“Salesforce.com provides everything we need to run and grow our business - with a highly mobile workforce across three continents it means everyone can see what's going on everywhere, anytime.”


Ian Sampson, Global Technical Director

Challenge

  • Glanton Solutions operates virtually around the world, with no fixed offices and a highly mobile workforce – it needed to implement a system that was available 24x7 that its consultants around the world could access anytime, from any device
  • Being a systems integrator specialising in corporate web services,  it recognised the challenges and complexity in implementing, hosting and managing its own off the shelf, on-premise system and keeping that system current
  • It wanted a system that would support all of its operations, from lead generation and conversion, to contract fulfilment, to service and support through to final invoicing
  • Glanton required a full 360˚view of each customer and across the entire business
  • A key factor for its chosen solution was that it be flexible enough to adapt to Glanton’s specific business model and able to easily scale up (and down in the GFC!) as the business grows

Solution

In 2006 Glanton Solutions implemented Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition for seven users across the enterprise to serve a global virtual office, giving the workforce 24x7 access to real time corporate information in the cloud over all time zones.

Results

  • Salesforce.com's cloud based model is a perfect fit for Glanton’s virtual operations model - giving its consultants anyplace, anytime, real time access to any aspect of the business
  • Salesforce.com has enabled Glanton to keep its fixed costs to an absolute minimum and so offer customers more competitive rates
  • In ‘going cloud’ Glanton estimates it has saved the costs of servers, software, physical office space and an extra person
  • The salesforce.com Service Cloud supports easy collaboration, allowing geographically separate teams to work together on the same client account in a unified manner
  • Fully integrated service and support application with email to case and web to case gives customers easy access to case, change and content management aspects of Glanton’s support model
  • "Living In salesforce.com" ensures that every lead, opportunity, case and conversation is captured, managed and available for instant recall at anytime, which guarantees consistently high service levels
  • While Glanton is a niche company, it's processes and systems are equivalent to the biggest and best in the world – providing enterprise clients with the assurance they need that service and support levels will always be met
  • Ultimately, complete visibility of all business operations in the cloud enables a relatively small company to provide large-scale, enterprise class solutions

Full Case Study

Glanton Solutions delivers corporate web and intranet services to mid-market and global enterprises - specialising in integrating the leading Microsoft® based, open source, web content management system DotNetNuke. Glanton’s WebAdvantage® package, delivers integration, content management, training and ongoing support services, globally, 24x7. Headquartered in the UK, they have consultants in the USA and Australia.

Virtual company seeks cloud CRM

Glanton Solutions operates virtually, with no fixed offices and no infrastructure of its own - yet it needed to implement a system available 24x7 and accessible from any device to support its highly mobile consultants working around the world. Salesforce CRM fitted the bill perfectly.

“Managing our business processes through salesforce.com is what enables us to successfully run a virtual organisation – there is no way we could remain as connected as we do without it,” explains Ian Sampson, Global Technical Director for Glanton Solutions, who believes that if the company weren’t operating in the salesforce.com Service Cloud it would undoubtedly need to have regional office space and employ an additional person for managing the necessary servers and software.

With a responsibility for some of the world’s largest global corporations, including all of their subsidiaries, Glanton finds one of the greatest advantages of Salesforce CRM is the workflow processes that ensure a structured flow of information through the system.

“Once something is entered into salesforce.com, as a lead or a task for example, you simply can’t lose it!”

Living in salesforce.com

Glanton Solutions relies on Salesforce CRM chiefly for managing its often complex business processes – in Sampson’s words the company has adopted the best practices within salesforce.com “lock, stock and barrel.” In this way it makes effective use of the application’s function for tracking Opportunities.

For example, an opportunity to create a new website on behalf of a client might spin off four or five contracts in terms of installation, user management, maintenance and support, which are automatically allocated to the most appropriate consultants, along with recommended timing and a timesheet. This makes it easy to keep track of work in process and greatly reduces the burden of invoicing, which is also done in Salesforce CRM through a Congamerge object sourced and customised from the salesforce.com AppExchange application market place.

"Living in Salesforce" is not a motto for us - it's our core business philosophy!”

Scale up and down effortlessly with the needs of the business

Glanton Solutions was up and running in salesforce.com in just two to three weeks. A notable advantage is the ability to scale up and down effortlessly as needed, simply by adding or removing user licenses to fit with workload.

Since moving to salesforce.com Glanton has become more and more aware of a growing need for a cloud solution to its line of business applications. On the cards for the future are plans to leverage salesforce.com as a back office system. The company is currently looking into the full integration of its own content management system with Salesforce CRM – it anticipates that integrating its core functions on a single platform will deliver significant benefits in terms of building and managing online communities.

Glanton Solutions

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