KPN Belgium Optimizes Sales Productivity and Sales Forecasting with salesforce.com

Challenge

• The key business issue facing KPN Belgium, a leading provider of telephony, data and Internet services, was a lack of visibility into information surrounding its Corporate and Small and Medium (SME) customers
• Owing to a reliance on a bespoke CRM system, the company was struggling to optimize sales productivity, effectively manage and execute marketing campaigns, and follow up on ad hoc sales opportunities
• KPN faced major concerns with the existing bespoke CRM system in terms of data consistency (including integration with the Clarify billing system), usability, performance, and accessibility (no Web access)

Solution

• KPN Belgium chose salesforce.com based on the low cost, cloud-computing model—it requires no major technology investment—the rapid time to market, ease of use, and ease of management (such as the use of pre-built AppExchange applications)
• The company deployed Salesforce CRM to 50 sales professionals to unify information around its customers.  Critical functionality includes shared account, opportunity, and activity management; sales commission calculation; quotes generation; workflow management; campaigns execution and drill-down reporting
• Salesforce CRM was deployed on time and on budget in only eight weeks with support from 4C Consulting

Results

• The cloud-computing model is helping KPN Belgium to maximize productivity (sales productivity immediately rose by 10% and is expected to rise further), with the ability to measure key metrics such as sales ‘ hit rates’ and customer visit frequencies
• Consistent, easy to manage dashboard reporting is helping to provide more accurate forecasting—by individual, by account team, and by product line
• The single, integrated view of the sales situation enables KPN Belgium to track all sales opportunities, ensuring none are neglected or ignored
• The system has been widely accepted by users as a user-friendly tool for managing customer relationships from anywhere.  The reporting and dashboards have also proved particularly popular
• The cloud-computing model enables KPN to manage customer relationships more cost effectively
• Looking ahead, KPN Belgium will use Salesforce CRM to create a shared community of channel resellers and other dealers based on Salesforce CRM Partners; deploy Salesforce CRM off-line in the field; and potentially use it to underpin customer support