Salesforce - Multiple Stories in Trailblazers Guide To Communities
Salesforce - Multiple Stories in Trailblazers Guide To Communities
Salesforce - Multiple Stories in Trailblazers Guide To Communities
Guide to Communities
Discover how companies use Salesforce’s digital experience
platform for their customers, partners, and employees.
From startups to global enterprises, thousands
of companies are transforming the way they do
business with Community Cloud.
22%
increase
24%
faster case
in partner
resolution time
engagement
30%
greater employee 22%
engagement increase in customer
satisfaction
4 The Trailblazer’s Guide to Communities
You hear it all the time — the world is getting smaller. The truth is,
it’s also getting smarter. And there are two good reasons why:
At Salesforce, we love to take all kinds of data and transform it into powerful insights. Einstein’s AI WANT TO LEARN MORE?
helps your teams sell smarter, service faster, and market better. Now you can go one step further.
Visit Trailhead. It’s our interactive guide
where anyone can get up to speed on
Community Cloud lets you extend Salesforce apps, data, and AI into customized portals, branded everything Salesforce, including our
sites, and social forums. Engage your customers, partners, and employees with intelligent, platform. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s simple to
use. If you’re ready to become a Trailblazer,
personalized experiences. let’s get started.
In this book, you’ll meet the Trailblazers who are creating captivating experiences. They are business
leaders who understand the need to move fast and keep everyone connected to the resources they THIS WAY TO...
need. They’re finding new ways to engage customers, empower partners, and inspire employees.
Find out how Community Cloud lets you transform the way you do business and blaze new trails
to unique user experiences.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE
TO BE A TRAILBLAZER?
As customers, partners, and employees expect more, you need to be able to give them more. With Community Cloud,
now you can. Here are a few stories of Trailblazers who have extended Salesforce into beautiful, AI-powered sites and
portals to grow sales, supercharge customer service, and engage employees.
1 2 3
C USTOME R S ERVICE SA LE S A ND PA RT NE R EM P LOY EE IN T RA N ET,
A N D E NGAGEMENT RE LATI ONSH I P HEL P DE S K, A N D MOR E
M A NAG E M E NT
B Lab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Asahi Mutual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 JDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Canlan Ice Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 National Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Clinical Continuum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 CyberPower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Nutricia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Jason’s Deli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Warranty Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Labor First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Wärtsilä . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Plus Relocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Prem Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Zayo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1
CUSTOMER SERVICE
AND ENGAGEMENT
BUILD INTELLIGENT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES
The customer is always right. We couldn’t agree more. And as every VP of service knows, it’s important
to keep your customers happy.
Customer Community empowers companies of all sizes to easily create beautifully branded communities
and portals. But that’s just the start. Customer Community also makes it possible for you to keep customers
happy by delivering stellar service.
Customer questions can be one of the biggest drains on your service desk. Not anymore. With Community
Cloud, common customer questions can be addressed in the community. You can even recommend
knowledge articles to empower customers to resolve issues faster. And if customers still need service help,
they can submit and track a case right in the community.
But customer engagement extends across the entire customer journey. With Community Cloud, companies
can build a secure account portal where customers log in to get updates, take action, or make a purchase.
WHO IS B LAB?
B Lab was born out of the idea that business can and should be a force for good. Over 1,500 Certified B
Founded in 2006, B Lab is a nonprofit
Corps, including recognizable brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Warby Parker, and Patagonia, have joined the rapidly organization that serves a global
growing global movement to redefine success in business so that one day, all companies measure social and movement of people using business as
a force for good. Its community of more
environmental impact with as much rigor as profit. “Community Cloud gives B Corps a platform to connect and than 1,500 companies from over 40
inspire one another, so they can make an even greater impact,” said Sarah Haggarty, B Hive Community Manager. countries and 130 industries, known as
Certified B Corporations, has met the
highest standards of verified, overall social
Every year, hundreds of B Corp leaders come together for an annual Champion Retreat to connect with and environmental performance, public
like-minded peers, share their successes, and solidify their commitment to each other and the movement. transparency, and legal accountability.
“During the conference, the question everyone kept asking was ‘How do we keep the conversation going?’”
said Haggarty. After exploring various social platforms that could help B Corps connect easier and faster than
the listservs they were relying on, Community Cloud was the clear choice for the organization, which runs
entirely on Salesforce. “Our developers were already comfortable with the platform, and that familiarity allowed
for easy customization — which was very important to us.”
Member companies can also tap the community’s B Corps Marketplace group
to actively promote their products and services to fellow B Corps.
1.5M 50%
turnaround
time by over
in build-out alone
Sarah Haggarty,
B Hive Community
Manager
B Corps had no efficient way to contact B Lab’s Services Department used Over 2,500 active B Corp members Sales Cloud
other member companies besides listservs Community Cloud to build the B Hive connecting across 33 countries.
that forwarded messages to several Community — facilitating collaboration, Community Cloud
members at once. cooperation, and commerce between Increased scalability through member
its member companies. communication and collaboration tools. Pardot
B Lab needed a scalable platform for its
large and rapidly growing community, Group discussions provide B Corps Enhanced member interaction and Data.com
with over 60,000 employees from 1,500 employees a forum to get advice from cooperation, leading to a greater overall
certified companies. their peers, share best practices, and social and economic impact.
find potential partners.
The only way B Corp employees could connect
one-on-one with a peer was to Searchable Chatter profiles enable
email a member of the B Lab services members to find and communicate
team and request an introduction. with each other on a one-on-one basis.
track of everyone is really challenging unless you have an easy, clear way of communicating.” Previously,
Canlan used an online portal to facilitate communications between league members, but its limited
toolset was inconvenient to use and put a significant burden on team reps, who were tasked with collecting
outstanding fees. “We were at risk of losing business because the job of team rep was just too arduous.”
