Fleet Synergy International Tracks Opportunities Across 25 Partner Companies in 35 Countries with Salesforce

"A major beauty of Salesforce for us is that it is so easy to use. One thing salespeople hate is spending time on administration. Data is automatically synchronised as it is input, so not only does this provide real-time information globally but there's also no need to pay outside consultants to maintain and synchronise the system."

Overview
Challenge
  • Fleet Synergy International, the world's largest motor fleet management alliance, needed a CRM system to track leads and sales opportunities across 25 partner companies in 35 countries
Solution
  • Fleet Synergy examined all major CRM offerings, from Siebel and PeopleSoft to ACT! and GoldMine. After a 30-day free trial, the company realised Salesforce best met its criteria at the most competitive cost
Results
  • Salesforce significantly reduced Fleet Synergy's maintenance and synchronisation costs, provides much better visibility of the global sales pipeline and customers, provides real-time information on and analysis of the most-productive partners, and enables the company to present a seamless, unified image to customers globally.
Full Story

Fleet Synergy International is the world's largest motor fleet management alliance. The company manages 830,000 vehicles on behalf of 25 companies in 35 countries, covering Western and Eastern Europe, North America, South America, and Japan. It enables companies to outsource the headaches and risks involved in managing fleets that can consist of thousands of vehicles across multiple geographies.

Headquartered in Brussels, Fleet Synergy required a CRM (customer relationship management) system that would help it manage customer leads and opportunities across its multicountry, multipartner operations. It was critical to have a central resource that could analyse, manage, and track the sales process globally.

The company was finding its IBM Lotus Notes system "too complex and expensive to maintain," says Hans Damen, regional sales and marketing director for Fleet Synergy. Partners also had the costs of dialing up from around the world into a server in Chicago. This did not include the cost to the company of the internal server and software support and maintenance.

Reassurance on Security, Ownership, and Financial Stability

Fleet Synergy examined all the major CRM solutions available, from Siebel and PeopleSoft to ACT! and GoldMine. Criteria included swift implementation; fully outsourced management of maintenance, support, and training; ease of use; and low cost.

"A friend who used to work for Oracle suggested that we have a look at salesforce.com," says Damen.

Salesforce.com delivers its CRM solution, Salesforce, through the Internet as an online information utility via a Web services infrastructure. As a result, there is no need to buy, install, or maintain hardware, software, networks, or hosting. Neither did Fleet Synergy have to invest in up-front licensing charges. Salesforce.com provides CRM as a pay-as-you-go service for a monthly fee per user.

Fleet Synergy availed itself of the 30-day free trial and presented its findings to an international partner meeting. "The results were excellent," says Damen.

Issues raised at the annual shareholder meeting included security. "We were able to reassure partners about security through salesforce.com's advanced security certification," says Damen. (Salesforce.com leverages the strongest encryption products to protect customer data and communications, including 128-bit VeriSign SSL Certification and 1,024-bit RSA public keys.)

At a time of major upheaval and change in the global technology sector, partners also wanted to know how financially secure salesforce.com was. "Again we were able to fully reassure the partners," says Damen. "Salesforce.com has thousands of global customers. Its financial position and cash flow are very solid."

Partners also wanted the assurance that if they were to outsource important and sensitive data on customers and sales prospects to salesforce.com, they could get it back if they changed their mind or switched suppliers in the future. "We have an agreement with salesforce.com whereby partners can get backup of all data on a weekly basis," says Damen.

The final issue was support. "Our holding group is focused on sales and marketing. We did not have the resources to invest in a help desk for 35 countries, nor did we want the expense," Damen explains.

Salesforce.com provides this support service. In addition, salesforce.com's free online training tools and documentation meant that Fleet Synergy could also outsource training and support.

Results: Money Saved and Sales Boosted

Fleet Systems implemented Salesforce Professional Edition with a six-week pilot covering seven countries. The pilot was followed up with a demo to all partners at an international sales meeting on a Friday. "By the time they got back to their office on Monday, they were able to access and use the system," says Damen.

A key benefit for Fleet Synergy is ease of use. "We are not a technology company," says Damen. "In addition, one thing salespeople hate is spending time on administration. A major beauty of Salesforce is that it is so easy to use. Data is automatically synchronised as it is input, so not only does this provide real-time information globally but there's also no need to pay outside consultants to maintain and synchronise the system. Neither do sales personnel have to waste time writing reports and inputting data more than once—a traditional bugbear for many salespeople."

The system has provided much greater transparency across the global operation. "We now have a much better view of our sales pipeline from the automated reports we can generate. It also helps manage the operation globally, and we can more easily identify the most-productive partners, sectors, and countries," Damen says.

Fleet Synergy uses the Salesforce application to post its latest brochures, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, tender documents, and so on. "We use it like a library. We have to update the information only once, and it is instantly available to our partners globally," says Damen.

The implementation of Salesforce across 35 countries has helped Fleet Synergy demonstrate a unified presence to its global customers. "It has strengthened the power of our global alliance, because our customers know that we have a consistent and single CRM system that is cohesive and uniform across the partners," says Damen. "Through Salesforce we have a shared technology and can act as a single global entity while having the power of local and shared knowledge. That consistency is very reassuring for our multinational customers."

Damen adds that the implementation of Salesforce has saved money and improved international coordination and reporting. "Through better lead tracking and sales management, we are also confident that the system will boost sales."

"Salesforce provides us with enterprise-class, global CRM," says Damen. "We were spending more just to synchronise information on our last system."


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