The Fedegari Group is a shining example of world-renowned “Made in Italy” production technology. Founded in the early 1950s as a small handicraft company in Pavia, it is now one of the world leaders in the sector of sterile pharmaceutical production systems. The company provides complete solutions, machines, components, and services in the field of sterilization, chemical bio-decontamination, cleaning, and environmental contamination control for the pharmaceutical, biotech, and food industry.

Fedegari's client base is impressive and includes virtually all of the leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, most of which are large multinational groups. Thanks to internationalization, the group has unlocked another achievement by opening branches in Switzerland, the United States, Singapore, China, Germany, Russia, and India, and has machinery and systems installed in over 100 countries. Fedegari currently sees an annual turnover of 75 million euro.

The globalized pharmaceutical market is an extremely complex reality, dominated by large multinational corporations that operate across multiple continents. Mergers and acquisitions often result in individual plants frequently changing ownership. What’s more, the process of selling and installing complex equipment such as sterilization systems can sometimes take years. To tackle this reality head on, managing client relationships efficiently is essential. “We’re a tiny little multinational corporation,” Baistrocchi said. “Although we have just over 500 employees, our needs are similar to those of large multinational companies.”

Aware of these needs, in 2017, the company’s founders gave the go-ahead for a transformation process that involved hiring new management personnel and introducing a new CRM platform. The traditional tools used up until that point to manage client relations and technical assistance were no longer meeting the group’s needs. After evaluating and comparing other solutions, Fedegari chose Salesforce.

“They won us over not only with the benefits of their cloud solution – which simplifies everything by providing a single platform for all of our branches throughout the world – but also with how comprehensive the solution is, how easy it was to integrate with other corporate systems, and how fast it was to implement, not to mention partnership support,” said Riccardo Massari, Manager of Global Information & Communication Technologies at the Fedegari Group.

The Fedegari Group uses Sales Cloud to manage the entire sales process due to the peculiarities and complexities inherent to the pharmaceutical industry. Through its integration with SAP, the platform also allows each project to be linked to the documents necessary to fully describe the technical requirements established by the client, analyses performed, KPIs, offers presented, negotiation stages, etc. It also enables the company to keep track of their client's companies in terms of any mergers and acquisitions, as well as if any individual managers move from one company to another. In short, Sales Cloud is used as a knowledge base to always have a clear, up-to-date view of the global pharmaceutical industry.

“Now we can divide the world market into segments, identify any and all opportunities, and create success models that we can replicate in all sectors. All of our vendors have access to the same information and can immediately learn about what their colleagues around the world have done. This exchange of information often allows us to discover new opportunities that we would have missed in the past. For example, we were recently able to optimize an important offer made to a European subsidiary of an emerging Asian group, taking advantage of the knowledge that allowed us to collaborate on another project with the parent company a short while ago. Thanks to Salesforce's support, we became aware of the opportunities in front of us and of the important relationship we could build with such a strategic entity. We surprised our client by being extremely well prepared for all of their needs,” Baistrocchi said.

Sales Cloud, which is currently in the process of being integrated with Outlook, will be used by 35 vendors deployed throughout the group’s headquarters and branches. 

In 2019, the success achieved with Sales Cloud convinced Fedegari to also implement Service Cloud — including the Field Service Lightning module — to best manage a globalized and well-structured technical assistance organization.

When possible, assistance requests from clients are managed locally by distributors deployed throughout the world. More complex matters are transferred to the group’s various branches, equipped with their own technicians for assistance in the field, or to the call center.

“With Service Cloud, exchanging information among everyone involved in technical assistance is so much faster and instant, which saves a significant amount of time,” said Matteo Germani, Manager of Global Technical Services.

Thanks to integration between the corporate technical database and Field Service Lightning, the 50 technicians operating in the field are now able to view system documents and previous support history. They can also find out if the same issue has already occurred in other systems and how it was resolved.

“Each technician’s experience can now be shared with everyone, which allows us to reduce the time it takes to solve problems. What’s more, our headquarters can now also monitor any assistance carried out by technicians in various locations around the world. This comprehensive view allows us to obtain useful feedback. For example, we can find out whether a given technical issue is specific to a single system or if it indicates a wider problem in general. Based on this, we can then take the necessary corrective measures or offer the client replacements to avoid machine downtime, guaranteeing better performance at a global level,” Germani said.