A journey of a manufacturing conglomerate on achieving synergy by identifying the factors that can be collaborated, bringing them together on a common sales platform (CRM), getting some common yardsticks for all, and eventually, getting better forecasting and sales growth.
Being a manufacturer of precision instruments for measurement and analysis, our client has a global footprint across all major markets. Products spread across multiple domains, be it automobiles, medical, environmental, only to name a few. The group has been involved in measurement technology for more than 50 years. It is diversified into five sectors: automotive tests systems (ATS), environmental, medical, semiconductor, and scientific fields.
The Challenge
Absence of a common sales platform/process which is quantifiable and comparable
Previously, all regions in ATS (Americas, Asia, Japan, and Europe) were using various forms of customer relationship management processes and tools. This puts all regions in a position where basic reporting and strategic planning becomes tenuous and indeterminate. A unifying strategic sales process was required, which would bring all regions under one umbrella.
Reliability of the pipeline in the absence of a common tool to determine the actual sales versus forecasted
Our client’s products cater to very niche markets, wherein forecasting and pipeline management are essential to minimize delivery delays. Across the globe, only the US team was able to forecast their pipeline accurately. Because of this and other factors mentioned, our client was looking for a unified forecasting model across all regions, similar to that used by the US team giving their manufacturing plants a more efficient and time-to-market production line. Moreover, it was thought that these changes would encourage cross-selling with access to accurate inventory and a predictable and reliable pipeline.
Adherence to legal specifications, future certification of standards, and collaboration
In this ever-evolving regulatory environment, our client needed to be compliant across all jurisdictions. However, multiple customer management processes and tools added another layer of difficulty. So that they are fully compliant with various data protection laws like GDPR, CCPA, etc., they needed to eliminate the opaque data visibility across regions and introduce a controllable and scalable data management tool.
Additionally, it was observed that there was little effective collaboration within teams or across regions. Complete collaboration among all teams was required to achieve the degree of cross-selling promised by the upgrades to the forecasting and pipeline systems.
The Solution
Unified sales process, common yardsticks, easy and reliable access through cloud-based platform under one umbrella
Implementing a global ATS solution which consisted of –
- Bringing all sales teams onto a single platform (Salesforce CRM)
- Defining a unified sales process that is trackable across its lifecycle and reportable on a "run-time" basis on any parameter.
The future state for our client’s Global ATS Sales team unites the team globally on one platform with a unified, strategic sales process. This delivers baseline access to all ATS users for account, opportunity, and certain contact data. The improved Salesforce configurations give the team an improved data model with better functionality. This also ensures the availability of deeper reporting and analysis to quantify global strategic initiatives and provide ATS users a simple platform to best service our client’s customers.
Defining global data visibility and custom forecast reports in addition to what Salesforce has already provided out of the box
It's indispensable that you forecast your pipeline accurately so that there is no delay in delivery - key to ongoing customer satisfaction. To be sure, to accomplish exceptional CSAT scores, real-time inputs from all regions are critical. Hence, Birlasoft designed key reports and dashboards focused on accurate pipeline and forecasting. These reports and dashboards provide visibility across all regions based on product, group of products, customer, region, sub-team, owner, manager, or period.
The solution also leveraged the Salesforce internal data structure and data visibility management to ensure visibility follows the hierarchy and security. Users had required access on a "need to know" basis.
Legal adherence using custom configuration and Chatter collaboration to encourage cross-selling
The solution offered enhanced and uniform collaboration by way of Salesforce Chatter, which provides value within the company and enables easy collaboration with their distributors and partners. A custom configuration has been created to meet all legal expectations for data capture and data retention. In a nutshell, our client is now fully compliant with all regulations globally.
The Impact
A synergy-oriented, ever-growing, and streamlined organization
The common platform and the unified sales process brought harmony of process across all ATS sales teams. Any sales team from any region now has visibility into other regions' activities and, therefore, can take corrective measures as needed. Multiple touchpoints for customers have been replaced by a single team dealing with key customers. Decision-making is now fully informed based on the visibility of the global data/reports and dashboards in a single view and on a real-time basis.
Our client is fully compliant with legal and regulatory requirements about data capture and data retention. Recently, Birlasoft finished implementing a marketing solution enabling the marketing team to engage in campaigns, develop metrics, and then measure the campaigns' effectiveness and quantify ROI. This is now possible because they have a united sales process and a common platform.
Since the global rollout for ATS, they have witnessed increased sales figures, and growth has been seen on the cross-selling front. In line with this, they have now started a global rollout for the medical division.
