Solid Cactus Boosts Earnings and Increases Efficiencies with Multi-faceted Salesforce CRM Deployment

Solid Cactus has designed more e-commerce Web sites than any other firm in the Internet Retailer Top 500--proof that the company knows what its customers want. Based in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., Solid Cactus built its business as a Yahoo store design agency and eventually expanded to become a full-service e-commerce design firm focused on designing, promoting, and helping store owners better manage their businesses.

As the company grew, so did its CRM needs. But Solid Cactus, which was recently named one of Inc. magazine’s fastest growing companies, was dealing with some prickly Web-based problems of its own. Impressed by a Siebel On Demand presentation, the company moved forward with a sales force automation implementation that failed to live up to expectations.

Dashboards started breaking as the company added users. Employees and executives refused to use the system. Solid Cactus paid an extra $150 a month to bolster Siebel OnDemand’s basic e-mail capabilities--and was unable to send a single e-mail. As a result, salespeople there struggled with a CRM system that just didn’t work.

"Functionally, Siebel OnDemand didn’t perform," says John Tomkoski, manager of sales engineering at Solid Cactus. "There were frequent down times and frequent JavaScript errors multiple times a day, affecting multiple users. You would be on a call handling a sale and the whole screen would disappear on you. We were constantly writing information down in notepads so we wouldn’t lose everything."

Salesforce CRM Replaces Siebel OnDemand

After a year, Solid Cactus had had enough. Frustrated sales executives labeled the Siebel OnDemand implementation ineffective and began searching for a new CRM solution that could deliver scalability, performance, reporting, and customization. Though Solid Cactus executives briefly considered Microsoft CRM, they decided they wanted the flexibility and functionality of the Salesforce CRM cloud-computing solution. Tomkoski deployed and customized Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition himself in three months, and tapped salesforce.com partner CRM Manager to assist with data migration.

"We knew we wanted something on-demand," Tomkoski explains. "We considered Microsoft CRM because we have an Exchange server in-house but ultimately we wanted something that would work perfectly right out of the box. We needed something that was flexible, easy to deploy, and easy to manage like Salesforce CRM."

The impact of the new system was almost immediate: Employees have embraced the new system, leading to a sharp increase in adoption. Executives who refused to use Siebel OnDemand now clamor to create reports to track pipeline, cases, and deal progress. Visibility into the pipeline means salespeople can now follow up on previously neglected opportunities. Workflow rules alert managers and help the company discover opportunities that would otherwise have been lost.

"We saw a $100,000 increase in earnings in our first three months on Salesforce CRM because of our ability to act on previously neglected and lost opportunities," Tomkoski says. "Moving over to Salesforce CRM is a dream come true for us because there is no way we can forget about anything we put inside Salesforce CRM. When you factor in time savings and the ability to work efficiently with the system, it becomes obvious that Salesforce CRM is worth the premium."

Rich, Pre-Packaged Functionality

With Salesforce CRM, Solid Cactus gained the functionality it lacked with its previous system. For example, the Web-to-lead feature in Salesforce CRM Marketing has significantly reduced response time with salespeople now reaching out to new leads within 15 minutes of receiving an inquiry. And mass e-mail, the feature the company paid Siebel extra for but couldn’t get to work, is a standard feature in Salesforce CRM.

"We were never able to successfully send an e-mail from Siebel," Tomkoski says. "With Salesforce CRM Marketing, we rely heavily on the campaigns functionality. We get a lot better metrics because Salesforce CRM takes marketing much further than a simple e-mail blast."

In addition, Solid Cactus integrated Salesforce CRM with an e-mail solution from salesforce.com partner ExactTarget, reducing the time it takes to send professional e-mail communications by 75 percent. While marketing used to work off one generic e-mail list, the team can now manage its lists from within Salesforce CRM and use Salesforce CRM data to deliver targeted promotions.

World-Class Customer Support

Without e-mail integration or the ability to send e-mail outside of the system, Tomkoski said he never considered using Siebel OnDemand for service and support. With Salesforce CRM, it was an entirely different story. Following its success using Salesforce CRM, Solid Cactus decided to replace Autotask with the Salesforce CRM Service call center.

The Salesforce CRM call center empowers Solid Cactus to efficiently capture customer information with features like Web-to-case. And, Cisco Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) delivers even more effectiveness to the company’s service and support process. Salespeople now get a screen pop of a customer’s record when taking a call, saving as many as three minutes per sales call.

As business needs change, Solid Cactus also employs a wealth of solutions offered by salesforce.com and the AppExchange marketplace. AppExchange allows Solid Cactus to pick and choose additional marketing and sales applications, adding even greater functionality to Salesforce CRM. For example, Google AdWords enables Solid Cactus to evaluate the effectiveness of its Google advertising campaigns and Web site lead generation activity. A recruiting application, on the other hand, manages open jobs and candidate information. So far, the company has downloaded more than 15 different applications from AppExchange.

More Innovation on the Way

The innovation doesn’t stop there though. Solid Cactus recently upgraded to Salesforce CRM Unlimited Edition, gaining access to features such as the Force.com sandbox, Salesforce.com Premier Support, and mobile access. In the future, Solid Cactus plans to take advantage of the Force.com platform and Force.com pages, which extends the power of cloud computing with a highly flexible presentation layer based on standard Web technologies. With Force.com pages, Solid Cactus will be able to customize the user interface and deliver a Salesforce CRM experience tailored specifically to the company.

"By enabling us to remove superfluous fields, Force.com pages will take what is already a superior customized solution and allow us to truly make it our own," Tomkoski says. "Salesforce CRM is already easy to use but Force.com pages will make it child’s play."

A custom interface is merely the beginning for Tomkoski who says he has several new projects in mind. Solid Cactus currently has 1,000 open projects with 100 people accessing those projects at all hours of the day. With five major departments that need the system for very different purposes, there is no off-the-shelf solution that can meet the company’s requirements. To handle this situation, Tomkoski says he will use custom tabs to build a project management system on top of Force.com and then customize the solution using Force.com pages-saving his company hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, and eliminating the need to manage two different systems.

"We went from using Siebel OnDemand for just CRM-and it didn’t even work for that-to using Salesforce CRM for CRM, recruiting, call scripting, service and support, and Google AdWords," Tomkoski  summarizes. "Even though we pay a little more, we get a lot of additional usage from the app. Salesforce.com will be the platform our entire company runs on."

Solid Cactus