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• Replace disparate contact management systems created by each region that result in silos of customer data
• Create visibility into the global sales pipeline for improved sales process consistency and selling efficacy
• Improve accuracy of forecasts to actuals

• Intergraph implemented Salesforce SFA in eight weeks, with a successful 60-country rollout in three months, integrating its Management Operations Systems sales methodology and processes into Salesforce for global visibility and consistency to opportunities and other critical sales information. Intergraph also leveraged Force.com Builder to deploy custom applications to support marketing project management, collaboration, budgets, and event management.

• With the Salesforce solution, Intergraph enjoys global consistency in sales process, behavior, messages, and sales language
• The company has visibility into its global sales pipeline for the first time in its history
• With Salesforce, Intergraph has reduced forecast-creation time by more than 80% and improved forecast accuracy to a 95% confidence level

Intergraph specializes in helping governments and businesses visualize and manage complex spatial information with software solutions that, for example, help agencies dispatch, command, and control emergency services to those in crisis. The company prides itself on providing solutions that enable its clients to make the "right decisions at the right time, using the right information."

In terms of its business processes, however, Intergraph faced a crisis of its own: For all its success in providing companies with high-quality information solutions, Intergraph struggled to get a unified view of its own customers, which were spread across 60 countries worldwide. The company lacked visibility into its global sales pipeline and had no central control over its sales and marketing processes.

"The big problem was that we had no contact-management capabilities to gather a list of prospects and contacts," explains Dan Ruscheinski, director of marketing operations at Intergraph. "Regions started to do things on their own, using Microsoft Outlook and other apps. We realized that this just didn't make sense. We had to consolidate."

More critically, with complex sales cycles that can stretch to 24 months, Intergraph grappled with high variability in matching forecasts to actuals, a business risk that could potentially prevent the company from meeting its earnings targets. "First and foremost, we wanted to provide an accurate forecast," says Ruscheinski. "That was our number one priority. Our analysts had to be able to provide accurate forecasts to our management."

The fact that Salesforce is a truly global solution with comprehensive features appealed to Intergraph when it came time to choose a solution. "Salesforce proved to be robust in terms of functionality and could be accessed from anywhere. With operations in 60 countries worldwide, ubiquitous access with multicurrency and multilingual support was vital; no other vendor could deliver it at the time."

Walk, Then Run: Easing into Worldwide Deployment

Intergraph used salesforce.com implementation partner GrowthCircle to help with a rapid eight-week deployment, deciding upfront to start simple and grow the system with the organization. Reflecting on the initial implementation experience, Ruscheinski recalls, "They tempered our enthusiasm and encouraged us to start simple and become more complex as we grew." Deployment under this plan was easy. Intergraph rolled out Salesforce to successive geographic regions, achieving global coverage in about a month, and with high user adoption because "the system was so easy to use, the resistance was low," Ruscheinski says.

Next up, Intergraph incorporated its Management Operations Systems sales methodology and processes into Salesforce, including consistent definitions of sales stages and percentage probability. The result: global consistency in sales processes, behavior, messages, and sales language, which translated to more accurate and consistent data and reporting-all available in real-time. Most compelling, Salesforce enabled Intergraph to provide forecasting visibility to its global sales pipeline for the first time in company history. Salesforce has become such an integral facet of Intergraph's business that, as Ruscheinski says, "Sales reps have Salesforce on their desktop at all times during the day."

Force.com: Extending Solutions, Improving Processes

While Intergraph incorporated its business methods into Salesforce, Salesforce inspired the company to enhance its practices based on the benefits inherent in the system. "Salesforce best practices have consistently helped us uncover weak areas in our processes," says Ruscheinski. "We are now developing strategies that align with our new CRM capabilities to improve our business." For instance, Salesforce's innovative Web-to-Lead functionality now generates one consistent online lead form that, based on workflow and context-sensitive routing rules, automatically routes leads through optimal queues so they reach the most appropriate reps.

Extending the Salesforce sales-oriented benefits, Intergraph leveraged Force.com Builder, a point-and-click development tool from salesforce.com, to develop custom tabs that enable a broad range of processes and functions, such as marketing project management, marketing collaboration, event management and budgeting, and expense reporting. The company also augmented this custom-built functionality with best-in-class AppExchange partner applications such as VerticalResponse to manage its outbound email campaigns.

The Simple Sell: Executive Buy-In

With a newfound visibility into sales pipelines and streamlined processes companywide, Intergraph found it easy to drive improvements in sales effectiveness. Prior to Salesforce, much of the interaction between sales management and sales reps was focused on commitment numbers for forecasting. Because consistent opportunity data is now maintained in the system, the quality of the conversation between sales managers and sales reps can be elevated. As Ruscheinski explains, "Instead of talking about forecast numbers, managers are more focused on coaching reps and helping them to achieve their sales goals."

With Salesforce's award-winning ease-of-use and real-time analytics such as dashboards, Intergraph has achieved greater executive participation. "We have executive involvement from the CEO down," Ruscheinski notes. Dashboards such as Top 20 Opportunities have made it possible for executives to become proactive in strategic deals. "A key indicator of our Salesforce deployment success is a noticeable improvement in win rates," says Ruscheinski, "with some larger deals being won because the right stakeholders are getting involved in the deal at the right time."

Improved Forecasts: Done

With a global sales force all marching to the same tune, Intergraph could finally build its global pipeline with consistent information across the board. The company reduced the amount of time it took to produce forecasts from more than a week to less than a day-an 80-percent boost in efficiency. And in addition to eliminating work, it produced fresher, more relevant forecast data.

Most important, Intergraph achieved its Salesforce implementation goal: forecast accuracy. "Our forecasts are more complete and consistent in creation and reporting, which boosts executives' confidence in the forecasts," says Ruscheinski. In fact, he says, "Ever since we started using Salesforce, forecasts have correlated to results with a 95 percent confidence level."