Symantec aligns its global business and increases customer satisfaction with Salesforce

Challenge

• Symantec, which provides a broad range of network security and storage solutions, wanted to unify sales and service operations on a single technology platform in order to align multiple business units and support an enterprise-wide initiative to increase customer satisfaction
• Needed a solution that was flexible enough to accommodate robust consumer and enterprise businesses and a diverse sales ecosystem that included a direct sales force, computer manufacturers, distributors, resellers, and systems integrators
• Sought to increase visibility and reduce costs by streamlining a fragmented IT infrastructure made up of multiple siloed systems that were expensive to license and manage

Solution

• Selected Salesforce for reliability, scalability, and flexibility and signed an enterprise license agreement making Salesforce apps a cornerstone of Symantec's corporate infrastructure
• Deployed the Sales Cloud to 3,900 employees in 40 countries and 11 languages in less than 4 months, later usage expanded to more than 11,000 employees
• Created a partner portal that is used for opportunity registration and partner lead management
• Deployed the Sales and Service Clouds to worldwide support centers as part of the foundation for building virtual contact centers running on a single IT infrastructure, replaced Sutherland CRM, Teleperformance, and Excel spreadsheets
• Integrated the Service Cloud with LivePerson for live chat and LiveOps for telephony
• Established Salesforce as the new rapid development platform for business apps—employees requesting additional functionality are instructed to first try to build new apps on Salesforce
• New apps include an app to manage the Executive Briefing Center that automated the briefing process and made it possible to measure whether briefings contributed to deal wins
• Rolled out Chatter and Chatter mobile on iPhones, iPads, and BlackBerry devices in order to improve communication among the global sales team; sales people in different geographic locations can now easily communicate on proposals and pricing
• Other Chatter use cases include communicating about worldwide sales conferences—instead of receiving multiple emails relating to a conference, employees simply check their Chatter feeds—motivating sales teams, and sharing information learned in deal reviews

Results

• Increased sales rep productivity by automating a multitude of manual processes
• A new ability to measure the effect of sales activities has led to better decision making and more efficient use of resources
• Improved operational efficiency by aligning business units and providing a central source of customer information
• Increased global collaboration by deploying Chatter