Salesforce.com Successforce Consulting and Education Help KONE Reduce Implementation Time and Speed ROI

Every day, KONE elevators and escalators provide safe and easy access to homes and businesses for millions of people around the world. As the world's leading elevator and escalator company, KONE has annual net revenues of €3.2 billion (2005) and 27,000 employees. Based in Finland, KONE guarantees local service for builders, developers, building owners, designers, and architects in 800 locations in 50 countries.

Challenges in Customer Service, Sales Team Effectiveness, and System Integration

KONE has invested significant resources in back-office efficiency by implementing an SAP solution. Now, with the mission to achieve global market leadership in the elevator and escalator business, KONE is focusing on two other key drivers: enhancing customer service and growing its business faster than the market average. These goals require a system that gives sales teams fast, consistent insight to critical sales-related information and the tools to act on that information.

According to Toby Fox, assistant vice president for project and application delivery at KONE, achieving those goals are key to KONE's success: "With our industry moving toward a commodity model, one way for KONE to distinguish itself is by deepening the relationships with our customers," he says. "Until now, we concentrated on increasing the efficiency of our back office by implementing a large-scale SAP environment. Now it's time for the front office. Until recently, our sales teams had to rely on a variety of fragmented systems and tools we had developed ourselves or bought from various vendors."

Choosing a CRM Solution and Speeding Time to Value

After a rigorous evaluation of various CRM vendors that included a five-year total cost-of-ownership study, usability reviews, and a time-to-value study, the choice was clear: the Salesforce solution. "It was the runaway leader in terms of speed, cost effectiveness, and ease of use," says Fox. "Moreover, Salesforce can integrate seamlessly with our SAP back office and scale to multiple time zones, geographies, and currencies."

Choosing the right CRM solution was one challenge; deploying that solution quickly and effectively to more than 1,800 users in 43 countries within six months presented another hurdle altogether. KONE turned to salesforce.com's Successforce Consulting for support in both the planning and implementation phases.

For KONE, working with the professional services team was a turning point in the global CRM implementation. "We lacked the in-house resources to meet the aggressive rollout plan we wanted to achieve," says Fox. "We believed that the Successforce Consulting team would give us the expert knowledge to plan the deployment, align the business objectives, and avoid common deployment mistakes. Fundamentally, the salesforce.com team would help KONE achieve a faster time to value for the CRM program."

The KONE Implementation Story

The professional services team assigned to the KONE deployment included one project manager, one integration specialist, and two analysts. They reported to a full-time KONE project manager, who was responsible for the project. "One of the things that impressed us most was their speed off the mark. They arrived on site the same day that the contract was signed," says Fox.

This team helped KONE to analyze its needs, align them to business objectives, and get users up to speed. It also helped with the Salesforce customization, the SAP integration, and the Salesforce deployment. To facilitate planning, the team conducted a business requirements review workshop and other needs-gathering sessions. Regular design meetings ensured that the scope of the deployment was simple, manageable, and adhered to proven best practices.

Based on these sessions, KONE decided to initiate a pilot deployment in three countries-the United States, the Netherlands, and Ireland—to ensure that the rollout included the most critical functionality. "Conducting a pilot was valuable advice from experts with experience in global rollouts," Fox says.

The pilot program was live within three months of signing the contract; with the remaining countries scheduled to come online during the following months. The professional services team conducted regular design meetings to provide knowledge transfer via train-the-trainer sessions. The first phase included integrating information in the SAP system about customers, products, and contracts with Salesforce. The second phase includes integration of the systems for prospect tendering, order processing, and customer billing. By the end of 2006, the Web-based automated lead-management system will be integrated as well, offering true end-to-end, Web-to-leads functionality. "Overall, we estimate that the implementation would have taken as much as five months longer without the participation of Successforce Consulting," Fox says.

Another area where the professional services team helped KONE was with customizations that contribute greatly to user productivity. Using Force.com Builder, the team worked together with the KONE team to create the initial customizations. According to Fox, this process has been very easy: "Force.com Builder means we can create our own adapted tabs, fields, layouts, and workflow ourselves, with minimal support either from the professional services team or our own IT department. Already, four of our own team are developing and changing reports as well as conducting regular uploads," Fox says.

Successforce Consulting Helps Deliver Success

With a goal of achieving a complete return on its Salesforce investment within three years, Fox feels the company is well on its way. "Once we reach the go-live date in all the territories, KONE will be uniquely positioned to increase the volume of sales per salesperson, significantly reduce the burden of administration by using a single customer view, and streamline and accelerate the decision-making process," Fox says.

How does Fox summarize his experience? "With the support of Successforce Professional Services and our internal project team, KONE is realizing the full potential value of the salesforce.com product suite. That means accelerating time to value, driving user adoption, and improving our decision-making. In my opinion, the people in Successforce Consulting deliver on promises, they're highly professional, and the feedback we have from users about what they're doing is very positive."

About KONE

KONE is one of the world's leading elevator and escalator companies, providing its customers with industry-leading elevators and escalators and innovative solutions for their maintenance and modernization. KONE also provides maintenance of automatic building doors. In 2005, KONE had annual net sales of €3.2 billion and about 27,000 employees.

KONE