“They really understood our business send reminders to players with outstanding balances. “Sixty-five percent of our
members said they are using our online payment system,” said Clark. “That
— they actually played hockey at one takes a load off of our frontline staff, and team reps are really thankful because
great work.” To support its sales and marketing efforts, Canlan launched a joint loyalty
program with Hockey Canada that helps players pay down their league fees
The completely custom Player’s Bench League Community allows players to while boosting revenue at Canlan’s on-premises
communicate with their teammates, set attendance, build game lineups, and
see which individual players and teams are on top of their game and who is
lagging behind. The community pulls real-time performance stats, division
standings, and schedules from an integrated LeagueStat database and
displays them in an easily digestible format.
With over one-third of Canlan’s revenue Using Community Cloud, Canlan built Stronger communication between league Community Cloud
coming from the ASHL, and other leagues a completely custom, interactive, and members and officials.
vying for players’ attention, the company responsive online community that allows Force.com
needed a better way to attract players members to communicate with teammates, Decreased administrative overhead and
and keep them engaged. set attendance, build game lineups, and faster collection of league fees.
view real-time performance stats.
Canlan’s previous online platform was 100% adoption — up from 26% in
limited in functionality and challenging The end-to-end team management platform previous platform.
to use; as a result, adoption was low. integrates with PayPal to simplify payment
collection and processing.
48,000 visitors monthly and over 232,000
Administrative costs were high, and Canlan monthly page views
was losing business because it lacked an Launched the Puck Bucks loyalty program,
easy way for team reps to communicate which rewards members for every dollar
Three-minute average visit length, over three
with players and collect league fees. spent at Canlan’s on-premises restaurants.
times the industry average.
The community not only helps study coordinators perform their jobs better,
it also gives Continuum Clinical a big edge over the competition.
“No one else in the industry is doing this,” said Reed. “The community has
“The community has
become a product that we include in a lot of our new business pitches become a product
and one that I don’t foresee going away any time soon. We’re just going to that we include in
continue to get better and better as we progress.”
a lot of our new
business pitches
and one that I don’t
foresee going away
Big More
engaged
anytime soon.”
competitve
advantage for scalability through
Continuum Clinical peer-to-peer
collaboration
Sean Reed
Head of Product
Management
When tasked with recruiting Phase 3 Taking an off-the-beaten-path approach, Big competitive advantage for Continuum Community Cloud
clinical trial participants with a rare Continuum’s Head of Product Clinical: No one else in the industry
condition, Continuum Clinical knew it Management launched an online has taken this approach to clinical site
needed to take a different approach community where clinical trial study engagement.
to building trial awareness. coordinators and investigators can
ask questions, participate in group More engaged study coordinators, which
Based on feedback from previous trials, conversations, and access all of the may result in more successful identification
it was clear that study coordinators wanted resources they need throughout the trial. of potential patients.
easier access to the documents they need
throughout the trial. Using Community Cloud’s Web-to-Case Easier, more efficient way for
feature, routed web inquiries to the pharmaceutical companies and research
Adding to the inefficiency, study inquiries were community’s case management organizations to manage leads and
handled through email. workflow, so community managers can communicate with physicians and nurses
manage all leads in a single location. from clinical sites throughout the country.
Instead of dull paper feedback forms, its products resonate with specific demographic segments. “We break those
down into primary, secondary, and tertiary customers, and these test delis
test customers are presented with a are representative of opportunities that we see for acquisition, retention, and
fun and fully gamified experience in a growth within the segments,” said Greer.
Once members accrue 20 stamps, $10 in Jason’s Deli food credit is applied
automatically to the member’s rewards card. “Keeping them active and
engaged has always been a challenge in the past, but with the community,
I think it’s going pretty well,” said Greer. To further aid in that goal, the
community awards members tier badges ranging from “Taste Tourist”
to “Culinary Pioneer” based on the total number of activities they have
completed, and a leaderboard keeps tabs of which users have earned the
most awards. In addition to surveys, Jason’s Deli Nation uses Ideas, one of
our community features, to get a quick guage on customer reactions to items
ranging from the importance of stocking paper menus in stores to a possible
new take on the company’s tagline.
25 The Trailblazer’s Guide to Communities
In an increasingly connected and social-media-centric world, Jason’s
Deli has also integrated specialized tools to assess the connectedness of
community members. “We’ve partnered with a professor at Ball State who
has an instrument that predicts social media engagement,” said Greer. “We’re
interested to understand how we might look at specific segments and how
likely they are to be engaged in social media.”
In the future, the company plans to enhance two-way communications “We’re interested to
to allow more dialogue between community managers and members and
is also considering Community Cloud for other segments of its business.
understand how we
“Having an intimate knowledge of the Salesforce Platform and already might look at specific
having that talent in-house — it just makes a lot of sense for us to continue segments and how
to build on it,” said Greer.
likely they are to be
engaged in social media.”
Increased
data reliability Reduced
resulting in a higher profit manpower required to
potential for new products process survey results Lee Greer,
Director of Customer
Insight and Analytics
Gathering feedback from customers was a Using Community Cloud, the company’s Built a base of over 1,500 users within three Sales Cloud
time-consuming process, which involved Research and Test Department built an months of launch.
managers distributing and collecting paper engaging, gamified community that serves Community Cloud
surveys and manually keying in data. as the hub for an ongoing relationship Reduced manpower required to process
with members. survey results.
Customer demographic tracking
was restricted to information voluntarily Integration with a cloud-based survey tool Improved quality of results due to enhanced
submitted on survey forms, curtailing the pulls customer response data into Salesforce qualitative customer data.
company’s ability to correlate responses for easy review.
with customer segments.
