Beyond CRM: Ansley Capital Group Banks on Salesforce CRM as a Business Process Management Platform

Challenge

• Ansley Capital Group—a healthcare-focused investment bank—needed a sophisticated workflow and document management solution to support communication and coordination between its clients and potential investors and strategic partners.
• Activity reporting, such as individual contact spreadsheets and phone logs, was time-consuming, difficult to consolidate, routinely out of date, and inadequate for external client communication.
• The company needed a communication and business relationship management solution that would enable it to manage the execution of a corporate finance project on par with the best practices in the banking industry.
• Beyond a simple CRM tool, Ansley Capital envisioned a Web portal with built-in “native” capabilities for rules-driven workflow, up-to-the-minute consolidated communication and documentation management—phone calls, document sharing, email.
• The company also wanted an open technical architecture that encouraged independent development of third-party solutions to enhance productivity and enrich the value of its investment.

Solution

• After briefly considering stand-alone and networked versions of ACT! and GoldMine, Ansley Capital was compelled by salesforce.com’s cloud-computing platform that allows the company to download pre-integrated apps and build customized solutions.
• During an extended trial, Ansley Capital easily customized Salesforce CRM Group Edition to its business processes; the company licensed Salesforce CRM Professional Edition and customized it further to support its unique workflow and business needs.
• Using the Force.com builder, the company created an M&A and Investment Transactions application that enables the association of related entities in an expanding database, and it developed a custom application for expense reporting.
• With Salesforce CRM Marketing, Ansley Capital delivers HTML email blasts, on behalf of its clients, for professional-looking communications to potential investors and strategic partners.
• After three years of increasing value, Ansley recently upgraded to Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition to take full advantage of the open API architecture and the expanding network of Force.com solutions.
• Through theAppExchange the company found an email integration engine that enables a mash-up between Salesforce CRM and Gmail with functionality similar to Force.com integration with Microsoft Outlook.
• Ansley Capital also installed and deployed OrgView, an AppExchange tool that allows users to create visual org charts and update them in Salesforce CRM using drag-and-drop functionality.

Results

• By providing a superior business process management platform, Salesforce CRM positions Ansley Capital on par with the best practices that our customers expect from their investment banker.
• The AppExchange ecosystem extends the value of the company’s CRM investment with functional solutions that improve productivity.
• The development possibilities made possible by Force.com code give Ansley Capital the power to add and customize solutions as its business grows. 
• A universally accessible source of customer information and transaction activities supports timely client communications and fosters knowledge-sharing that streamlines our business processes.
• Inspired by Force.com and the AppExchange, the company will continue to build apps, develop mash-ups, and install tools that align with its business objectives