Custom apps take flight at Egencia

Challenge

• Fifth largest travel management agency in the world wanted to build applications that matched business processes
• Tracked customers’ hotel and hospitality agreements manually using spreadsheets
• Slow VPN (virtual private network) made it difficult to access third-party applications
• Wanted to account for customers who served as sales references
• Provide single sign-on to business applications
• Give Sales and Account Managers mobile access to vital customer data

Solution

• Hired a Salesforce.com Certified Administrator to automate business processes using salesforce.com
• Deployed Salesforce CRM’s content library to all 192 users
• Built applications on Force.com including:
  RFP Tracker: To create and track standardized RFPs
  Hotel Data: To track the agreements customers have with hotels; when information needs updating, workflows trigger automated emails to hotels that haven’t responded
  MDR Profile: For the company’s market development group to submit and pass leads to sales
  Customer Reference tool: To profile reference customers and track the reference activities they’ve participated in.
• Account Managers submit and vote on Egencia customer’s feature requests using an internal ideas community
• Sales and Account Managers access salesforce.com on mobile devices with the Sales Cloud’s mobile lite feature
• Downloaded and installed AppExchange applications including Exact Target for email marketing, MarketSync for fulfillment, OneSource for prospecting, and Demand Tools for data cleansing.
• Future plans include a custom customer portal featuring a Service Cloud ideas community and a content management library
• Force.com Sites will eventually power a Webinar and event registration Web site

Results

• Automation and workflows save inside sales people save up to 20 hours a month
• Applications built and deployed five times faster in hours instead of months, at a fraction of the cost
• Employees can easily access cloud-based applications without a VPN
• Elimination of spreadsheets boosts productivity and visibility