ProtaGene makes more strategic decisions with richer insights

ProtaGene is a contract research organisation (CRO) in the biopharmaceutical sector. It works with companies across the world to map and analyse biopharmaceuticals and the complex molecules used in cell and gene therapies, such as mRNA vaccines. It has four offices across the US and Europe and employs around 200 people.

Low adoption and manual reporting risked inaccurate or incomplete data.

In its previous solution, sales data was spread across individual spreadsheets and databases. Staff found this difficult to navigate, which meant adoption was low and datasets were often incomplete. This made it difficult to get full visibility of the sales pipeline, track KPIs, and adapt to the fast-changing market – especially across four global regions. With a shift towards high volumes of smaller projects, CROs must act quickly and ensure high levels of data integrity to reduce time to market and win more business. ProtaGene needed to clean its data, centralise it, and find a structured system it wouldn’t need to heavily customise.

Centralising sales, client services, and business development on a platform people want to use.

ProtaGene thoroughly researched the solutions on the market. It interviewed its sponsors and other CROs to find out what they were using, and Salesforce was quickly established as the gold standard for creating an actionable single source of truth.

ProtaGene implemented Salesforce Pro Suite and migrated its active opportunities and data, leaving legacy data on its previous system to give its sales pipeline a fresh start. It started with a small data set to make sure Salesforce was set up in the most intuitive way for its team and, once approved, made it the primary platform for sales, client services, and business development. This gives ProtaGene a unified view of leads, customers, and quotes on one platform.

Learning new skills with fun training pathways on Trailhead Academy.

ProtaGene uses the free online learning academy, Trailhead, for training – and it doesn’t take staff long to get up to speed. The team created a leaderboard to celebrate staff with the highest number of badges, and this fun approach, combined with ease of use, means adoption and buy-in are high. The IT team doesn’t have to spend time reminding staff to use the system or update data, which gives them more time for other projects.

An integrated platform supporting the sales cycle and fostering growth.

The contact form on ProtaGene’s website is connected to Salesforce via an API. This automatically routes leads and opportunities into the system and tracks them throughout the sales cycle. The client services team checks leads and allocates them to a business development sales rep. Salesforce is also integrated with the quoting system, so staff can generate quotes quickly and easily in a few clicks.

With more productivity time, colleagues are collaborating better and focusing on client projects instead of admin. At a lean company like ProtaGene, this is crucial for company growth.

Automated reporting and trusted data help identify new opportunities.

Previously, trained staff had to pull together manual reports. Now, they’re generated automatically from a single source of trusted data. This helps the client services team view global trends and analyse the business with a more strategic lens. For example, if a global client starts to ramp up business in the US, the European team can reach out to the client’s European offices to find out if there are more opportunities to work together.

Forecasting has also improved significantly. Accuracy has almost doubled, and figures that were once challenging to calculate are now readily available in Salesforce.

Dashboards support faster, data-driven decisions.

Having data in one place means teams at ProtaGene can generate dashboards to help them work smarter. From management dashboards tracking teams to executive dashboards analysing KPIs, better visibility leads to better decisions. Sales KPIs include turnaround times, time to quote, and the length of the sales cycle. Staff can also create custom dashboards to help them make decisions faster.

This speed and agility help ProtaGene react quickly to developments and trends. It’s also uncovering 360-degree visibility of clients and prospects, which improves the client experience. For example, when a sales rep can get a complete picture of a client’s global spend, they can easily see if they’re eligible for a volume discount and offer more competitive pricing.

Exploring AI and discovering the best channels for marketing campaigns.

With a CRM platform it feels confident in, ProtaGene is thinking of the future. Long-term plans include using AI to identify the best leads to nurture for maximum impact and using the platform’s marketing tools. 

ProtaGene runs regular lead-generating webinars and plans to create promotional campaigns in Salesforce. This will allow it to capture leads from signups across multiple channels and automatically track each webinar’s reach and impact. It would also mean centralising another department on one platform, rather than using multiple marketing systems. This is more efficient and helps build a complete picture of every step in the customer journey.

Salesforce Pro Suite is user-friendly, easy to set up, and comes with all the functionality an SME needs to get started. It adapts alongside growing businesses, making it simple to explore features like AI and marketing campaigns. For ProtaGene, the combination of clean, central data, automated dashboards, and reporting in a single platform helps its team focus on more skilled and strategic projects.

• 50% reduction in data management time
• Doubled forecasting accuracy