Salesforce and the AppExchange Fuel Team Selling Success at Cognos

"As business intelligence experts, knowledge sharing drives our success. With clear visibility across all divisions, Salesforce helps us harness knowledge to facilitate a coordinated, team-selling approach to our customer success program"


Challenge
  • Cognos, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance planning software for the enterprise, had outgrown its custom-built forecasting application
  • The company needed to provide its 1,300 sales, presales and professional services teams with sophisticated account, opportunity, contact and lead management solutions to facilitate its team selling methodology
  • An outdated Onyx CRM system, used as a CRM in only a few locations, failed to meet the company's multi-language support needs and advanced forecasting requirements because it wasn't easy to upgrade an application that had been customized beyond recognition

Solution
  • To identify a solution that would work best with all users, Cognos performed a comprehensive needs analysis, surveying its entire worldwide community
  • Cognos evaluated Salesforce SFA, Onyx, and Siebel CRM OnDemand, choosing Salesforce for its performance and market leadership position, among other things
  • With the help of salesforce.com's Professional Services, Cognos began deploying Salesforce to users on a global basis in just four months
  • Using the Force.com API, Cognos extracts Salesforce information into its BI data warehouse to provide integration with Oracle Financials information and perform advanced reporting and analysis
  • Lead routing and workflow tasks streamline the sales process, and opportunity management tracks qualified sales opportunities
  • Cognos has downloaded and implemented Eloqua Conversion Suite, an application from the AppExchange directory, to easily execute and automate marketing campaigns from within Salesforce
  • Because security was a primary concern, Cognos chose to augment Salesforce's data security features with secure hardware tokens to create a failsafe login authentication process
  • Platinum Support provides Cognos with 24/7 support for all users

Results
  • By enabling knowledge sharing among sales, presales, and services teams, Salesforce make possible a team-selling approach to Cognos' customer success program
  • Cognos enjoys end-to-end visibility, tracking leads through to closed opportunities
  • User friendliness spurs team member adoption, dramatically improving account forecasting accuracy
  • Currently live with 40+ partners, plans to roll out Salesforce PRM to 150 partners will support continued channel growth—a vital component of the company's business strategy
 
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