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

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