Higher profit potential for new products
Correlation of survey responses because of increased data reliability.
Retaining test customers was challenging with customer psychographic data from
because of the limited and often temporary a proprietary consumer data provider
relationship the company had with testers. allows the company to segment results
based on consumer type.
“Everything we do — from prospecting to plan quoting to servicing our clients — is all off the Salesforce
Platform,” said Dulczak. In the field, sales reps use the Salesforce1 Mobile App to manage leads and
log new opportunities. Once an opportunity is won, the team tracks and manages customer onboarding
with native project management app TaskRay.
it’s easy to stay on top of the documents Recently, Labor First upgraded its healthcare exchange from a simple
enrollment tool to Community Cloud, delivering a personalized experience for
and tasks necessary to move the customers that’s secure and mobile-ready out of the box, features that are key
quoting and proposal process when you’re dealing with HIPAA compliance and a demographic that favors
iPads and smartphones over desktop computers. Since their information is
forward — especially important for a preloaded into Sales Cloud, most participants only need to enter their special
code to begin the enrollment process, and Labor First keeps the process
company that’s growing at Labor First’s simple by limiting plan options to a select set. While some offerings are a
accelerated pace. single rate, others require pricing logic, which is built right into Salesforce —
accounting for variables such as age, state, and zip code. Participants can
In just four years, the company grew from 4,000 participants to over 45,000. get instant rate quotes, compare plans side by side, and set up automatic
In the coming years that number is expected to double. Salesforce is growing payments once they’ve confirmed a plan. At any stage in the process, they can
with it. “Not only have we been able to handle the type of growth that puts connect with their dedicated advocate, whose photo and contact details are
a lot of companies out of business, but we’ve been able to do it in such an front and center on the home page.
efficient manner,” said Dulczak. “That’s a testament to what Salesforce allows
you to do.”
ut proposal
C
Saved over
1.5M 50%
turnaround
time by over
David Zawrotny,
in build-out alone COO
Facing rapid growth, Labor First sought a Labor First runs its entire business using Saved over $1.5 million in implementation Sales Cloud
holistic, cloud-based solution to automate Salesforce and AppExchange apps — from and customization costs.
sales processes and manage its expanding prospecting to quoting to service. Community Cloud
client base while delivering the high level Achieved 100% customer retention while
of service that’s at the heart of its business Upgraded its healthcare exchange from a growing 1,025% in just four years.
model. web-based enrollment tool to Community
Cloud — enabling a personalized Reduced the proposal phase by more than
The company also wanted a more flexible, experience for customers. 50% (30 to 14 days).
customizable solution for providing online
insurance quotes. Automated the quoting and proposals Increased customer service efficiency
process in Sales Cloud. tenfold.
“Relocation is the third most stressful event in a person’s life, next to death and divorce,” said Susan Schneider, WHO IS PLUS RELOCATION?
CEO of Plus Relocation. The international relocation services provider set out to ease some of the burden for Plus Relocation helps Fortune 500 companies
the thousands of Fortune 500 employees and families it moves each year. And in the process, the company is — including Tesla, Yelp, Kohl’s, and Deckers
Brands — design and implement completely
transforming the entire industry. customized mobility solutions. By offering
the perfect balance of personal service with
Inspiration struck at 35,000 feet in the air. “I was sitting on a plane reading the Salesforce Chatter feed innovative technology, Plus has achieved a
near-perfect customer satisfaction and client
from our business development group, and I thought, ‘Why can’t we use the Salesforce Platform to build a retention rate. With its newly launched,
community that puts the transferee in the center of the relocation process?’” Schneider said. game-changing client community, the
49-year-old company is changing the way
the relocation industry interacts with clients,
“Instead of transferees feeling like they need to reach out to 20 different people,
partners, and employees.
why don’t we surround them?”
Working with Salesforce partner 7Summits, Plus Relocation turned its vision Another big need that Elo technology fulfills is the ability to connect with
into a reality with Community Cloud. In less than nine months, the company others going through the same experience. Transferees can join company-,
designed and launched Elo technology, a comprehensive community that interest-, or location-specific groups to get insight and tips on neighborhoods,
brings the entire relocation team together in one place to collectively make schools, doctors, and the best restaurants in their new city.
the move a seamless experience.
The community keeps members engaged by providing content relevant to
Rather than struggling to keep up with emails, calls, and texts, transferees every phase of their move, such as “Selling Your Home FAQs,” “Moving with
have their own private group page where they can one-click connect to all Teenagers,” and “Licensing Your Vehicle in Your New State.”
of the key players involved in their move, including their Plus Relocation
counselor, real estate agent, moving company, HR, and significant other.
Throughout the move, transferees can keep track of to-do lists and
appointments from any device. They can submit expenses and see what’s
been paid and what’s still pending. Using DocuSign and Community Cloud’s
Transferees are overwhelmed with the Out-of-the-box features, such as Groups, The comprehensive, mobile-enabled Sales Cloud
logistical complexity of the relocation allow transferees to quickly connect with community allows relocating
experience. other community members to share tips employees to tap into their entire Community Cloud
and content and discuss their moves. relocation ecosystem in real time,
Lacking a centralized way to communicate, managing their tasks and events,
Pardot
Plus Relocation clients and their relocating Integrations with Concur and DocuSign connecting with suppliers and their
employees were inundated with back-and- mean employees can easily view, sign, Relocation counselor, submitting and
Data.com
forth emails and calls, making it difficult and store their documents within the tracking expenses, and managing all
to keep track of important information community. of their information in a single location.
and events.
