JMsolutions Harnesses Salesforce and the AppExchange to Streamline Intricate Processes Across Multiple Business Groups

“Salesforce does not just pay lip service to the idea of extending CRM solutions beyond sales organizations. The AppExchange delivers tangible benefits that cut across a wide swath of diverse business groups. Now each of these groups can communicate and share in a way that streamlines very complex and intricate customer processes.”


Challenge
  • JMsolutions—provider of integrated software systems that help automotive dealers improve operational efficiencies and increase revenues—wanted a centralized CRM solution to share information across multiple groups including sales, support, service ticketing, and installation field teams
  • An existing ACT! application could only provide a piece of what the company required from a CRM system 
  •  The company, whose offerings are all “no software” solutions, needed an integrated platform on which to deploy apps and share information between sales and product development
  • Given the intricacy involved in each stage of JMsolutions’ business processes, advanced workflow capabilities were vital

Solution
  • In a side-by-side comparison of Salesforce and Siebel On Demand, salesforce.com’s Enterprise Edition won out for its superior workflow functionality and comprehensive Force.com platform; a positive sales experience sealed the deal
  • With the help of salesforce.com implementation partner Astadia, the company quickly deployed the solution to 133 users with Microsoft Outlook integration, large scale data imports, and multifaceted functionality
  • The company test drove and installed more than six applications from the AppExchange marketplace for use by multiple departments companywide:

- GetAnswered is an automated dialing solution that equips JMsolutions with advanced call center capabilities such as call scripting, call scoring, and automated voicemail functionality

- Project and Issue Management provides the company with a central location for managing key aspects of projects, including status and target completion dates

- Bug Tracking and Quality Assurance allows the company to see which products have recurring problems and how the development and quality assurance teams are handling each bug

- User Adoption Dashboard analyzes data activity that has taken place over the past 60 days and provides information about who has and has not logged in over the past seven days

- Vista helps JMsolutions manage online surveys

- QuickArrow Time and Expense helps JMsolutions track, streamline, and analyze time and expense data to improve accuracy and efficiency

  • Integration with an internal retailing system pulls customer data into Salesforce daily to maintain a fresh picture of current customers
  • Dashboards provide top-down views of sales information such as basic sales numbers and all open leads
  • Using Salesforce for service and support drives a complex web of processes—f ueled by workflow automation—throughout each stage of the customer lifecycle
  • Custom tabs—such as Outage, which tracks bugs for system issues, and Site Survey, which gathers pre-install customer information—tailor Salesforce to align with the company’s unique business model

Results
  • The efficiencies created by AppExchange solutions span multiple departments and users, maximizing the benefits of the Force.com platform
  • A complex maze of customer processes—from the point of sale to the point of installation to the point of support—flows as one cohesive system
  • Aggregating data into one information source enables universal access across multiple groups—driving efficiencies at each phase of the customer lifecycle
  • Upper management buy-in and overall ease-of-use drives high user adoption
  • Remote access without a VPN means users can access information from anywhere
 
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