Cytiva supports critical life sciences projects by delivering the right products at the right time

The reset, which involved migrating to the Lightning Experience and adding a host of extra features, has been a massive success. Customer quotes can be approved more rapidly. Account plans can be updated more easily. Forecasts can be generated more accurately. And customer queries can be answered more effectively. 

Thanks to these and other improvements, the internal Net Promoter Score used to rate the effectiveness of the platform by sales teams has increased by 16% among experienced users. “With Salesforce, we can boost operational excellence by unifying our global teams and processes,” said Silke Fetzer, General Manager for Global Commercial Excellence at Cytiva. “Our people want to use the platform because they know it makes them more effective.” 

From procurement specialists and marketing professionals to field service engineers and support scientists, Salesforce currently supports around half of Cytiva’s 7,000+ associates.  As well as the core platform, Cytiva has deployed a number of solutions from the Salesforce AppExchange to further optimise sales, service, and procurement workflows. 

Integrated with Cytiva’s enterprise resource planning system and website, the data captured in Salesforce is critical to driving operational excellence and future growth. “With Salesforce, we can tap into new insights and opportunities that increase our competitive advantage. It’s become much more than a CRM platform,” added Halford.

Transforming its approach to account planning was a key step to unlocking greater visibility and value. “To build customer loyalty, you can’t rely on just one person’s relationship or knowledge,” said Fetzer. “With Salesforce Anywhere, we can involve a wider community in account planning, which helps us better understand and meet the needs of our growing customer base.”

Since deploying Salesforce Anywhere, Cytiva has tripled the number of account plans that benefit from real-time collaboration. “Our account plans have become living documents instead of just being reviewed quarterly and annually,” said Henry Wellbelove, Senior Global Project Leader at Cytiva. “Account teams are alerted in real time about any updates, such as a new opportunity or service request, which means they can have more relevant customer conversations.” 

Progressing new opportunities and orders as quickly as possible was key during the COVID-19 pandemic when customer demand spiked. To better manage its global pipeline, Cytiva created a new dedicated dashboard in Sales Cloud.

Implemented in a matter of weeks, the dashboard enables Cytiva’s leaders to track opportunities by customer, country, and product and share this information with colleagues in finance and manufacturing. “With Sales Cloud, we can see what’s coming and make better decisions in a shorter timeframe,” added Halford.

Cytiva has also accelerated the quotation process for customers. With a growing focus on selling holistic solutions rather than individual products, some quotes can include as many as 80 line items.

With Salesforce CPQ, Cytiva has been able to improve the accuracy and profitability of customer quotes, which has simplified approvals. As a result, it has reduced the time taken to process a quote by an average of 70%. 

Customers can track orders via a portal built on Experience Cloud. Integrated with the Cytiva website, the portal supports the personalisation of customer service on a massive scale.

Customers can also raise and collaborate on cases, and will eventually be able to check maintenance schedules, book field engineer visits, and view performance metrics for their Cytiva equipment. “With Experience Cloud, we can empower our customers to self-serve and provide them with a more relevant and consistent experience,” said Golestani.

Customer service and support is a big focus for Cytiva. It has more than 250 agents around the world as well as 500 field engineers and 30+ support scientists who respond to thousands of requests and queries a year.

Customer cases are tracked centrally in Service Cloud, which simplifies collaboration with other functions, such as supply chain and research and development. “With Service Cloud, we can unify how we capture interactions across different customer support channels,” said Golestani. “We want to provide our agents with 360-degree visibility, so they can respond to customer queries as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Providing agents with access to installation and maintenance data captured by field engineers will be key to achieving this goal. Cytiva manages around 30,000 instruments for its customers and carries out approximately 60,000 service visits per year. 

Social distancing measures and local lockdowns meant that Cytiva had to take a radically different approach to servicing equipment at customer sites during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, it used video conferencing and collaboration technologies to run acceptance tests and guide customers through repairs remotely.

Cytiva is no stranger to pioneering the use of new technology; it has also harnessed AI and the Internet of Things to improve the performance and maintenance of its products. IoT data will eventually be pulled into Salesforce to enable service and sales teams to have even richer customer conversations.

Cytiva plans to extend its adoption of AI by using Einstein and Tableau CRM to unlock predictive insights for its sales teams. It has already conducted a pilot that enabled it to forecast when customers would need to order consumables for certain products. “With Salesforce, we can extract greater value from our data,” said Halford. “It helps us identify current trends and shape future strategies.”