PREM Group’s Salesforce journey began with a need for better data visibility and a better way to connect with
customers and understand their needs. Between Outlook, Excel, Word, Access, and Act, “we had a whole
bunch of disparate systems we were having to access and try to share data between,” said Johnson.
The management group uses Lightning Customer Community and Field Service Lightning to streamline
everything from communicating with customers to managing and reporting on maintenance work orders.
The most immediate benefit was a 50% reduction in email. Now, instead of Now, with Field Service Lightning, when a resident logs a case, it’s
sending out mass emails, management uses community Chatter groups to automatically routed to the appropriate department and assigned to a
notify residents on everything from social events to upcoming maintenance technician. Hours, billing, and service-part information is updated and tracked
projects to mail awaiting pickup. Community Cloud has also simplified rent directly through Salesforce, eliminating countless hours of filling out forms
payments — as well as the company’s infrastructure to accept and document in triplicate and providing a detailed picture of exactly where maintenance
them. Owners and tenants can pay rent or dues through a payment gateway dollars are being spent. This level of coordination has allowed PREM Group
that integrates directly with FinancialForce, providing instant status updates to realign service tech schedules, adjust appointment times, and realize
to customer accounts. Residents can also count on fast notifications when remarkable savings. “On our maintenance operations, we went from about
they’re waiting on special deliveries. 7% profitability up to almost 20% — right around where it should be,”
said Johnson.
Jacob Johnson,
President and CEO,
PREM Group
Customer and property data was spread PREM Group’s CEO used Lightning Reduced incoming email by 50%. Community Cloud
across spreadsheets and disparate database Customer Community and Field Service
systems, making it difficult to manage and Lightning to transform service operations by Increased maintenance operation Service Cloud
track customer relationships and service creating customizable online communities profitability by 13%.
records. for each property it manages.
Einstein Analytics
Enabled real-time updates on maintenance
Mass email was the primary mode of Swapped mass email for Chatter, projects. Force.com
customer communication, resulting in enabling two-way communication and
major inefficiencies. providing a one-stop hub for payments,
Cut operational costs and increased
building alerts, FAQs, case management,
operational efficiencies, which translates
Relying on paper-based work orders, service and event notices.
into more growth opportunities.
techs had no way to accurately report on
expenses related to maintenance requests. Eliminated paper work orders and
optimized field service management by
Residents couldn’t see the status of their streamlining all maintenance operations
service requests. with Field Service Lightning.
BANDWIDTH INFRASTRUCTURE
With the demand for bandwidth increasing, the telecommunications landscape has been transformed WHO IS ZAYO?
dramatically in the past decade. One challenge has remained constant: Quoting and ordering service has
Having rapidly grown through the acquisition of
been a very slow process. “It’s traditionally been one of the most painful processes in our industry,” said more than 30 companies in less than a decade, Zayo
Group is now one of the world’s leading providers of
Sandi Mays EVP of IT, Tranzact, Big Data, Client Services & Billing at Zayo Group. Taking a page from online
fiber-based bandwidth infrastructure services. The
retailers — where the transactional process is fast, intuitive, and even fun — the company embarked on a company’s 110,000-mile network in the U.S., Europe,
program to transform its ordering process, and as an end-to-end Salesforce shop, Community Cloud was and Canada includes extensive metro connectivity to
thousands of buildings and data centers — powering
the natural solution. reliable high-performance connectivity, secure
colocation, and flexible cloud services for ISPs, wireless
Previously, the quoting process involved a lot of shuttling of spreadsheets back and forth between carriers, enterprises, and governments worldwide.
departments. “When a salesperson needed a quote, he or she would fill out an Excel spreadsheet and send
it to the product group. The product group would then manually verify and approve the quote and rekey the
opportunity into Salesforce,” said Mays. Beyond being inconvenient, the process was very time-consuming:
“It could take anywhere from two to 10 days to get a quote approved, which made no sense at all.”
“We’ve shown it to CEOs at other companies and their first question is, ‘How did
you build this?’” Mays said. “But really, the community is just the wrapper on top
of what really matters, which is all of the data, all of our processes, and all of our
systems — in one source. That’s the beauty of building this in Salesforce.”
65%
Zayo’s sales volume Reduced the quoting
and all of our systems
— in one source. That’s
the beauty of building
originates through process from 2–10
a Tranzact quote, days to as little as this in Salesforce.”
representing about
33% 20
seconds
of its total new
sales dollars
Sandi Mays,
EVP of IT, Tranzact,
Big Data, Client Services
& Billing
Quoting services was a time-consuming Launched an ecommerce community Quoting process reduced from 2–10 days Sales Cloud
process that involved sales representatives featuring Tranzact, Zayo’s custom sales app to as little as 20 seconds.
entering customer and order details on built using Salesforce Platform tools. Service Cloud
spreadsheets and sending them between Transactions are processed in a fraction of
departments to be processed. Created a one-stop shop where customers can the time: 65% of the transactional volume Salesforce Platform
generate quick quotes, get support, and 33% of Zayo’s total sales originate
Sales and product groups weren’t adequately order services, and manage existing through Tranzact.
Salesforce1 Mobile App
staffed to process the volume of quote services on their own.
requests they were receiving. A better customer experience for more than
Chatter
Integrated a custom mapping tool and put 1,400 B2B customers and more than 3,800
the customer in charge of the provisioning external users.
Data.com
process, accelerating the time from quote
to contract.
Community Cloud
Community Cloud makes it simple to build a partner portal with the data, processes, and apps that
partners need to work smarter and faster. You can share contacts, leads, and customer insights,
and personalize each partner’s experience to deliver the right information at the right time.
