Salesforce CRM Assists U.S. Department of the Treasury Federal Consulting Group to Manage Sales, Pipeline, and Customer Information

Challenge

• The Performance Measurement and Customer Satisfaction team in the Federal Consulting Group, a franchise of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, required a system to more effectively track and manage agreements with federal agencies
• After its customer base grew and it acquired more staff, the team found it had outgrown its paper-based and Microsoft Excel tracking systems; it grew increasingly difficult to track customer contact information and to know which agreements were assigned to each customer
• The team required an easy-to-use, readily accessible CRM solution that would be quick and easy to implement

Solution

• With the help of the Salesforce CRM tutorial, the team implemented Salesforce CRM Group Edition by three people in less than a month
• Agreements with different agencies are specified in Salesforce CRM as "opportunities"; changes to an agreement, such as price or service type, are entered as modifications to the opportunity
• Automated alerts along with reports indicate when agreements are coming to a close
• Communications with customers are logged in activity history and matched to the specific opportunity
• Customized fields store important agreement-specific information for easy access
• Pipeline reports track what agreements are pending and what stage they are at in the process

Results

• One central location of customer agreements puts everyone on the same page, streamlining productivity and increasing knowledge sharing
• All customer contact information is stored in Salesforce CRM, significantly reducing the time needed to find a telephone number or email address
• Customers are contacted before agreements end, ensuring no loss of business
• The team upgraded from Salesforce CRM Group Edition to Salesforce CRM Professional Edition to enable integration with Lotus Notes
• Other areas of FCG are being added to Salesforce CRM, which will store agreements and customer contacts from all business lines in one centralized location