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• SurfControl wanted to increase sales effectiveness with a powerful CRM solution that would be well adopted by its user base. The company’s pre-existing GoldMine instances had different data structures and practices, and could not communicate with one another. Key requirements included rapid global deployment and minimal IT support.

• SurfControl selected salesforce.com’s Unlimited Edition over competitors for its flexibility, user-friendliness, reliability, and ease-of-deployment. Integration of Salesforce with marketing campaigns, order entry, accounts receivable and entitlement systems provides a seamless experience for end users. The company also extended its use of Salesforce with solutions available on the AppExchange marketplace.

• Strong user adoption and acceptance of Salesforce has resulted in an increase in the productivity of sales staff and the quality of telemarketing and other outbound marketing campaigns. Forecasts and reports are now generated in real time, saving users time and making them more effective.

SurfControl knows that success as a top-notch on-demand security company isn’t just about getting networks, applications, and other technical resources to mesh. It’s also about managing customer relationships right-whether they’re with potential customers looking for the right solution or existing customers who need technical assistance.

So it should come as no surprise that SurfControl also began tearing out disparate systems and implementing Salesforce for customer relationship management and technical support. The move has not only enabled the company to increase sales with 10 percent fewer sales people, but also dramatically improved CRM adoption. As SurfControl extends Salesforce through the entire company, Max Rayner, CIO and executive vice president of products & services, said he expects support staff and order processing to see increased efficiencies as well.

Founded in 1997, SurfControl’s policy management and filter software protect more than 14.5 million users in over 23,000 companies worldwide. The company, which generated almost $102 million in sales in 2006, has grown quickly over the last ten years through acquisitions in Asia Pacific, North and South America, and Europe.

SurfControl’s rapid growth, however, left it reliant on five separate client-server instances of FrontRange Solution’s GoldMine CRM. These disparate systems were difficult for end users to navigate, and meant the company lacked a complete view of its sales pipeline.

"Our GoldMine instances were tragically different, and with different data structures and practices," Rayner said. "We called GoldMine our ‘Sales Prevention System.’ Either people didn’t use it or they used it incorrectly."

Ambitious growth plans and a growing global customer base meant something had to change. Rayner knew he needed to consolidate his CRM on one platform, and to implement a solution that would be well-adopted by a skeptical user base. SurfControl also had key requirements: Offices in remote locations meant the company needed a CRM system that would work in limited bandwidth situations. A solution that could be rapidly implemented worldwide with minimal IT support was essential. Extensive, elegant API capabilities that would allow SurfControl to integrate its order entry and other systems were a necessity.

Salesforce Wins Out Over Client/Server Solutions

Initially, PeopleSoft and Oracle CRM solutions were considered but executive concerns about the future of the PeopleSoft brand caused SurfControl to look elsewhere. With limited IT support, Siebel was also out-the company simply lacked the resources to handle such a complex deployment.

"We had limited staff in IT to deploy something as complex as Siebel, or to deploy something incomplete and then have to build the Taj Mahal around it to compensate for deficiencies," Rayner said.

Rayner and his team decided a hosted, software-free CRM replacement best fit their business needs and chose Salesforce because it provided the accessibility, flexibility, and ease of use their old system-and competing products-lacked. Salesforce also offered easy deployment, reliability, and a large number of integration partners and solutions on the AppExchange marketplace, Rayner said.

With integration assistance from salesforce.com partner BlueWolf Group in New York, SurfControl deployed salesforce.com’s Enterprise Edition to users and executives worldwide in less than 10 months. Shortly after implementing Salesforce, the company upgraded to Unlimited Edition to get access to the Force.com Sandbox, a separate on-demand application environment for development, testing, and training.

Unlimited Edition Provides Total Functionality

The premier support and administration included with Unlimited Edition has also proved useful, allowing SurfControl to take full advantage of its Salesforce investment while minimizing the impact on internal IT resources. The additional expertise came in especially handy when SurfControl began integrating its systems with Salesforce. For example, marketing campaigns are now integrated with Salesforce allowing a potential customer who responds to an email campaign and visits the SurfControl Web site to be automatically placed into a lead queue in Salesforce. The back office system that authorizes new selling partners is also integrated with Salesforce, automating the back office authorization management and lead distribution processes. And, SurfControl’s Softrax order entry/accounts receivable system is integrated with Salesforce, ensuring valuable installed base and entitlements information is available to employees.

SurfControl also created business process management extensions to other systems with the help of salesforce.com partner OutSystems Inc. in Redwood Shores, CA. In addition to internal systems, Salesforce is integrated with Microsoft Outlook so that employees can work on- and off-line.

SurfControl has also extended its use of Salesforce by taking advantage of solutions available on the AppExchange marketplace. The company installed and deployed applications such as ClickTools, a survey application that captures valuable prospect data. Crystalreports.com from Business Objects, on the other hand, enables SurfControl to work with Crystal Reports directly inside Salesforce.

Strong Adoption Fuels Sales

Adoption has been strong, with users queuing up to use Salesforce. In fact, sales people are so eager to adopt Salesforce that Rayner has had to implement a rule that a logon can be issued only after a user has gone through proper training and is able to get the fullest benefit from Salesforce.

"The effectiveness of a system depends not only on quality but on people’s acceptance of it," Rayner said. "Salesforce has become the lingua franca of sales people everywhere."

Today more than half of the company’s employees and contractors rely on Salesforce, and as a result SurfControl’s sales continue to increase despite having 10 percent fewer sales people, Rayner said. Much of this has to do with Salesforce’s ease-of-use: With the sales team no longer spending 40 percent of its time struggling to use GoldMine, sales people are working more effectively and efficiently. Salesforce has also proven to be a competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting and hiring valuable sales people.

"People would snicker when we said we had GoldMine," Rayner said. "Our HR problem of how to hire people was solved by Salesforce because recruits were asking for it. The best sales people are demanding Salesforce and if you tell them you have something else, they don’t have time for you."

Rayner and his team are now evaluating additional ways they can use CRM technology to automate SurfControl’s rapidly growing business. The company, which uses Salesforce to unify the technical support team’s business processes for responding to external customers, is evaluating an integration of Salesforce with IP phones and automatic call distribution technology. The system will automatically recognize a customer’s number when the call center receives the call, route the call to the right queue, and automatically display the customer’s account information in Salesforce when the call is answered by a technical support person. By integrating, Rayner said he hopes to simplify call handling and improve responsiveness to customer requests while tracking each customer. 

While the focus is currently on technical support, there are also plans in place to extend the use of Salesforce to the entire company. Already, customizations for legal, human resources, and investor relations have been developed. "The goal is to arm every employee with a Salesforce account and truly become a CRM company," Rayner said.