And with new Sales Cloud PRM, an app built for partner relationship management, deploying a
personalized experience is fast and easy. The new interactive wizard helps customize all of the
standard PRM functionality.
Previously, Asahi circulated paper statements to its sales agents, which meant they had to wait until
the end of the month when statements came in the mail to see their sales totals and commission
amounts. “And at the same time, our internal reps were looking through piles of paper to track the
performance of the agencies,” said Masatake Konno, Assistant Manager of the Agency Business
Administration Division. “It was very inefficient.”
“We calculated how many hours were problems for us,” said Konno. “With Community Cloud, we can control who has
access to information much more effectively while avoiding operational risks.”
spent creating the performance
Since Community Cloud integrates with Asahi’s commission
documents we sent out to distributors, calculation system, agents always have access to the most up-to-date
and the total came out to 960 hours performance metrics. Internally, the company can easily keep track
of its stronger — and weaker — sellers and use Community Cloud to launch
per year,” said Konno. “Now, that waste incentive campaigns. These incentives, plus the ease of interaction
Community Cloud affords, are both compelling reasons for agents to sell
of effort is gone — simply gone.” Asahi products over those offered by competitors within their portfolio.
more
motivated f manual labor
o
workforce annually
Masatake Konno,
Assistant Manager
Agency Business
Administration Division
With over 8,000 independent agents Launched a Partner Community in less Now that everything is on a single platform, Force.com
added to its sales force, Asahi Life had than six weeks, giving both agents and Asahi can easily track sales from any device,
difficulty keeping track of up-to-date sales internal reps 24/7 access to updated provide real-time performance reports for Sales Cloud
performance through manual means. performance metrics. independent agencies, and offer incentives
to increase sales.
Community Cloud
Since statements were mailed, agents had After first considering a PaaS solution
no way to track their sales totals and provided by a domestic Japanese vendor, Eliminated 960 hours of manual labor
commissions until the end of the month. Asahi chose Community Cloud for its annually.
out-of-the-box mobility, development
The labor-intensive process of printing capabilities, and ease of integration with Increased security — eliminated the risk
statements and stuffing them into envelopes Sales Cloud and external solutions. of mailing the wrong statements to the
was not only time-consuming for internal wrong distributors.
reps, it also made the company vulnerable
to human error. Ability to quickly launch self-training
programs to further improve the
sales force.
WHO IS BOX?
Box has been a household name in business file sharing and cloud content management for years, but an
Since its founding in 2005, Box has
outdated legacy customer portal was preventing it from providing the outstanding modern user experience become a leading cloud content
expected by today’s partners. “Functionally, the portal did what it was supposed to, but the experience, design, management and file-sharing service
for businesses. From its headquarters in
and personalization of a modern portal was absent,” said Tony Dyck, Director of IT Delivery Services at Box.
Redwood City, California, Box works with
1,400 employees around the country.
When Box was ready to tackle a more accessible and user-friendly partner portal, executives turned to Sales
Cloud PRM. “Sales Cloud PRM empowered our channel operations team to be Trailblazers because they did
not have to go through IT for help making changes in the portal” said Dyck. Integrating Cornerstone’s LMS was
an easy first step for Box to ensure partners were trained and certified on their products.
“When we made the change to a webinar series to walk users through the transition and offer step-by- step
instructions for logging in and using the portal.
Sales Cloud PRM, it was like the
The core project team visited Box’s all- hands meeting recently to present the
sunlight broke through the clouds,” successes of the Sales Cloud PRM project so far. “This really shows the level of
said Dyck. appreciation within the company. Everyone in channel organization was just
thrilled with the change,” said Dyck. Box credits Partner Community Planning
“We were able to give personalized access and custom dashboards to and Design Accelerators for speeding along its implementation by outlining
different users so each partner renewal manager could utilize measures a structured approach to using Sales Cloud PRM to solve its channel needs.
and statistics to grow their business and admins could use them to
measure overall partnership health.”
3x
user engagement
because they did not have to go through
IT for help making changes in the portal.”
Tony Dyck,
Director of IT
Delivery Services
Previous portal was static and difficult to Worked with Partner Community Delivered a personalized experience to Sales Cloud PRM
navigate. Accelerators to define implementation different users, which helped to triple
direction. engagement. Cornerstone LMS
It only gave partners a single access point.
Implemented Sales Cloud PRM as a Increased satisfaction across 200 partners and Salesforce Accelerators
It was unable to customize experience for flexible solution to grow and scale 1,200 users.
each user accessing the platform. channel business.
WHO IS CYBERPOWER?
CyberPower is a global manufacturer
CyberPower’s relationship with technology solutions providers and distributors was a big catalyst for
of uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
implementing the Partner Community. Solution architects configure IT implementations for their customers, systems, power distribution units (PDUs),
and CyberPower wanted to be at the top of their list when planning new deals. CyberPower opted to provide surge protectors, mobile charging devices,
connectivity devices, and fiber-to-the-
a digital solution to share product and pricing information and improve quoting time. Now, instead of sorting premises (FTTx) backup power solutions.
through product brochures, reps simply click on the Partner Community link to find product information and CyberPower’s sustainable practices ensure
product reliability and value through
configuration variables such as special pricing and power requirements. design and engineering, manufacturing,
distribution, and customer support.
“We wanted to use the Partner Community to set up a one-stop shop to house all our catalog information,
and more importantly, provide the ability to live chat with us,” said Scott Koller, Vice President of Channel Sales.
“The expectation by the end user, and even our partners, is that they receive
answers and quotes in about 10 minutes. Over 50% of the time, the company
Looking at what is possible with
that responds first is awarded the business. It’s well worth the endeavor to not Community Cloud continues to drive
only increase our response time with a Partner Community but also improve the
quality of our response,” said Koller. new initiatives at CyberPower.
