Pearson Packaging Systems Builds Custom Applications on Force.com, Dramatically Improves Quoting

Challenge

• Pearson Packaging Systems, a leader in the secondary packaging machinery industry, has complex sales cycles that require accurate quotes for custom-manufactured equipment.
• The company wanted to automate its manually intensive quote process.
• Pearson also needed to integrate a legacy ERP application with its Salesforce CRM system.
• In addition, the company wanted to provide access to customer equipment detail for post-sales service.
• The elimination of expensive maintenance costs related to disparate legacy systems was key.

Solution

• The company chose Force.com over .NET and J2EE for rapid development, innovation, and the potential of cloud computing.
• Pearson decided to use the Force.com platform to build a custom application to automate its post sales service process. The application, which took 90 days to build, gives service reps access to custom asset data via a custom link in Salesforce CRM.
• Pearson integrated configured products including pricing, component, and real-time cost data with Salesforce CRM.
• Following the acquisition of a company in December 2008, Pearson easily integrated data from multiple sources with Salesforce CRM. Pearson is also using Salesforce CRM to document the acquired company's install base of machines for follow-up sales opportunities, and service and parts opportunities.

Results

• Sales representatives can create quotes for prospects and customers directly within Salesforce CRM in less than 5 minutes, down from over 1 hour with its previous Microsoft Word-based solution.
• Force.com enabled Pearson to reduce sales training time while increasing productivity.
• The new post-sales service program successfully enables service reps with key customer asset data.
• With Force.com, forecast accuracy has improved by 50 percent.
• Lead follow-up rates have doubled. In addition, the company has seen significant improvement in customer response time.