Salesforce and the Force.com Platform Accelerate Freeman's Expansion into New Sales Market

Challenge

• Freeman, a leader in producing expositions, corporate events, conventions, and exhibit programs, needed a sales force automation solution for its new corporate sales division
• An existing legacy system failed to meet the needs of this rapidly growing division
• As a large enterprise, it was vital that the new solution scale to the entire company as other divisions migrated to the new solution
• Companywide user adoption was crucial to implementation success

Solution

• The company was so impressed by the way salesforce.com representatives aligned their presentation to the exact requirements outlined in Freeman's RFP—customizability, fast deployment, real-time reporting—that it ultimately selected Salesforce SFA over other solutions
• Freeman employed the help of salesforce.com's implementation partner MW Advisors to initially deploy to 120 users in eight weeks with, with Microsoft Outlook integration
• The Force.com platform powers integrations to Lawson, legacy systems, homegrown systems, and the corporate Web site
• From the AppExchange directory, Freeman downloaded and installed two applications: a project management tool that provides automated alerts for the expo sales team, and a de-duplication solution that keeps the enterprise's data clean
• Salesforce Marketing delivers automated integration from lead to campaign via the company's Web site and then routes leads to appropriate sales divisions
• Real-time analytics and forecasting capabilities with customized dashboards present information and data results the way top executives prefer to see it

Results

• The success of the initial deployment, due to ease of use and ongoing support, led to enterprisewide deployment to 800 sales reps
• Accelerated productivity, enabled by Salesforce, helps Freeman rapidly expand into new corporate market
• Real-time dashboards keep management's fingers on the company's sales pulse
• The Web-based, cost-free infrastructure and the ease with which sales staff can customize their own systems independently slashed company IT costs