A lot of companies share a common problem – the pressures from the market and the constant changes in the technology sector, make it difficult to take a moment to step back, assess how you are doing what you are doing, and whether you can work smarter, more effective and with less stress.

CROZ had a similar issue! The renowned IT firm from Croatia has got talented and skilled employees, an exceptional sales team that was not fully supported by the CRM system they were using. Due to the growth of the sales operation and its complexity, the company had “outgrown” the CRM they were using. The old CRM was unstable, lacking in features to support the desired sales processes and journeys. This made it difficult to have a complete, 360 view of accounts and the sales process.

The decision was made to purchase a brand new, modern CRM that will support their growth and business long term.

 

“We were hoping for a technological upgrade, which would be a better, faster system, easier to use, better usability. We needed to improve our existing processes”. Krešimir Mudrovčić, Board Member, CROZ.

Making of the blueprint and planning for the implementation and integrations

During the discovery phase and the design of the blueprint, Agilcon sat down with stakeholders from CROZ and discussed their needs, challenges, and expectations. Our guidance and professional advice, based on years of experience and Salesforce best practices, helped shape the new system.

One of the most important improvements that had been made was the integration of Salesforce with SAP. As Salesforce has all opportunities and that is the place where sales planning and forecasting is done, and SAP is the master database of acquired customers, the integration of these two systems enabled account managers and CROZ management to have up-to-date, real-time tracking of the fulfilment of the sales plan so that the entire sales process can be tracked automatically from the lead phase to the invoicing.

Connecting all stages of the marketing and sales effort into one seamless process

Next, we discussed with CROZ the importance of making sure that the system supports salespeople in executing all necessary and proscribed steps in the sales process.

That is why we integrated lead management into the CRM and connected the lead management process with opportunities so that the sales process can seamlessly flow end to end in one system. We implemented journeys into Salesforce and set them up in the system so that sales are not able to circumvent the process or skip any of the steps. The first phase was to set up the processes, and in the second phase, we made a kanban board. The goal was to improve data flow, eliminate mistakes from the process and make sure sales goes through all the necessary activities to make the sale.

Everything from contact data to interactions is now visible on opportunities: all initiatives, communications and improvements. This makes it very easy for both sales and management to have a good understanding of what is going on with opportunities and what the next best action may be.

Additionally, which was of huge importance for the synchronization of marketing and sales effort, was the integration of lead management with marketing activities, sales, and money flow. Now marketing can add campaign data and insert marketing qualified leads into Salesforce. Also, the Mailchimp sync gave marketing the ability to gain insight into behaviors of people who attended their events (who attended, who were the first timers, who are interested in the product, which activities lead to sales and so on).

All this resulted in the better conversion of sales opportunities.

 

“The process has improved a lot since implementing Salesforce into our business. The last part would be for people to use Salesforce for every logging. Everything was much easier to adapt to our usage. There aren’t a lot of new rules, so there won’t be any more workarounds. We assume that it will be completed in a year.” Branimir Čudina, Business Developer, CROZ.

How did the team adapt to the new system? 

It is no secret that generally, salespeople dislike maintaining CRM and that if they do not perceive the value of this activity, they will avoid it.

In CROZ, process leads, and PMs had been involved in the implementation of Salesforce and they had gotten used to the system during that period. The critical user group were people who had not previously used CRM. The adoption was done in phases, and a test team had been selected. They started using the system without much education because we wanted to see to what extent it was intuitive. All the learnings from the test phase have been incorporated into training for the rest of the users. CROZ has set up a special Salesforce group for all technical and usability issues where users can post questions and provide assistance to one another.

Salesforce CRM – a tool helping ensure growth in CROZ

With help from Agilcon and Salesforce, CROZ went through a process of exchanging the old CRM, which was mostly used as a customer bookkeeping system, for a new tool which will help them build durable relationships with their customers. Salesforce CRM is providing CROZ with a system for automating and integrating marketing and sales and helping them analyse customer data in order to make more informed business decisions.

Our dedication to customers is long term and we are looking forward to supporting CROZ in their future growth.

If you are interested in hearing how Salesforce and Agilcon can help your business, reach out to us at info@agilcon.com