Genesys Conferencing Consolidates 12 Databases in 10 Countries for 360-Degree Customer View

Genesys Conferencing enables customers to communicate and collaborate with a global audience. Their Salesforce CRM system does the same for the organization. Challenged with a fragmented view of its customers, Genesys deployed Salesforce SFA, Salesforce Service & Support, and the Force.com platform to 570 professionals worldwide to create a single, comprehensive view of more than 18,000 customers worldwide. By unifying sales, marketing, and service information, Genesys effectively targets and acquires prospects—delivering a fast, rewarding service to existing customers.

Genesys Conferencing is a leading provider of integrated Web, audio, and video conferencing services. The company's flagship product, Genesys Meeting Center, provides a single-platform, multimedia conferencing solution that is easy to use and available on demand. With offices in 24 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, the company offers an unmatched global presence and strong local support.

Aside from being a world expert on conferencing solutions, Genesys had also been an unintentional expert on the problems associated with running separate and fragmented on-premise customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Until recently, the company used an assortment of CRM, service management, and communications applications. These solutions were deployed in North America, ten European countries, and six Asia-Pacific countries to manage relationships with hundreds of thousands of conferencing customers. There was no integration between the sales and customer service systems; each country required its own technology infrastructure to support the on-premise solutions; and global visibility into the business was haphazard.

"It was difficult to synchronize sales, marketing, and service information at a country level—l et alone on a global scale," explains Marcus Johansson, MIS project leader, CRM, Genesys Conferencing. "The solutions operated independently of one another; they were expensive to operate; and they lacked the functionality Genesys needed to operate a world-class conferencing business."

Rich, Pre-Packaged Functionality

Johansson's team was introduced to salesforce.com three years ago, and they were immediately impressed by what they saw. "The rich, pre-packaged functionality provided Genesys with global visibility into every account—including the status on every deal, a real-time view of every customer support issue, and an instant snapshot of our marketing campaigns," he says. "The on-demand CRM system is proven among many thousands of customers in the real world, and it's easy to use. Moreover, Salesforce enabled Genesys to eliminate the expensive local servers used for its on-premise system."

Genesys deployed Salesforce SFA, Salesforce Service & Support, and the Force.com platform to 570 sales, marketing, support, and finance professionals worldwide. These integrated, customizable enterprise applications provide the company with a single, comprehensive view of more than 18,000 conferencing accounts. From a sales management perspective, 250 account managers have a unified understanding of each prospect, including lead, opportunity, account, territory, and contract management. They also have instant access to sales activities, collateral, and documents.

"Our account teams now share sales opportunities worldwide," says Johansson. "If we identify a conferencing opportunity from a major financial services prospect in Hong Kong, for instance, our account teams in London can share this information and simultaneously examine local opportunities there. By facilitating global collaboration, we can work together to close more deals, more quickly."

The sales teams and managers can also knowledge management—to resolve the inquiry quickly and to a satisfying standard. Complex cases that are unresolved within predefined time periods are automatically escalated. Even the global infrastructure support team uses Salesforce Service & Support in a help desk environment to track and resolve staff technology inquiries.

Marketing uses Salesforce to segment targeted groups of customers based on geography, product interest, and more. The telesales teams then contact prospects with relevant, compelling sales messages. Qualified leads are routed seamlessly to the right sales teams for follow-up.

The integrated sales, marketing, and service system was quick and easy to deploy. "There's no software to integrate, and we did the data mapping, data migration, and sales training in only 10 days," says Johansson.

Whereas customization of the old system was approached with caution, Genesys actively encourages changes to Salesforce. "Force.com customizations take just a few mouse clicks," says Johansson. "We recently needed to add a custom object for salespeople to register a change of account ownership. We simply created the object and linked it to an account. Now it automatically updates both Salesforce and our homegrown, back-office system. I'm not a technical expert, and even I could do it."

Genesys Conferencing