F-Secure grows stronger with Salesforce

Viruses. Trojans. Worms. Malware. F-Secure tackles all of these online threats and more. The Helsinki-based company is on a mission to help people connect safely with the world around them.; “The security landscape is constantly evolving,” said Olivier Pierrot, Director of Customer Care at F-Secure. “As threats have become more targeted and more sophisticated, we’ve developed a holistic approach to cyber security that helps protect people and companies in an increasingly digital world.”

Although the company already had a CRM system that was designed to capture this type of information, it was cumbersome to manage and maintain. “It restricted our ways of working,” revealed Marko Keskinen, CRM Business Owner at F-Secure. “It was often slow to respond, and any minor changes had to be made by an external consultant.”

F-Secure, which provides security software and services, spent six months investigating the best CRM solutions on the market before selecting Salesforce. “It ticked all of our boxes,” commented Keskinen. “Salesforce is easy to maintain, configure and use.”

The phased implementation of Sales Cloud started in 2013, and the solution is now used across every region and every market in both sales and service functions. “Using the same platform in all our 20-plus countries ensures consistency and quality for our customers,” said Keskinen.

Sales Cloud underpins the entire sales process at F-Secure, from automatically logging and assigning online leads to tracking communications and creating customer accounts following the placement of an order. “Our sales teams are more efficient with Sales Cloud,” explained Toni Urpi, Service Owner at F-Secure. “It also takes less time to on-board new resellers, which means they can start selling faster.”

Thanks to the flexibility of the solution, F-Secure has been able to vary its sales workflows according to the customer. For example, large-value operator opportunities, which involve lots of people, follow a highly regimented process.

It can also see how these and other opportunities are helping F-Secure to hit sales targets. “The sales teams can instantly see key metrics on the dashboards, such as order intake, number of active resellers, pipeline opportunities, and average lead handling time. This gives them a unique insight into performance, and what needs to be improved,” explained Urpi.

All the customer data logged by the sales teams is also available to the customer care team via Service Cloud, which means they can provide more informed responses to queries. “With Service Cloud, we can provide consistent and seamless service across multiple geographies to improve the customer experience,” explained Pierrot.

Everyone in the sales and support teams can view cases and create their own reports by customer, language or product. “We used to have to wait for data to be uploaded to the data warehouse, and even then only certain people had access. Now we can all jump on cases and check in seconds,” said Keskinen.

This visibility enables account managers to stay close to their customers throughout their relationship. “It’s hard to excel in customer care without the right tools,” Pierrot affirmed. “Service Cloud tracks our performance against service level agreements (SLAs), which makes it much easier to meet them. If a case needs escalating, account managers can engage with their colleagues in the customer care team via Chatter.”

F-Secure’s unified approach to sales and customer support has helped improve its Net Promoter Score (at 50 in Q3 2016) and customer satisfaction. “With Salesforce, we can provide a seamless customer experience. The delivery team can see the status of upcoming sales and ensure resources are available as soon as the contract is signed,” said Pierrot.

F-Secure can also ensure its products continue to meet the needs of its customers. Information captured in Service Cloud is fed to its research and development team, so they can make enhancements to future releases. Updates on these new releases and other company announcements are shared via Chatter. “Chatter has brought our sales and customer care teams closer together. With people in 20-plus countries, it helps bridge the geographical divide,” said Urpi.

The online community also acts as an ideas board for expanding the use of Salesforce within the business. As Keskinen explained, “Salesforce is a living platform. We can quickly test out suggestions from the team in our sandbox environment, and if they work, we roll them out globally. It helps people feel more involved as they know they can have a direct impact on the future of the business.”

This continuous cycle of innovation and improvement helps F-Secure react faster and grow stronger. “With Salesforce, we can stay sharp. We can scale more easily, we can care for our customers more effectively and we can generate more sales. We’re a stronger company with Salesforce,” said Pierrot.