Raven Industries Meets Service and Support, Telephony Integration, and Diverse CRM Needs of Four Businesses with One Salesforce Solution

Challenge

• Raven Industries, a leading industrial manufacturer with four distinct operating units, wanted to improve its overall customer relationship management capabilities
• Prompted by the needs of one business unit for a service and support application that provided remote access and seasonal scalability, Raven decided to replace its disparate CRM pieces with a common on-demand solution that met the unique needs of each of its businesses across service and support, sales, and marketing operations
• Consolidating its disconnected contact management systems, automating manual customer service operations, and providing seamless access to information in Raven's IBM AS/400 database were high on the priority list for the new solution
• Integration with the company's Avaya phone system and low-cost system administration also were key

Solution

• After an extensive evaluation that included Siebel CRM OnDemand and SalesLogix, Raven selected Salesforce SFA and Salesforce Service & Support
• The company selected Salesforce for its deeper functionality, on-demand architecture, and broad applicability to Raven's businesses, each of which has its own product line
• The AppExchange API powers bidirectional integrations with IBM AS/400-based quoting and back-office applications, creating a seamless opportunity-to-quote-to-order process through Salesforce
• Using the Force.com Telephony API, Raven linked Salesforce to its Avaya phone system to provide "screen pops" for incoming calls and automated outbound dialing from within Salesforce
• Up next, the company will use Salesforce to provide executives with real-time dashboards and customers with self-service support access

Results

• The company now has one central database where employees share knowledge about customers, products, and solutions to common issues
• Raven can now link customers to distributors, providing deeper insights into how its products are sold and supported through the channel
• With a rich repository of customer information, Raven can perform trend analysis and take the guesswork out of tracking department performance over time
• The company has dramatically reduced IT support costs, because the Salesforce hosted delivery model requires no hardware and nontechnical administrators rather than programmers can perform maintenance and customization