CRM- September 2008 - (Page 48) Enterprise CRM SWIFTER CONNECTIONS AND SPEEDIER RESULTS WITH ECHOSIGN AND SALESFORCE.COM solution. The on-demand software removed the technical reaA multifaceted enterprise faces many obstacles in keeping sons users had given for not logging in—it can be accessed anyeach of its departments running smoothly. Even the tiniest glitch where, plus it provides users with more features than before. in a process can bog the system down, delay sales, and impact “One of the things that changed, because we aren’t spending customer relationships. This was the case for Qualcomm, a as much time on infrastructure, [is that the Qualcomm] analysts developer and innovator of wireless technologies and mobile have time to do other things such as figuring out business probdata solutions, with its contract management solution. Quallems, working out adoption rates, and having more time being comm, when signing on new clients, had a bulky and timeable to manage and push people to make sure they are using the consuming method involving several go-betweens, unnecessary application appropriately,” Silber says. “It means we’re able to paperwork, and an unreliable filing method. deploy more features faster than we ever have been able to before.” The contract division would often draft up The old, on-premises CRM solutions presented the need for a document in Microsoft Word, mail or email trouble shooting and support staff. With the software-as-athe paperwork to the client—and then have service model provided by Salesforce.com, Qualcomm was able to wait for the client to print out and sign the to cut down on its support staff by nearly 60 percent. Another contract and either send it back via snail mail key benefit is how rapidly changes are visible and available in or scan-and-email. The contract then had to the system. With the former solution, system changes required be routed to someone at Qualcomm to roughly between 10 weeks and 12 weeks to take effect. With countersign before it could—finally!—be Salesforce.com, there is no downtime required—and nothing placed in the hands of the contract manageMark Silber, information takes more than a few days to flip the switch on. ment department. The process of signing technology systems architect, Qualcomm “Really the issue with the previous architecture was just the contracts often took longer than a week. process of getting a change through the end-to-end process— The technology team at Qualcomm knew it was 12 weeks,” Silber says of the Qualcomm CRM cycles. “A there had to be an easier way. “EchoSign—a Salesforce.com lot was just making the change, having to migrate the change AppExchange partner—allowed us to replace a labor-intensive manual contract-signature process by allowing sales reps in the [Qualcomm Enterprise Services, or QES] division to electronically send contracts to [the] customer and “We’re able to deploy more features faster than we route the contracts back to the appropriate person for ever have been able to before.” countersign,” says Mark Silber, information technology systems architect with Qualcomm. After the QES division implemented Salesforce.com CRM in August of from one instance to another, and do database backup. People 2007, the EchoSign solution went live in March of this year. would work late into the night. The release would take up to four And a simple concept led to big results. The overall gain? “It’s hours. That has all gone away. It doesn’t matter that people are easier to do business with us as a company,” Silber says. Imin or out of the system. The changes are faster and have less proved contract signatures mean the organization is able to ship impact on the end user.” —Lauren McKay its products out sooner, a factor that Qualcomm hopes to soon put numbers to. Although Qualcomm has multiple servers in different divireal results : qualcomm sions, opting for Salesforce.com allowed the company to replace ■ Increased user adoption by more than 40 percentage points. several of the out-of-date on-premises servers it had devoted to ■ Reduced required support staff by more than 60 percent. CRM. Silber estimates that Qualcomm is saving about $100,000 ■ Saved more than $100,000 in hardware costs to upgrade in upgrade costs that would have gone to the former onout-of-date on-premises CRM solutions. premises vendors. When using the number of log-ins as a met■ Began tracking hundreds of additional customer ric to evaluate user adoption, Silber says Qualcomm sees greater attributes in Salesforce.com that were never tapped into with previous systems. than 80 percent adoption with Salesforce.com—compared to the ■ Reduced CRM-update cycle times by approximately 40-fold, 30 percent to 40 percent range with the former on-premises from 12 weeks down to just a few days. Qualcomm THE ELITE 48 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | SEPTEMBER 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://SALESFORCE.COM http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://www.destinationCRM.com
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