Wilhelmsen Ships Service Sails into Global Waters with Salesforce

Salesforce is making waves at Wilhelmsen Ships Service.  The Norwegian company has cast off its legacy, fragmented assortment of sales processes and replaced them with one unified, 360 degree customer view, based on Salesforce.  Providing 500 sales professionals in all four corners of the world with accurate, real-time customer information, Salesforce is playing a crucial role in supporting Wilhelmsen Ships Service’s global growth strategy, while adapting swiftly to the organization’s changing needs.

Wilhelmsen Ships Service is the world's leading maritime services network, with the capability to service 2,200 ports in 115 countries.  Headquartered in Oslo, Norway the company's main focus is to deliver improved vessel operating efficiency to the merchant fleet.  A comprehensive range of standardized services is offered, backed by a global service and logistics organization of 4,300 employees working out of 319 offices in 71 countries.

Talking to Frederic Fontarosa, Vice President, International Sales and Market Segments for Wilhelmsen Ships Service, it is apparent that when it came to sales management systems, the company had everything and nothing prior to Salesforce. "We were using an assortment of locally-based systems to manage relationships with our four key target customer groups and strategic accounts: owners and operators, ship managers, charterers, and logistics operators," he says. "We needed a customer information management system tailor made to our needs that could help us share information, ideas, and best practices."

The acquisition of Unitor two years ago provided the catalyst to create one, unified global sales management system.  Fontarosa continues, "When the two organizations merged, we had two sets of customer knowledge, information, and intelligence.  What we knew about our customers was scattered around the globe in isolated pockets of information.  By merging sales information in one place, Wilhelmsen Ships Service would be positioned to increase revenues, improve cash flow, enhance the flow of communication, and provide better data quality."

Ease-of-use, Breadth of Functionality

Having defined the specification for the customer relationship management (CRM) solution, a shortlist of providers was quickly compiled. Salesforce.com was the preferred choice, based on its ease-of-use, breadth of functionality, and the ease with which it could be adapted to meet the unique needs of the ships service provider.  "Salesforce.com pretty much created the on-demand CRM market, and they bring to Wilhelmsen Ships Service a world-class solution, great experience, and a highly professional team putting it all together," says Fontarosa.

Wilhelmsen Ships Service has deployed Salesforce SFA to more than 500 sales professionals in all four corners of the world, together with supporting users in high growth regions, such as Kuwait and Shanghai.  From the sales representatives perspective, Salesforce provides them fast access to data—whether it’s online, offline, or via mobile devices—and links to the company’s Microsoft Office and Outlook environments.  Among a host of features, they are using a customized activity environment to track and collaborate on tasks and sales activities, schedule joint meetings, develop and share sales reports, and put teams together to work on deals.

It is equally popular among Fontarosa's team of sales managers.  They have clear visibility into their sales funnels and pipelines—at a global, regional, country or customer level.  And accurate and timely revenue forecasting is helping to increase the deal pipeline and provide insight into market trends and demand for ships services.  For example, once an account is opened in Salesforce for a new customer, all contact information, visit reports, and opportunities are stored in one place for sharing among key account participants.  The team has access in a few clicks to comprehensive reporting surrounding the account, together with a customized dashboard view to help analyze the sales pipelines and other metrics.

Salesforce Contributes to Global Growth

Live for 18 months, this single collaborative system is benefiting the entire sales process.  Fontarosa explains, "It's too early to talk in terms of return on investment; but what is apparent is that Wilhelmsen Ships Service has grown considerably in the last few years—and Salesforce has played an important role in that success.  The flexibility of the system, its ability to effectively support our sales activity plans, and the general ability to know at the touch of a button the state of the business at a global level, have all contributed to that success.  In particular, we now know the sales situation in important—but less accessible—s ales territories like India and that helps us to structure the business and more effectively build on our success."

Customers can see the difference too.  Salesforce provides the Wilhelmsen Ships Service team with a 360-degree view of each customer, together with online contact management, thereby helping to deliver a profound degree of insight into each account and contact.  The ability to track customer history in one place, together with access to customer organization charts and documents, enhance the consistency and quality of service each customer receives.  "The bottom line is that Salesforce allows Wilhelmsen Ships Service to act globally.  With their software as a service model, we’re developing global sales strategies in support of our global customer base," says Fontarosa.

Wihelmsen Ships Service