“I’ve never had a CRM experience as good as the one with Salesforce, especially
with the Partner Community. The product is so pliable, thanks to the AppExchange,
and the investments we’ve made in customizations stay intact through updates.
“I’ve never had a
You just can’t beat the scalability of Salesforce,” said Koller. “This will meet any CRM experience
company’s needs by taking advantage of available apps and having a good partner as good as the one
to help with integration.”
with Salesforce,
especially with the
Partner Community.”
21% 96%
projected reduced
sales growth response time
Communications with channel sales and CyberPower teamed with Salesforce Communications and information Community Cloud
partners were fragmented and inconsistent. implementation expert Modacto to build centralized via Partner Community.
a comprehensive Partner Community. Sales Cloud
Providing customer quotes was a Quotes can be prepared with the native
cumbersome process. The Partner Community provided a sales Salesforce quote template in a fraction of
portal with product information readily the time that it took prior to the Partner
Company was losing sales due to not being available. Community.
able to respond quickly enough with customer
quotes. The Partner Community has a live chat Closing rates have increased due to
function to facilitate sales communications. improved communications and quoting
process.
Sales quoting system simplified and
automated to increase speed of responses. Improved channel mindshare as a result
of Partner Community.
How Moving to the Cloud Saved The Warranty Group and related benefits. For more than 50 years, it’s
provided underwriting, claims administration,
$8 million
and marketing expertise to some of the world’s
leading manufacturers, distributors, and retailers
of consumer goods including automobiles,
homes, consumer appliances, electronics, and
The Warranty Group is the world’s leading provider of extended warranty programs and associated benefits
furniture, as well as specialty insurance products
for automobile, home, consumer goods, and travel. With 1,800 employees in 33 countries, The Warranty and services for financial institutions.
Group faced a challenge shared by many global organizations: how to lower IT costs and radically simplify the
business across dozens of older legacy systems globally. Operations in 33 countries meant IT staff, hardware
infrastructure, plus licensing costs. Many systems were built to support specific clients or countries. Data was
The Warranty Group Heads With Community Cloud, this customer now has its very own segmented
community. “They have their own confidential knowledge base and their
to the Cloud own special parts dealers,” said Paul Risk. “They were thrilled. This is so much
better than we could have hoped for.” TWG used Community Cloud to help
“We approached the transformation to Salesforce strategically,” said Paul Risk, Nissan more effectively manage brand compliance at dealerships.
TWG Chief of Global Applications and Architecture. “We created six self-
contained projects, and delivered value at every stage. We did it with fixed
predictable costs and ROI for each project.”
Today, Community Cloud helps drive service and sales and greater dealer
engagement. One example — a customer pulls into an auto dealer’s service
lane. The VIN number is scanned, the contract pulled up. All information is
on an iPad. The claim is filed and instantly adjudicated. A contract extension
is sold and completed. The driver is still in the car. For complicated repairs,
dealers shoot video or still photos from inside the Community Cloud, send it
up for review, and get immediate results.
Lower IT costs, simplify the business across The Warranty Group went through a Savings of nearly $8 million. Sales Cloud
dozens of older legacy systems globally. total IT transformation, moving its entire
enterprise stack into the cloud using Increased customer satisfaction. Service Cloud
Connect reps, dealers, salespeople, and Community Cloud, integrated
customers. with Service Cloud and third-party
Faster product launches. Community Cloud
automotive software. The Warranty Group
provides dealers and agents with
Get new products to market easier and faster. Easy transitions from B2B to B2C. Chatter
a single platform to verify and enter
claims information.
Einstein Analytics
Lightning Connect
Salesforce Shield
Heroku
Force.com
WHO IS WÄRTSILÄ?
Few industries are as geographically dispersed as marine and energy, and with 11,000 service professionals
Based in Helsinki, Finland, Wärtsilä serves
supporting marine transportation customers from 160 locations in 70 countries, Wärtsilä covers as much the marine and energy industries globally
ground as its customers. When the company decided to replace its aging homegrown portal with a modern, with products and services ranging from
ship machinery to power generation
integrated solution connecting to its worldwide marine and energy industry client bases, Wärtsilä turned to management systems. Collectively, the
Community Cloud. company’s more than 17,000 employees
are dedicated to providing innovative and
sustainable solutions with a continued
By 2014, Wärtsilä’s custom-developed services portal — then a decade and a half old — had proven focus on total efficiency.
completely inadequate for the company’s increasingly complex customer service demands. “It was more or
less kind of a black box,” said Tuomo Iivonen, Development Manager. “We had no clue what was happening
inside there or how our customers were behaving.” The company’s existing relationship with the Salesforce
CRM system triggered an interest in Community Cloud, and the platform was the ideal fit for Wärtsilä’s
underlying customer focus. Community Cloud’s tight platform integration was a major time-saver in
deployment, too. “If we hadn’t built the Online Services Community on top of Salesforce, we’d have ended
up doing a lot more different integrations, and the overall complexity would have been much greater.”
a unified interface that’s completely No matter the user’s role, support is always a few clicks away. Built-in
deflection tools suggest existing knowledge articles and bulletins that might
seamless to the user. resolve the customer’s issue instantly. But if a case is logged, Community
Cloud takes advantage of its tight Service Cloud integration to route it to
“Some services’ underlying delivery processes are on SAP, such as parts sales
the correct Wärtsilä expert with all relevant product information attached,
or warranty claim handling, and the community integrated with these services
reducing lead time and data entry. Select customers can also access a team
quite nicely,” said Iivonen. This level of integration also maintains impeccable
forum for direct technical support conversations with Wärtsilä technicians,
data integrity across multiple back-end systems, which is critical to successfully
and the company is considering opening this forum to user-to-user
supporting such a sizable and dispersed customer base. “There’s no email
interactions as well.
ping-pong happening in the background — data is always going to the right
place, to the master data engineers who are able to maintain these things
in SAP directly.”
