Polycom Improves Sales Forecast Accuracy to Within 2% and Reduces Approval Costs 75% with the Sales Cloud

David Phillips shakes his head when he thinks back to when he first joined Polycom as the company's senior vice president of worldwide sales. Every Thursday, he would hold booking commitment meetings with his sales managers. To prepare, his organization would start to roll up forecasting information by sifting through cryptic spreadsheets on Monday to prepare for Thursday's meeting. By the time the Thursday meeting occurred, the data being presented was four days old.

No one argued against having the meetings. The efficiency and cost structures of Polycom's business-from supply-chain management and manufacturing to marketing and accounting-relied on a steady diet of information regarding sales opportunities and forecasts. But preparation was tedious, and it carried a serious opportunity cost. The days spent interpreting spreadsheets could have been spent with customers.

"You can't run a sales force based on a spreadsheet," says Phillips. "You can't do it with incorrect and old information. We spent too much time forecasting and not enough time engaging customers, and the roll-ups we did gather were often inaccurate and out of date. We needed greater efficiency across our business-we needed a better connection between information and execution."

Eliminating Foggy Forecasts

Polycom relied on a proprietary system for gathering forecast data, but the system was unable to provide what the growing company needed: instantaneous, real-time information that was integrated with various lines of business and the channel.

Phillips envisioned a solution that would provide real-time visibility into the sales pipeline so his group could deliver a predictable stream of revenue each quarter. His strategy involved balancing sales linearity over the course of a quarter-his goal was a "30-30-40" monthly breakdown percentage-wise of quarterly sales. Phillips also set 70% probabilities on projected near-term deals-in other words, a goal to close 70% of the deals that had 30- to-60-day forecast windows. Achieving this goal would add predictability to Polycom's linearity.

"Since deploying Salesforce CRM, our revenue has been within two percent of our forecasts, giving us companywide visibility that's fine-tuned with pinpoint accuracy," says Phillips. "Salesforce CRM's instant and constant visibility has made us extremely agile and efficient."

Quest for a High-Touch Business

But the benefits of instant visibility go far beyond forecasting. With Salesforce CRM, pipeline bookings meetings no longer require days of preparation. Accurate, real-time information can be pulled 15 minutes before a meeting, saving a solid workday every week for customer interaction instead.

"Having instantaneous access to information was one of the factors that enabled us to improve sales productivity dramatically over the past three years," says Phillips. "Based on the time previously spent on administrative tasks, we're saving at least a day per week in lost sales productivity and aligning sales teams with our high-touch strategy." Ultimately, Salesforce CRM made the entire sales team more productive. Offline access for traveling sales reps meant more effective use of travel time. And providing valid, real-time information to sales operations, manufacturing, accounting, marketing, telemarketing, and the channel improved efficiency throughout the sales cycle-from lead generation to order management to fulfillment.

While the enhanced efficiency enables more customer face time for sales, it also extends throughout Polycom's business. Supply-chain and manufacturing teams review Salesforce CRM-generated reports to project product mixes and manage production costs. Marketing validates awareness and lead generation campaigns by tracking eventual deals.

"My strategy was to establish a high-touch sales organization," says Phillips. "We needed simplicity. We needed to minimize administrative work and engage customers as much as possible. We needed an cloud-computing system that could synchronize our entire business globally. Salesforce CRM delivered this for us."

Salesforce CRM Drives Dramatic ROI

Polycom wanted a 60-day rollout, and salesforce.com's cloud-computing model led Niederman to believe that his team could hit that mark without enlisting help from IT or expensive consultants.

His sixth sense was right. In about eight weeks, Salesforce CRM was up and running in North America, which represents 50 percent of Polycom's worldwide revenue. Immediately, sales management created dashboards and account managers created their own customized reports indicating recent deals, forecasts and probabilities, and top deals per region without involving IT. Suddenly, reps could access information anywhere, anytime, including offline on a plane or in an airport.

Polycom also used the Force.com builder to create applications for commission management and nonstandard discount (NST) approvals; as an added benefit, the system reduced approval costs by 75 percent over the previous approval system. Most important was approval time regardless of where the NST was generated around the world was reduced from an average of five to seven days to less than a couple of hours.

"Determining a break-even ROI is difficult," says Phillips. "However, if we deployed the other solution we evaluated, we would have still been six to nine months away from finishing the implementation, let alone a million dollars in the hole. We've revamped our sales infrastructure with Salesforce CRM, and we now plan on synchronizing opportunity management and forecasting with our channels to produce an even more dynamic revenue-generating machine."

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