MDS Pharma Services Unifies Seven Lines of Business on Salesforce, Revolutionizes Its Approach to Selling

“Salesforce has revolutionized the way we look at selling. We went from being a fragmented string of sales groups to a cohesive force with information at our fingertips.”


Challenge
  • MDS Pharma Services is a global contract research organization that provides high-quality, on-time services to meet the drug discovery and development needs of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. It needed an on-demand CRM application to unify sales operations and deliver increased visibility into performance and operational metrics.
  • The MDS business unit’s seven lines of business lacked a common sales process, data, or culture. 
  • MDS Pharma Services wanted a customizable software-as-a-service system that would easily integrate with its Oracle E-Business Suite of applications.

Solution
  • MDS Pharma Services chose Salesforce over Seibel OnDemand to increase its pipeline visibility, improve sales forecasting, and capitalize on its ease of use.
  • In 6 months, MDS Pharma Services rolled out Salesforce Enterprise Edition for 238 users with Microsoft Outlook integration across the U.S., Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe. 
  • With help from Boomi, MDS Pharma Services integrated Salesforce with Oracle to sync financial information to each of its seven lines of business.
  • To enforce user adoption, upper management require staff to create reports in Salesforce.
  • With Cognos Now! from the AppExchange marketplace, MDS Pharma Services accesses and analyzes financial data from its Oracle E-Business Suite of applications.
  • Dashboards are utilized to analyze sales opportunities, accounts, leads, and campaigns; custom alerts notify users when a goal has been reached.
  • A custom Projects tab allows users to check the status of ongoing scientific studies instantly rather than waiting days for an email response.
  • MDS Pharma Services is in the process of implementing Salesforce Marketing’s Web-to-lead capabilities.

Results
  • Salesforce has revolutionized the way MDS Pharma Services approaches selling.
  • With all seven sales groups on Salesforce, MDS Pharma Services has hired a SVP to direct global business development efforts.
  • The business held its first off-site global sales and training meeting to teach reps strategic account selling, cross-selling, and pre-call planning—something that would have been impossible without Salesforce.
  • Tracking user compliance and operational metrics through Salesforce gives management a better understanding of its overall performance.
  • Integration with Oracle Projects avoids the productivity loss that could result from manually checking the status of scientific studies.
 
View All Snapshots