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• Reliance on country-specific, un-coordinated sales systems
• No common, central system for viewing sales opportunities, proposals and other customer information
• Minimal management insight into sales performance

• Deployed Salesforce SFA and Salesforce AppExchange Builder to 700 sales teams in 22 countries and seven languages to create a single, comprehensive view of the customer across multiple channels

• Improved cross-selling capability
• Increased the company’s focus on customer management
• Enhanced sales collaboration on international sales opportunities
• Streamlined call, pipeline, and forecast management
• Helped the company adhere closely to the Six Sigma sales methodology for continuous sales process improvement
• Quick and simple to adapt the system to unique and diverse needs
• No up-front technology investment and drawn-out deployment; minimal impact on IT resources
• Increased the company’s focus on customer management
• Enhanced sales collaboration on international sales opportunities
• Streamlined call, pipeline, and forecast management
• Helped the company adhere closely to the Six Sigma sales methodology for continuous sales process improvement
• Quick and simple to adapt the system to unique and diverse needs
• No up-front technology investment and drawn-out deployment; minimal impact on IT resources

Organic Growth in Iberia

Until recently, Alava Group was relying on home-grown, fragmented customer databases to manage customer relationships, but these systems were struggling to keep pace with the organic growth of the business. Each Alava Group office had its own, unique view of customers. This meant the company struggled to keep control of the sales teams operating in each territory and ensure they were operating a common strategy. Moreover, the sales forecasting process took almost a day each month for the administrator to compile; and when a sales person wanted to review a quote prepared by one of the other offices, they had to contact the originating sales person and ask for a copy.

Four years ago-conscious of the need to create a single, common view of each and every customer- Preditec embarked on a program to implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM). “Even back then, it was apparent that salesforce.com was a visionary company in the CRM market,” explains Marcel Garcia, Deputy Managing Director, Alava Ingenieros. “The on-demand model would enable Preditec to quickly deploy a comprehensive, flexible, and efficient CRM system—which could be shared throughout the organization. We looked at Microsoft Dynamics NAV, because it has some in-built CRM capability, but the functionality, ease of use, and overwhelming success of salesforce.com in the CRM market convinced us that it was the right choice for Preditec. Since then, we ve never looked back.”

Following a free trial and a successful pilot deployment, Alava Group deployed salesforce.com's sales force automation (SFA) application to 73 sales, marketing, and customer support staff. It took only two months for all 73 staff to be trained and productive on the system. The solution provides them with a single, unified view of each and every customer. Comprehensive, detailed information regarding leads, opportunities, accounts, sales territories, and contracts is available in one shared, browser-based system. Similarly, the sales team has one-button access to product information, activities, workflow, and sales forecasts. In due course, Preditec added salesforce Service & Support, allowing the company to manage sales orders, respond quickly and effectively to support enquiries, and assist in technical trouble-shooting.

Finding New Ways to Do Business

Garcia is satisfied by what he sees. “Salesforce has fundamentally changed the way we do business,” he says. “The single customer view is helping us to find new ways to do business. For example, we can now collaborate in near real-time on sales opportunities that straddle different regions and even countries. Throughout the sales process, we have an instant, detailed, and analytic view of the progress of the sales opportunity—from identification through to closure.”

Last year Alava Group upgraded Salesforce to the Enterprise Edition, and saw for itself the ease with which the system can be customized. “We have six companies in one at Alava Group, which meant the system needed to be adapted to suit the individual needs of each business unit. It only took a few hours to customize the system using Force.com Builder and create different interfaces, fields, and objects. Flexibility is the watchword of Salesforce—it’s easier to change than a car tire!”

Like every strong, process-driven engineering organization, Preditec has kept a watchful eye on measuring the success of Salesforce. Overall, the Alava subsidiary has experienced a 25 percent increase in sales revenues in 12 months using Salesforce. This is primarily due to more proactive sales calls on customers and the real-time, dashboard view of sales processes. “We now have weekly sales calls where all the sales indicators are reviewed and analyzed. Everyone shares the same view of the data, which helps improve and accelerate the decision-making process. It’s far easier now to design action plans, and for the first time sales compensation plans are related directly to historical and current sales activities,” says Garcia.

With sales rising, Preditec recently concentrated on improving its marketing campaign effectiveness. Two micro sites have been created offering a gift to prospects who record their contact details and interests on the site. Using the Web to Leads functionality, this information is now automatically populated directly into Salesforce. New workflow has also been introduced which ensures that whenever a sales lead is closed, the customer automatically receives an email thanking him or her for the business. “If a member of staff sends out an invalid email, they and their manager now automatically receive an email notification of the error. Since this was launched, the error rate for emails has dropped by 50 percent.

But it’s a considerable challenge to keep track of more than 10,000 prospects on its system. For this reason, when an important new deal is being progressed in Salesforce, managers receive an automated email to notify them of any change in the deal status. Real-time triggers ensure they keep abreast of every opportunity—and close more business. Garcia concludes, “Salesforce is so much more than just another system here. It’s the lifeblood of our business.”