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• Local markets were using a large number of different, fragmented sales and CRM solutions
• No generally applicable, central system providing an overview of sales opportunities, quotations, and customer information
• No analysis and forecasting capability at global and regional level

• Software AG implemented Salesforce Enterprise Edition for 600 sales staff with the aim of creating a single, comprehensive overview of customers.

• A homogeneous system as the "source of truth"
• Reliable forecasting option
• The system can be tailored to the requirements of the individual sales regions in just a few days
• Rapid implementation
• No up-front investments in technology required

Software AG’s specialization is in its name. For more than 37 years, the company has offered an extensive portfolio of products and solutions for IT infrastructures and service-oriented architectures (SOAs). The technology developed by the Darmstadt-based firm enables over 3,000 customers worldwide to modernize legacy systems and obtain a uniform overview of strategic business information in real time. With global operations and 2,700 employees in 60 countries, Software AG is one of the largest and most important IT companies worldwide.

When it comes to software for managing business relationships, however, Software AG is happy to rely on specialists in this area, in spite of its own expertise. Because the company specializes in programming systems, creating an in-house solution would be a piece of cake, yet Software AG opted for a CRM system developed by salesforce.com. "Sales processes are essentially standardized procedures. There was therefore no need to reinvent the wheel," says Alexander Gassmann, project manager for the new customer relationship management system.

The main problem and reason for the re-evaluation was the lack of uniformity of the systems used by Software AG’s different sites around the world. Shortly after a company-wide solution was initially rolled out across the globe in 1999, it became clear that the system was unable to meet the requirements of the individual national companies of Software AG. In Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Asia-Pacific alone, it was used to a considerable extent. In 2003, the United States and Canada decided to switch to a different on-demand solution, SalesNet, while most of the other countries opted for Excel, ACT!, and other isolated applications.

The status quo was not effective, so it was time to find a uniform standard, the aim of which was to provide homogeneous CRM for all branches around the world. Forecasting and reporting were two of the main areas that the company’s decision-makers wished to see simplified with a solution implemented worldwide. One important goal was to correctly map Software AG’s sales methodology to a single, homogeneous system and to make current sales status information accessible to all sales employees in real time. At first glance, the responsible employee must be able to identify rapidly where many promising opportunities lie or are at risk, so as to take corresponding countermeasures and plan the customer acquisition in the best manner possible.

Rapidly Deployed and Easy to Integrate

What was needed was a solution for Central Europe and Asia that would be rapidly deployed and easy to integrate. Erik Mittmeyer, a software engineering specialist in Software AG’s Corporate Business Excellence Center, describes why his company decided on salesforce.com: "Firstly, salesforce.com is the world’s leading supplier. Secondly, choosing this solution gives us the security of knowing that we always have a firm grip on our own data. Then, of course, there were the advantages of an on-demand solution-rapid, easy implementation and update capability, worldwide access, no maintenance costs, and customization." The company started with two independent Salesforce "islands" in Spain, Latin America, Portugal, Benelux, and France on the one hand and Germany, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the Far East on the other.

The actual implementation was wrapped up in a matter of weeks. Specialists at Software AG merely had some difficulties in extracting the data that had been stored in the on-demand system used in the past. Following a brief adjustment phase, however, all data was updated as required. 

High User Acceptance Through a Uniform Overview of Customers

From the outset, user acceptance was very high. Even inexperienced users find Salesforce easy to understand, and sales representatives have little difficulty in populating the system with their data. Thanks to Force.com Mobile, using the solution outside the office is no problem either. Today, some 550 employees around the world work with Salesforce, as many as 150 of these in Germany. Software AG’s international users deploy the solution in their local languages. Salesforce.com now offers its solution in fourteen languages.

"Acceptance among users is higher than average because all sales and marketing staff have a uniform overview of our customers at all times. Moreover, our managers now have much greater opportunities for more efficient management, and the sales pipeline is more transparent," says Erik Mittmeyer, summarizing the benefits of the new system.

The central forecasting and reporting enables Software AG to respond much faster to changes than before, and the interaction with international marketing also generates valuable advantages. The IT specialists are currently working on merging the two Salesforce islands to create a common system. The company is also actively following developments related to the Force.com platform and the AppExchange.

Today, the AppExchange provides hundreds of different on-demand applications. In addition to applications for campaign management, online marketing, or mass mailing, the AppExchange now includes numerous solutions that map the entire range of business processes. "By introducing Salesforce, we have implemented a high-performance platform that is certain to generate advantages for us also outside the CRM area in the medium term," Mittmeyer says.