Ariba Gains a Competitive Edge with Salesforce CRM and AppExchange and Chatter

Challenge

• Ariba, the leading cloud-based collaborative business commerce solutions, wanted a CRM solution for sales and marketing functions, opportunity and activity tracking, and to measure the effectiveness of marketing activities
• Demanded an easy-to-use and customizable system that could be rolled out quickly and maintained cost-effectively
• Required flexibility that included anytime, anywhere access as well as built-in collaboration tools

Solution

• Selected Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition, deploying it to hundreds of users in sales and marketing as well as to executives
• With Salesforce CRM, Ariba manages leads automatically as they come over the Web, and follows up on all leads within 24 hours maximum
• Easily generated Reports and dashboards let executives track sales and marketing metrics
• The company broadened its usage of Salesforce CRM by test-driving and installing applications such as Eloqua and Inside View from the AppExchange
• Added Data.com to filter, clean and augment existing data to ensure customer and prospect accounts contain quality contacts
• Data.com also helps identify new profiles within existing accounts making it easier to reach key decision makers
• Rolled out Chatter to improve collaboration and accelerate information sharing among sales, marketing, product management, and customer support
• Most employees use Chatter to follow accounts, contacts, and opportunities
• In addition, people follow others in complementary roles on Chatter; for example, solution consultants follow the account executives they support to see what opportunities are being created and account executives follow their inside sales reps to see what leads they're working
• Chatter is also used to gather business and competitive intelligence picked up in the field during sales calls

Results

• Strong adoption; sales and marketing users log into Salesforce CRM on average 5 times per week
• Salesforce CRM is now the backbone of Ariba's sales and marketing functions; when new functionality is needed the company easily adds new applications from the AppExchange such as ExactTarget and Inside View
• Users without a programming background can build custom applications and extend the power of Salesforce CRM companywide
• Before a purchase, the company now ensures that all technology vendors integrate Salesforce CRM
• Increased productivity and effectiveness because Chatter provides an always-on forum to share and capture critical knowledge on opportunities, contacts, and competitors across the organization
• With Data.com, contacts are verified and updated so the sales team can focus on leads that are more likely to generate business