Polycom Improves Sales Forecast Accuracy to Within 2% and Reduces Approval Costs 75% with Salesforce and the AppExchange

"Since deploying Salesforce, we've been within 2% of our sales forecasts, giving us companywide visibility that's fine-tuned with pinpoint accuracy. Salesforce's instant and constant visibility into sales has made us extremely agile and efficient."


Challenge
  • Polycom, a global telecommunications and collaboration company, wanted to change its go-to-market model by establishing a multipronged sales strategy to boost sales by increasing customer face time, improving sales forecasting, and reducing administrative time
  • The company needed to provide sales and business units with instant access to real-time information on forecasting and opportunities
  • Polycom needed to maximize the productivity of its salespeople, helping them spend less time on administrative tasks and more time in front of customers
  • The growing company wanted to evolve beyond its rudimentary proprietary system to a global, on-demand platform that could potentially synchronize sales with marketing, accounting, channels, supply chain management, and manufacturing
  • Any management solution it chose had to enable fast, self-sufficient implementation with cost-effective benefits that would justify the investment
  • Timely responses are critical during the sales/customer negotiating process, so speed of special-pricing approvals was critical

Solution
  • Polycom deployed Salesforce because of its quick implementation abilities, affordability, ease of management, and high-powered analytics
  • With help from salesforce.com Professional Services, Polycom implemented Salesforce in eight weeks in North America, which represents 50% of the company's worldwide revenue

Results
  • Instantaneous access to information on a worldwide, companywide basis is one of the factors that contributed to increasing sales headcount productivity almost 100% and the ability to grow sales more than 70% over the past three years
  • Salesforce provides Polycom with real-time visibility into the sales pipeline, enabling the company to improve sales productivity, operational efficiency, and cost containment
  • Accuracy of sales forecasting improved to within 2% of projected forecasts
  • AppExchange-built nonstandard discount approval system reduced approval costs by 75% over the previous approval system
 
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