s ability to positively affect team chemistry.

Hornets scouts now can acquire information, store notes and sync with a master database, from which valuable reports can be pulled to evaluate potential players.

The scouting database is used to rank players based on a set of standard criteria and their interpretation by scouts.

“Our mobile application, built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, is a unique solution that other teams have not yet deployed,” Caflisch said.

He said that Hornets saved a significant amount of money compared with developing an app from scratch, so it’s a real slam-dunk as far as the return on investment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is concerned.

Caflisch anticipates that his mobile-scouting application will attract a lot of attention in the NBA.

“I thought Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabled us to develop a very innovative idea, and it has exceeded our expectations,” he said. “Other teams will take a serious look at what we’ve done and may copy our lead, possibly building a similar database using Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”

David Willis (News - Alert), corporate vice president for U.S. Dynamics business at Microsoft said that in an era when one-to-one customer relationships and niche communications are rapidly replacing mass-marketing techniques, Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows organizations to access conversations, buying history and preferences for each of their customers quickly.

“The results are much stronger customer relationships, improved opportunities to gain sales and better prospects for success,” Willis said.