Maporama International Identifies New Revenue Opportunities After Implementing Salesforce in 15 Days

"We needed a more efficient system to identify who our customers were, where our customers were, and what they were doing. The dual objective was to boost both sales and customer service."

Overview
Challenge
  • Paris-headquartered Maporama International is a rapidly growing specialist in location-based services. Customers are blue-chip and multinational. Maporama Intl. had been using Microsoft Outlook and Exchange to track customers and leads, which was proving labour-intensive to synchronise and was producing islands of information.
Solution
  • The company considered a number of CRM solutions including traditional client/server, which it rejected because of up-front cost and ongoing cost of maintenance as well as complexity and length of implementation. Maporama Intl. selected Salesforce Professional Edition, which provides on-demand CRM via the Internet for a monthly fee per user.
Results
  • Salesforce was implemented in 15 days, giving the company greater clarity of customers, which has boosted revenue opportunities and customer care. Maporama Intl. now has greater productivity of the sales team, saving time on administration, reporting, and synchronisation. The marketing spend is also more productive due to better targeting.
Full Story

CRM Solution Required to Manage Rapid Growth

Paris-headquartered Maporama Intl. SA is a global provider of location-centric applications. It can localise the addresses of over a billion consumers across the world and provides detailed street maps from Europe, North America, Eastern Europe, Australia, Africa, and South America..

Maporama Intl. works with over 500 corporate customers in 20 countries including Accor, Delphi Automotive, Dr Martens, Europcar, Fortis, Hitachi, Renault, and L'Oréal. The company has 5,000 to 10,000 contacts it needs to track and operates sales teams in the United States and Europe. Its customer base is global, and as Maporama Intl. grew, it required a more sophisticated CRM (customer relationship management) system to identify its customers and synchronise sales information across countries and across multinational customers.

Maporama Intl. had been using a combination of Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange. This was proving labour-intensive to synchronise and was resulting in islands of customer information in salespeople's heads, laptops, and desktop computers..

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"We needed a more efficient system to identify who, where, and what our customers were doing," comments Dominique Grillet, CEO of Maporama International. "The dual objective was to boost sales and customer service."

Rejected Traditional Client-Server Approach

Maporama Intl. investigated a number of CRM offerings including traditional solutions. "We rejected an internal client/server approach not only because of cost but because of the time and hassle it would take to implement," says Grillet. "Neither did we want to have the problem and cost of ongoing maintenance.".

After examining a number of options in the market, Maporama Intl. selected salesforce.com, which delivers on-demand CRM via the Internet. As a result there is no need to buy, install, or maintain hardware, software, networks, or hosting. Neither did Maporama Intl. have to invest in upfront licensing charges. Salesforce.com provides on-demand CRM as a pay-as-you-go service for a monthly fee per user..

Maporama Intl. selected Salesforce Professional Edition. Salesforce.com also provides Salesforce Enterprise Edition for larger enterprise customers and a Salesforce Group Edition for small firms with five or fewer users.

Boosting Productivity from Sales and Marketing Spend

Salesforce was implemented within Maporama's sales, marketing, and support teams in 15 days. "We now have a real-time, single view of our customer," comments Grillet. "It provides answers to all the questions we need to know to run the business. Who should the salesperson call today? Which products have customers bought in the past and when? What was the last contact with them and by whom? Has a sister company bought our products in another country? How effective was our telesales and marketing campaign? What are our sales forecasts? In what industry sectors are we winning the most business?".

Grillet says that this is all vital information that was very difficult to access in the past. "We now know our customers much better, which helps us to provide more responsive customer care. Because there is much greater clarity of our customer base, the implementation of Salesforce has also boosted revenue opportunities.".

A major benefit following the implementation of Salesforce is that it has improved the productivity of Maporama's sales teams. "Salespeople are an expensive resource," says Grillet. "You need to maximise their productivity individually and as teams. Salesforce helps us do that. For example, they save a lot of valuable time in being able to access real-time customer information more easily. If one member of a team is away, we still have all the relevant customer information. Salesforce helps us to identify whom and when to call, which helps the sales process and makes sure we don't miss revenue opportunities.".

Salesforce has also boosted productivity in the marketing spend. "A great facility of Salesforce is that it tracks the effectiveness of marketing and sales campaigns," explains Grillet. "This helps us to target our marketing spend more effectively.".

Maporama Intl. required an affordable and no-hassle solution implemented quickly to help boost revenues and customer service. "Salesforce has helped us achieve those goals at a low cost," says Grillet.


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