Ashland Deploys Salesforce Unlimited Edition Across Sales and Customer Service for Increased Productivity and Streamlined Operations

“By creating clearer customer visibility and allowing us to manage interactions through multiple channels, Salesforce helped us quickly improve productivity and boost customer service levels. Our upgrade to Unlimited Edition extends our Salesforce success to 2,500 users across multiple departments companywide.”


Challenge
  • Ashland Distribution, a division of Ashland Inc., a Fortune 500 company, needed a way for sales, customer service, and other departments to capture and share customer information; it also wanted to enhance productivity from its customer service team
  • Customers were contacting the company via fax and email, as well as by phone, and needed an effective method to track all customer service activities; there was no single location to house orders to ensure all reps could see the same information
  • As a leading distributor of chemicals, plastics, composite materials, and environmental services, Ashland wanted to share information with members of its supply chain

Solution
  • After using the Salesforce demo, which allowed Ashland to test its feasibility, the company found its simple Web-based interface easy to use with no IT requirements
  • After successfully piloting Salesforce with eight users in customer support, the company rolled it out to 200+ service agents in several phases; Ashland deployed Salesforce to 50 sales reps in three months and ultimately to over 1000 users in sales and customer service organizations
  • The company subsequently upgraded to Salesforce Unlimited Edition and added an additional 750+ users over several phases companywide
  • Unlimited Edition extends Ashland’s customer support solution to include Force.com Sandbox testing environment, access to limitless AppExchange apps, and Successforce Premier Support and Administration
  • Successforce Consulting provided application and integration design expertise to integrate SAP’s customer master, vendor master, and materials master data across 2,500 potential users companywide
  • Custom tabs, such as Customer Demand Form with s-controls to prevent inefficiencies in the sales process along with customized Web links, provide workflow benefits that streamline the sales lifecycle
  • Leads are pushed from the marketing group into Salesforce where they can be assigned by district managers to individual salespeople
  • Dashboards reveal all activities pertaining to issues and discrepancies to keep everyone on the same page regarding customer issues
  • Service agents use Service & Support to track calls by type and easily log multiple calls from a single customer
  • Participants in Ashland’s supply chain were incorporated into the system and can view service histories for customers

Results
  • Enhanced lead process makes Ashland a more attractive distributor to its suppliers/customers
  • Customizations and workflow automation improve sales processes, which boosts productivity and improves the bottom line
  • Adoption of Service & Support across many regions and lines of business streamlines operations, enhances customer service, and makes agents more productive
  • Ashland’s sales and customer service organizations now share and collaborate on customer efforts
  • Limitless application development capabilities inherent in Unlimited Edition give Ashland the agility to create numerous, customized apps that map to workflow and business objectives
 
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