Dell Harnesses the Power of Salesforce CRM and the Force.com Platform to Drive Innovation and Success

Challenge

• Dell--a leading global systems and services company--wanted a CRM solution capable of providing a global view of its pipeline and a way to collaborate across global sales teams.
• The company relied on multiple homegrown opportunity management solutions in each region. 
• The company wanted a flexible and easy-to-use system that was globally consistent. IT was building out a centralized solution but found it costly. 
• Dell manages a large number of internal and external recommendations for key technology partnerships. Executives wanted a centralized location they could go to to determine the status of current and past technology partnership evaluations.
• The technology giant also needed a scalable way to collect feedback from its community, helping the company capture feedback and drive innovation.
• Dell interacts with more than three million customers every day.
• The company wanted to create a secure employee community to capture candid feedback from 80,000 employees from across the globe.
• In addition to the online communities, Dell also developed a plan to launch a global partner program in less than 6 months.
• Considered “anti-channel,” Dell needed to gain the trust of value-added resellers.
• Varied channel-facing business units had disparate needs.

Solution

• Dell selected Salesforce CRM for its ease of use, flexibility, and the ability to deploy worldwide. The company rolled out Salesforce CRM to 4,000 users in 12 weeks in the United States with help from Salesforce.com Consulting. This is now 15,000 users over 18 months globally.
• Dell managed the overall user training program, leveraging Salesforce.com Training & Certification programs as well as a sales process consulting firm; it contracted delivery to a select group of companies who had worked closely with Dell in the past. 
• Salesforce.com Training & Certification managed up to 140 instructor-led classes, training over 3,000 users in 5 weeks. Salesforce.com Training & Certification also created eLearning courses and other curriculum to provide ongoing training for instructors and users. 
• Dell leverages Salesforce.com Premier Suppprt for 24x7 technical support. The global Salesforce.com Premier Suppport team is leveraged by Dell internal support help desk which is the company’s first point of technical contact for supporting its complex implementation.
• With help from Salesforce.com Premier Support, Dell leveraged Force.com to map its business process and build an application for tracking technology partnerships in less than 4 weeks. The application allows a team of 75 technology evaluators to track, manage, and report on evaluations.
• Using Force.com, Dell allows venture capital firms and others to submit new evaluation submissions via a simple email form.
• Workflow and analytics enable users and executives to easily generate reports to quickly identify, track, and manage key evaluations in real time.
• Dell CEO Michael Dell was so impressed with Salesforce CRM ideas communities and the way they drive product development at salesforce.com that he immediately wanted one rolled out at his company. 
• With help from Salesforce.com Consulting, the company had launched Dell IdeaStorm—built with Salesforce CRM ideas in 3 weeks—to give customers and enthusiasts a chance to “walk the halls of Dell” and share ideas that influence product development, services, and operations.
• Posted ideas compete on equal footing; comments and voting ensure the most popular ideas bubble up to the top. 
• Within the first week, Dell IdeaStorm had collected more than 500 ideas; by the first month it had collected 2,500 ideas. 
• EmployeeStorm is a secure community that allows employees to post ideas regardless of where they sit within the company; in the first two weeks of launching it had gathered more than 700 ideas.

Results

• With the Force.com platform and Force.com code, the Dell CTO team can quickly adapt the technology partner evaluation application to track key technology trends.
• Ideas bubble up through IdeaStorm, allowing the company to identify pain-points and hone in on areas that need improvement and enhancement.
• Customer feedback on IdeaStorm led the company to build select consumer notebooks and desktops pre-installed with the Linux platform. Dell also decided to continue offering Windows XP as a pre-installed operating system option in response to customer requests.
• Dell leverages the wisdom of crowds to evaluate and prioritize customer feedback.
• Dell customers and enthusiasts have a chance to be a part of the product development process—to tell the company what they want to see in future releases.
• Executive-level confidence drives home the message that IdeaStorm is an important way to engage customers and broaden innovation.
• EmployeeStorm breaks down the silos natural in corporate life and increases collaboration—allowing, for example, tech support employees in Asia to communicate and share ideas with sales reps in Round Rock, Texas. 
• Ideastorm also engages employees at every level to comment on their area of expertise and to participate in the discussion. 
• Dell is experiencing more than a thousand partner registrations a month via Salesforce CRM Partners. Average turnaround time is reduced to just 36 hours.
• Over $200 million in deals submitted by partners have been approved and serviced using Salesforce CRM.
• Dell’s partner community applauds Salesforce CRM’s simplicity and ease of use.
• Looking ahead, Dell is considering an extension to its implementation through Salesforce CRM Partners with help from Salesforce.com Consulting. Dell’s new global deal registration program would use Salesforce CRM Partners to push leads to partners and to manage channel conflict. Dell would be able to create custom-branded portals for its 44,000 partners.