For Wärtsilä, Community Cloud is one step toward the company’s goal of
developing deeper customer insight. “Compared with our previous platform,
we now have a much better capability of seeing and understanding how our
customers behave, what they do, and what they are looking for,” said Iivonen.
And Community Cloud’s role as a digital hub for client interaction will only
accelerated
quoting and ordering speed
increase. “We will soon be at a point where nearly everything that we do
has some kind of a digital interface, and Online Services is one of the most
important channels to provide that content to our customers.”
improved
data quality
Wärtsilä needed to provide customer Using Community Cloud, Wärtsilä’s Improved data quality by maintaining Sales Cloud
support, technical assistance, and quoting development manager built a single a centralized hub for many different
and ordering services to clients spread customer touchpoint for functions customer transactions. Service Cloud
across the globe. divided between siloed data systems.
Case deflection through automatic Community Cloud
Inventory, quoting, CRM, and other Dashboards provide customers a knowledge search during the
back-end systems were divided between consolidated view of their warranty case-logging process.
Salesforce and SAP, potentially requiring claims, support requests, product
extensive customization to create an orders, and quotations. Wärtsilä gains valuable insight into
integrated solution. customers’ interests and activity within
Customizable notifications allow the community.
The company’s existing homegrown customers to tailor highlighted
customer portal had very limited user updates to their own personal Increased quoting and ordering speed
functionality and was incapable of interests. while also boosting accuracy.
giving the company insight into
customer activity, interests, and Online quoting and ordering
behavior. streamlines the transactional process
from the user’s perspective.
And with Salesforce Employee Apps, everything is accessible on mobile devices so your employees can get work
done anywhere, even when they’re away from the office. It’s one destination where employees can access
everything they need to stay engaged and productive.
When you think about it, your employees work to support your growth. Doesn’t it make sense that they
have access to the same tools and technology you’d offer your customers? Salesforce Employee Apps
give your employees the connected experience they’ve come to expect, and access to everything
they need to get work done.
“Now, we are all in one sandbox together.
Chatter ... makes everything so easy!”
Jennifer Fasolino, Senior Business Systems Analyst
WHO IS JDA?
WITH CHATTER For over 30 years, JDA helps more than
4,000 companies worldwide deliver
for their customers every day while
Like many tech companies, JDA grew through acquisitions and a significant merger that resulted in a complex optimizing costs, increasing revenue,
and reducing time to market. JDA has
service organization using multiple CRM systems and struggling with inconsistent processes. JDA knew that
been the leading provider of end-to-
operational improvements depended on a single CRM solution, unifying global processes, and enhancing end, integrated retail and supply chain
communication within a larger and more complex organization. JDA selected Service Cloud and Chatter for planning and execution solutions. Its
heritage, customer base, and industry
a streamlined collaborative solution. expertise have combined to make it the
leader in supply chain and retail solutions.
JDA’s customer success team needed to share information more efficiently across service lines and to find the
right people at the right time to build global collaboration. JDA launched Service Cloud and Chatter to address
these essential business goals. Unfortunately, JDA could not do everything it wanted to do with Chatter at the
implementation launch because, “There was so much change to get people from different CRM systems into
Service Cloud that we didn’t feel like we gave Chatter due justice,” said Fasolino.
The
74 The Trailblazer’s
Trailblazer’s Guide toGuide to Communities
Communities
SA L E S FORCE CUSTOMER SU CC E S S STORY:
J DA
CHALLENGE S O LU T IO N R E S U LTS P RO D U CTS
JDA’s customer success team needed a better Working with a Salesforce Accelerator After consulting with a Salesforce Accelerator, Chatter
way to communicate and collaborate with specialist, JDA brought its customer success Chatter engagement skyrocketed. In just five
approximately 1,000 associates across its organization into Chatter to promote months: Service Cloud
global organization and its combined support more open communication between
and cloud service business lines. teams, drive global collaboration, and 390% increase in Chatter Posts. On average
encourage celebration of customer success there are over 800 Posts per month.
After implementing Salesforce Service achievements.
Cloud and Chatter, JDA needed assistance 250% increase in new Chatter groups.
to relaunch Chatter to bring all associates
on board and transform the way they 55 new Chatter groups created since the
communicate and collaborate. Accelerator.
Effectiveness. “Chatter has been invaluable when it comes to quickly getting and sharing knowledge with others.”
Close to 2,000 geographically dispersed sales reps, managers, leaders, and marketing team members need to connect
to get immediate answers and collaborate more effectively around customers. Previously, the company had three
different CRM platforms, over 30 different sales processes, and relied on an ad hoc collaboration system consisting
of email and personal networks. “It wasn’t consistent, and people were often engaging the wrong resources,
or they weren’t finding the right people they should have been talking to,” said Matthews.
dramatic because we got both inside “People saw immediately that this was the
sellers and field teams talking … and platform of the future,” said Matthews.
“And we followed that method as we moved
quickly — within minutes — bringing to other regions because it’s so successful
The rapid success of Chatter is largely due to an aggressive strategy that began
with simplifying the CRM system. “In an attempt to try to keep the Salesforce
Platform as clean as we could, we came up with criteria from a migration
standpoint that was what we termed ‘sales relevant,’” said Kyle Johnson,
Manager of Global Sales and Business Analytics. “We worked with the
opportunities 10%
gain in productivity
reps are able to manage
Ian Matthews,
Director of Global
Sales Effectiveness
With three different CRM systems, The company manually scrubbed and Deeper level of collaboration between inside Sales Cloud
50 geographically diverse offices and migrated sales data to Salesforce CRM sellers and field teams resulted in sales reps
a 2,000-person sales organization, system using Informatica and internal data saving 40–45 minutes a day. Chatter
National Instruments lacked consistency warehouse resources, creating a single
in its sales processes. governed sales process. Big increase in the number of opportunities
reps are able to manage.
