Barco International Relies on the Salesforce.com Cloud Computing Model to Maximize Customer Satisfaction

Challenge

• A global technology company, Barco International designs and develops visualization solutions for a variety of selected professional markets, including medical imaging, media & entertainment, and transport
• Barco was struggling to deliver responsive, reliable, and consistent customer support in The Netherlands and elsewhere, owing to a reliance on disparate, fragmented systems
• Specific problems included the fact that complaint handling was not categorized, the result being that poor customer support was one of the customers’ most common complaints
• Another problem was the lack of integration with the back-office ERP system, which led to double entries
• The Barco team needed to adhere to rigorous service agreements for customer support―despite the fact web and email-based enquiry functionality was very limited in its functionality

Solution

• Following a highly successful Salesforce CRM SFA deployment to 75 professionals within its medical sales division, Barco implemented Salesforce CRM Service & Support worldwide to 270 staff to support globally unified service request management
• Barco chose salesforce.com following a competitive evaluation which included Siebel/Oracle and Microsoft.  Salesforce CRM was selected based on functionality, user-friendliness, and straightforward integration with the back-office ERP platform
• The Salesforce Customer Portal is helping Barco turn the 'web' into the 'self-service web'―allowing the technology company to exploit Web 2.0 as the ideal channel to provide superior self-service 
• Customers can manage their own cases via the Salesforce Customer Portal: they can log, view, edit, and close cases entirely online. They can also search through the Barco knowledge base and previously resolved cases, for comprehensive customer self-service

Results

• According to Barco, the implementation time for Salesforce CRM was ‘many times faster’ than it was for traditional on-premise CRM systems
• Salesforce CRM SFA provides significantly improved lead management, opportunity tracking, and reporting
• Using the Salesforce Customer Portal, the Barco team can quickly change the look and feel of the self-service portal with an easy-to-use style editor
• With Salesforce Customer Portal, Barco can deliver relevant customer information based on data from any source, share any application built on salesforce.com’s on-demand platform, and get other departments—including sales and operations— to engage with customers online
• Barco now has extensive reporting tools at its disposal that provide a comprehensive overview of service quality
• Salesforce CRM supports automated upgrades every quarter―helping to ensure business continuity