Integrated Salesforce solution drives complete business views across sales and service at Intacct

Challenge

• Leading provider of cloud-computing financial management and accounting applications needed a scalable CRM system to automate sales and service processes, increase productivity, and provide greater business visibility
• Needed to support a high-velocity, highly efficient lead-to-order-to-cash process across marketing, sales, and finance
• Wanted to replace a homegrown case management system with a flexible, easy-to-use solution that would enable self-service case resolution
• Wanted to support its IT strategy of being a showcase for running the entire business with best-of-breed solutions

Solution

• Selected Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition for its cloud-computing delivery model, integration capabilities, and support for sales force automation, channel management, and service and support
• Deployed to 100 employees, including the sales, service, support, product management, and finance teams, including 8 agents

SALES CLOUD

• Deployed a Sales Cloud partner portal to help 25 partners register deals (which are booked directly into financials via Intacct MAX)
• Added a content library to make it easy for customers and partners to find the best and most relevant product information and materials

SERVICE CLOUD

• Added a Service Cloud customer portal to provide self-service case management, access to content and knowledge base information, and improve SLA and entitlement tracking for more than 600 customers
• Configured password protected ideas communities to create more intimate relationships with customers and partners by allowing them to share feedback and ideas, and enabling product management to close the loop when suggestions are implemented

CHATTER

• Added Salesforce Chatter to facilitate communication around deals and support cases and enable input from a wider range of contributors

FORCE.COM

• Used the Force.com cloud platform to build Intacct MAX™ for Salesforce CRM, automatically integrating Salesforce CRM and Intacct financials and closing the gap between sales and finance
• Installed applications from the AppExchange to extend Salesforce beyond CRM, including ClickTools for integrated customer satisfaction surveys

Results

• Salesforce CRM is regarded as a key business application by employees and partners, with more than 85 percent of the company using Salesforce CRM and Intacct regularly
• Improved business planning and customer satisfaction through full visibility into deals, partner activities, and customer health and feedback across the business
•  Increased sales and finance productivity and improved data quality through full automation of the lead-to-cash process with Intacct MAX; hundreds of companies are now using Intacct and Salesforce CRM together
• Fulfilled goal of moving to a partner-based implementation model because the partner portal makes it easy to share opportunities and implementation information
• Improved case tracking and response times through improved self-service and tracking capabilities; case resolution has almost doubled
• More than 50% of customer cases are opened through the portal —deflecting from email, chat, and phone inquiries and enabling the company to discontinue email support (which formerly represented 40% of inquiries) completely
• Improved communication with customers and partners through the centralized content library and full integration with the customer and partner portals
• More than 20 new ideas are contributed by customers each week—with 22 implemented in the first six months
• Decreased email and increased resolution times through real time visibility to customer issues with Chatter