Collaboration was inefficient and spread Activated Chatter, enabling inside sellers
across email, personal networks, and and field teams to collaborate around Quick access to files, data, and expert
hundreds of different groups sales reps accounts and opportunities and quickly resources.
created in NI Talk, a homegrown social tap into expert knowledge.
intranet.
Reduced email noise and streamlined,
In addition to extensive training around contextual conversations.
Salespeople had difficulty connecting infrastructure and CRM system, executive
to the right resources. leadership encouraged Chatter adoption
and engagement by using it as their core
communication tool.
WHO IS NUTRICIA?
“I honestly believe that introducing a tool in itself has absolutely no value,” said Kirsten Wain-Lefebvre, Global
Since its founding over a century ago,
Digital Executive at Nutricia Advanced Medical Nutrition. “You need to show people the value to them as Nutricia has pioneered nutritional
individuals through the right strategic implementation process and really explain the greater contribution it discoveries that help people of all ages live
longer, healthier lives. Now a part of the
will make to the business.” With busy employees divided between various business units scattered across the Danone Company, Nutricia’s presence has
globe, driving adoption of a new Employee Community was no less than a monumental challenge. But with a expanded globally to include more than
5,000 employees spread
comprehensive implementation plan and a little bit of help from Salesforce, Nutricia ultimately found success. across six continents.
Nutricia’s employees previously had access to an IBM-based portal tool, but it didn’t offer the range of features
they needed. “The key to our business is making sure that our people on the ground who are approaching
healthcare professionals always have all the latest medical evidence, marketing material, and sales data — both
for our own business and our competitors’,” said Wain-Lefebvre. An internal audit of Nutricia’s needs led the
search to Chatter from Community Cloud, and Salesforce’s unparalleled level of customer support sealed the
deal. “That was the clear differentiator — Salesforce was not just a company we could buy a tool from, but it
was really a partner that we could work with to improve our business.”
To Introduce the community, Wain-Lefebvre and her team recruited a Everyone’s successes were celebrated in the fourth pillar, Applaud. “What we
champion within each business unit to act as a community ambassador and tended to do in the past is to work on the business where they’re doing
drive awareness and adoption among peers. Working with the champion, a really lousy job and forget about all the people that are actually doing really
specific action plans and timelines were tailored to local interests. “Whether well,” said Wain-Lefebvre.
it was trying to get the most viral video within their regional community or
T-shirts and mugs with their Chatter @mention on them, we would help
them come up with a fun idea and activate it within their business unit,”
Wain-Lefebvre said.
The champions’ role deepened in the second pillar, Engage, as they kept
very active in their business unit’s Chatter sphere and drew upon a specially
created toolkit of presentations and e-learning tools to assist their peers in
making the Employee Community an integral part of their daily routines.
With over 5,000 employees in various Recruited a champion ambassador to Increased collaboration within and across Community Cloud
business units scattered across the globe, drive awareness among peers. business units.
driving adoption of a new Employee Chatter
Community was challenging. Held contests and provided incentives Improved company culture, inspiring
to build excitement. employees and upper management to share
insights and ask empowering questions.
Got upper management on board
and inspired. Exceeded global adoption targets (over a
six-month period).
Organized regular meetings to guide
champions and share successes. Reached 86% active users, exceeding goal of
75%.
The good news is you don’t have to radically reinvent yourself to become a Trailblazer. All you need is the right
platform on which to build your vision.
You’ve already taken your first step by reading this book. Where you go now is up to you. As you’ve discovered,
there is no limit to what you can do with Salesforce. Now you can empower anyone to build productivity apps and
run your entire business on a single platform. Join the thousands of Trailblazers who are changing their businesses,
their roles, and connecting to customers in a whole new way.
The Salesforce Platform is a complete CRM solution that connects every facet of your business so you can connect
with your customers in a whole new way. There is simply no better platform for building apps — from low code/no
code to elaborately customized apps — or a larger ecosystem of readymade apps, available on our AppExchange.
No matter how big — or small — your company, whatever your industry or current systems, Salesforce is the right
partner to help you become the community leader you need to become to lead your business into the future.
Artificial Intelligence — More intelligent. More predictive. Einstein Analytics, with the world’s first comprehensive
AI for CRM, transforms all the data from your customers, suppliers, and the Internet of Things into insights and
actions that will drive sales, product enhancements, and customer satisfaction.
Mobility — The mobile revolution could not have happened without the cloud revolution. Everything we do is
mobile-ready — and with Salesforce Platform Mobile Services, now you have everything you need to build, run,
and manage engaging mobile apps that are secure from day one.
Productivity — Automate processes, give your employees a 360-degree view of your customers from any device,
connect your field staff to HQ — the Salesforce Platform replaces infrastructure with constant innovation so you
can increase productivity in every department, every employee, across the business.
The good news is you don’t have to radically reinvent yourself to become a Trailblazer. All you need is the right
platform on which to build your vision.
You’ve already taken your first step by reading this book. Where you go now is up to you. As you’ve discovered,
there is no limit to what you can do with Salesforce. Now you can empower anyone to build productivity apps and
run your entire business on a single platform. Join the thousands of Trailblazers who are changing their businesses,
their roles, and connecting to customers in a whole new way.