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• Replace existing separate and fragmented sales and support management processes
• Customer data locked in a variety of separate systems—each of which was not easy to share
• Sales people struggled to learn the status of an outstanding support enquiry when they made a sales call
• Minimal lead tracking, project management was conducted using spreadsheets, and sales and support reporting were minimal

• Deployed Salesforce SFA to 35 staff in four locations and in four languages to provide a single, comprehensive view of customers.

• Increased visibility into leads and opportunities pipeline
• Significantly quicker and easier to produce quotations, record research results, place and track orders, and manage the production process
• Enhanced ability to accurately analyze near-real-time reports on sales enquiries, orders, fulfillment, and financials
• Enabled marketing team is able to concentrate efforts on the right customer segments and target audiences
• Quick and simple to adapt the system to unique and diverse needs
• No up-front technology investment and drawn-out deployment; minimal impact on IT resources, easy to do business with, and very responsive

Sharing the salesforce.com mantra of 'no software', BuildOnline is the leading global provider of on-demand document management and collaboration software. The company has taken this shared philosophy further, by implementing Salesforce SFA in four regions and four languages to create a single, complete customer view. By uniting information around the customer - and leveraging new AppExchange applications - BuildOnline is maximizing sales effectiveness while ensuring customers receive prompt, expert customer support.

BuildOnline's solutions help customers share knowledge - both inside their own organizations and externally, with key business partners. Founded in 1998, the company's customers include Hochtief, BNP Paribas, Balfour Beatty, and Skanska.

'Software as a service on demand'. Where have you heard that before? In fact, there are many parallels between BuildOnline and Salesforce.com. The most evident one is that both company's solutions were designed from day one using Internet technologies and are offered on-demand. Like salesforce.com, BuildOnline's focus is on getting customers' projects live in days rather than weeks, saving the customers significant time and money on implementation.

Coordinate Customer Support Enquiries

But the two companies only became aware of the shared vision in 2001, when BuildOnline needed to replace its existing sales and support management processes. Until then, the company had been using a set of separate and fragmented systems to track, monitor, and coordinate customer support enquiries. According to Guy Halfhead, Sales and Marketing Manager, BuildOnline, this made it very tricky to deliver the quality of support that customers expected.

"We had separate sales and support systems," he explains. "From a sales perspective, we had customer data locked in a variety of separate systems—each of which was not easy to share. Because the support systems were separate, the sales people struggled to learn the status of an outstanding support enquiry when they made a sales call. There was minimal lead tracking, project management was conducted using spreadsheets, and sales and support reporting were minimal."

With customers in 20 countries, a seven-language operation, and a sales center in the Middle East, it was clear that BuildOnline could no longer rely on spreadsheets, a Microsoft Outlook tracker hybrid, and other solutions to manage customer relationships. "We examined several customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and the on-demand features of salesforce.com were very appealing," says Halfhead. "We chose salesforce.com over Heat FrontRange, SupportWorks, and other solutions, based on the remarkable ease of use and rich functionality. The web-based salesforce.com solution is highly scalable, quick to customize, and offers seamless synchronization with Microsoft Outlook and PDA devices."

Single Comprehensive View of Customers

The sales force automation solution Salesforce SFA is now used by 35 staff in four locations (UK, France, Germany, and the U.S.) and in four languages to provide a single, comprehensive view of customers. From a sales perspective, the international team has low-click access to unrivalled sales features. They can manage leads, opportunities, accounts, territories, and contracts from a unified sales system. They can manage activities, workflow, documents, and marketing collateral. They can also conduct rigorous sales analytics and forecasting—all using the consolidated customer view. "Sales productivity has increased since we deployed salesforce.com. We no longer have to re-key data, and all of the information is available to everyone much more quickly than before," he says.

Customer support is the highest priority at BuildOnline. The company has a dedicated support team who are available to assist with all user questions by telephone, email, or web. Using the salesforce.com system, the support staff are highly skilled in product knowledge and can diagnose and solve problems rapidly—thereby enabling customers to resolve issues and get back to business as soon as possible. "By logging individual cases and incorporating a complete view of each customer's support enquiry history, we can deliver a responsive, efficient service. Moreover, when a salesperson is preparing to make a sales call, they can view any outstanding customer support enquiries before they meet the customer. Not only are they more productive this way - they're also delivering an enhanced service experience."

But the benefits don't stop there. BuildOnline also recently began using the AppExchange, the world's first on-demand application-sharing service, where customers can browse and test drive dozens of new on-demand applications and install them into their salesforce.com account with just a few clicks. Following a successful test, BuildOnline deployed VerticalResponse for AppExchange, which provides self-service email and direct mail solutions. Using the solution, Heafhead and his team can launch professional sales and marketing campaigns in minutes, without technical assistance. This ranges from campaigns targeting just a handful of key document management software prospects, right up to a mass mailing. With VerticalResponse the sales and marketing team can control the end-to-end campaign development, execution, and analysis.

Halfhead is highly impressed by Force.com. "It's an astonishing piece of software development. With Force.com, we can be productive within a few hours on applications which would have required a considerable investment to develop in-house or purchase from a vendor. With this solution, we only pay for the campaigns we use it for."

Other AppExchange solutions have also caught Halfhead's eye. "We're a Skype customer, and we're certainly interested in some of the emerging Skype communications solutions in the AppExchange. Our business is all about collaboration—salesforce.com takes that collaboration to new heights."