Stratus Uses the Force.com API to Integrate Salesforce and Oracle Financials On Time and Under Budget

"The fact that the Force.com API was so clean and intuitive made the Oracle—Salesforce integration painless. As a result, we now have much greater visibility into our sales process. We know where we're getting leads, how quickly we're closing deals, and how efficiently we're executing orders. We know if we're spending money wisely, such as tying sales to marketing campaigns and verifying supply-chain efficiency."


Challenge
  • Stratus Technologies, a manufacturer of continuously available enterprise servers and provider of system integration and consulting services for high-intensity customers, needed to integrate disparate sales and operations databases globally
  • Lack of integrated systems for aligning key business functions in support of sales resulted in inaccurate sales forecasting and made it difficult to justify marketing and other business expenses against actual sales
  • Costly, unwieldy, and complex CRM investments (first on-premise Siebel and then on-premise homegrown) weren't working

Solution
  • After considering Siebel (again), NetSuite, and SalesNet, Stratus Technologies deployed Salesforce—at a third of the cost of the previous Siebel investment
  • The company deployed Salesforce globally to 170 users, leveraging the Force.com API to integrate the sales organization with back-office Oracle Financials systems
  • The Salesforce-and-Oracle-based solution offers an integrated, on-demand dashboard that synchronizes sales information with marketing campaigns, supply chain, manufacturing, contracts, and accounting

Results
  • Bidirectional integration between Salesforce and Oracle took only seven weeks to build using the Force.com API
  • User adoption occurred almost instantly—as much as 90 percent of the sales teams access Salesforce at least once a week
  • Lead conversion has accelerated from weeks and months to as little as one day
  • Sales cycles have shortened because of faster lead conversion and efficient, integrated business systems
  • The compelling value of the Force.com API—its ease of use, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness—is prompting Stratus Technologies to plan future integration with evolving business functions, without the prospect of incurring hefty consulting fees typically associated with traditional CRM products
 
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