Dimension Data Boosts Global Sales Pipeline by 172 Percent in One Year with Salesforce CRM

"The interface is just about as easy to use as Amazon.com and we can customize it as we want.  Salesforce CRM has transformed our opportunity management process, offering improved resources management, improved closure rates, and a reduced cost of sale."


— Dimension Data

Challenge

  • Dimension Data, a specialized, South Africa-based IT services provider, was relying on a set of systems in five regions worldwide to target, acquire, and retain customers.
  • Fragmented, existing sales management systems—including Siebel, Oracle Financials, bespoke systems, spreadsheets, and email.
  • Multiple, overlapping systems demanded undue IT resources.

Solution

  • Dimension Data deployed Salesforce CRM Sales to sales professionals worldwide in four months as part of a multitenant CRM solution geared to maximizing sales effectiveness and efficiency.
  • Existing sales management systems were discarded in favour of a single and globally unified sales management system based on Salesforce CRM.
  • Salesforce CRM provides staff in 40 countries with one common sales process and methodology, one global lead capture tool, and one global drill-down forecasting mechanism.
  • Point-and-click customization was completed quickly and easily by sales teams without the need for IT intervention; examples include hundreds of sales reports and a reference management tool used to coordinate customer references.
  • Sales teams are using Salesforce CRM to share crucial deal data and collaborate on international sales opportunities.
  • Salesforce CRM’s affordable, easy-to-deploy model frees regional IT departments to work on other projects, and reduces the need for new hardware purchases.
     

Results

  • Salesforce CRM has increased the value of Dimension Data’s global sales pipeline by 172 percent, helping the company identify and track leads and opportunities that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.
  • The system provides sales teams with simultaneous, shared access to more than 5,000 standalone company reports and more than 700 customized global reports.
  • Dimension Data has reduced the variance between the sales pipeline forecast and the value the company closes at.
  • The solution reduced the number of accounts tracked by Dimension Data, aggregating many overlapping accounts, and enabling sales teams worldwide to better understand who they sell to.
  • Salesforce CRM is achieving a 92 percent utilization rate and proving to be immensely popular with staff at all levels in the organization.
  • Salesforce CRM is critical to Dimension Data’s opportunity management process and improved sales results.
     

Full Case Study

The great thing about global organizations is how quickly good news spreads.  And the positive comments being expressed within Dimension Data concerning Salesforce CRM prompted the specialist IT services and solution provider to extend an initial deployment of the CRM solution in the U.S. to a global roll-out across five regions and 1,650 staff.  The results have silenced any skeptics.  Since deploying Salesforce CRM Sales, Dimension Data has increased the value of its global sales pipeline by 172 percent; teams have simultaneous, shared access to more than 5,000 standard company reports and over 700 customized global reports; and the utilization rate for Salesforce CRM is currently 92 percent.

The situation Dimension Data was facing two years previously now seems light years ago.  To target, acquire, and retain customers, sales teams in five regions—the U.S., Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia—were using systems ranging from Siebel CRM, spreadsheets, and Oracle Financials, to bespoke platforms and email.  Not only were many of these systems difficult to use, but the fragmented approach meant there was no single view of global and multi-national accounts, and the  lack of a consolidated sales forecast.  There was no predictability, no historical information—but there were overlapping sales pipelines by the spadeful.

One Global View of the Business

“We were looking for a standard platform, which would provide all five regions with one global view of the business,” says Scott Rames, Global Sales Automation Director.  “Salesforce was just what we needed.  The ASP model meant we could deploy it quickly worldwide without significant interference from IT, the interface is just about as easy to use as Amazon.com, and we can customize it at will.  Overall, we believed Salesforce would transform our opportunity management process, offering better resources management, improved closure rates and a reduced cost of sale.  When we initially rolled Salesforce out to 200 sales professionals in the U.S. region, news quickly spread about how great the system was and the other regions were keen to pick it up.”

Based on the delivery model, the ‘as easy to use as Amazon.com’ analogy, and strong recommendations from early adopters, Dimension Data has deployed Salesforce CRM Sales to sales professionals in 40 countries worldwide.  Working with the BlueWolf Group—which helped shape initial page layouts, data migration, and calculation scripts—the initial focus for Rames and his team was to discard other sales management systems used by the regions and concentrate on using Salesforce CRM for opportunity management and account management.  “It was so easy to implement; we hardly needed any technical assistance from the IT team and successfully deployed Salesforce SFA to all 1,650 staff worldwide in four months,” says Rames.  “One of the advantages is that the regional IT departments can now focus on client-driven initiatives.”

Salesforce CRM provides Dimension Data with one global sales process, one global lead capture tool, and one global drill-down forecast.  Opportunities are now visible to the organization; and the company can trend previous and future performance, capture and track account histories, and anticipate future staffing needs.   “Salesforce is a business tool which has alleviated our business pain.   In a pre-sales engagement, for example, a colleague in Mumbai can check with his sales colleague in Colorado to find out the precise status of a sales opportunity, collaborate on an international deal, and close the deal more quickly—quite possibly to a higher value too,” Rames explains.

Although Salesforce CRM offers one system across five regions, users have undertaken limited, point-and-click regional customization to adapt the system to their unique geographic needs.  One example of this customization is a reference management tool, which is used to identify and track customer references such as case studies.  Customized tabs, fields, and records identify which customers can be referenced, the number of times they have been used, the media they can be referenced through—such as a press release, case study, or peer-to-peer reference—and the scored quality of the reference.

Utilization Rate for Salesforce CRM Sales Hits 92 Percent

All of this has made the system immensely popular with users.  The utilization rate of Salesforce CRM is 92 percent, and According to Rames, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” This high adoption rate means the system has made a fundamental and lasting difference to Dimension Data’s business.

Strange as it may seem, Rames is also pleased that the number of accounts tracked by Dimension Data has fallen by 20 percent following the introduction of Salesforce CRM.  “It’s great, because we’ve managed to aggregate many of the accounts we previously tracked separately,” he says.  “We’ve eliminated thousands of unnecessary leads and now better understand who we really sell to. The bottom line is that Salesforce has become part of our sales culture and is critical to our opportunity management process and improved sales results.  If I had to make the choice again—I’d choose salesforce.com.”

Dimension Data

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