The Challenge
Our client realized that their inefficient tracking led to lost opportunities. Before coming to us, they used an open-source CRM which they further customized in-house to track contact submissions and customer data. This led to a disparate and unorganized adhoc tracking using email and Excel spreadsheets. As the business scaled, this did not suffice for their growing demands. In addition, the visibility into where submissions came from and the progress of deals was limited. To summarize, the issues they faced were:
- They could only process a percentage of deal submissions from partners, leading to lost opportunities
- Inefficient tracking of submissions from partners
- Difficulties handling multiple submissions causing problems for underwriting
- Limited visibility into source of submissions
How It Was Solved
Upon onboarding, the Sphere Salesforce Business Analyst and team worked with the company’s operations lead to perform a business process review with our help. Our consultants determined that the client’s issue can be solved by customizations within the Salesforce Service Cloud.
Following a detailed review, we designed a custom Salesforce solution to address key processes and efficiency opportunities. The team initially deployed a custom routing solution to route submissions from partners directly to Salesforce. To do this, we built a custom email tool to parse relevant data automatically. This helped avoid deal duplication, and ensured submissions are attributed to the correct source at time of entry. The second focus was to streamline the lead management process. The new system creates automatic stipulation workflows, as opposed to the manual process the underwriting team had to go through prior to this implementation.
The Results
The overall results were an improved sales pipeline tracking and underwriting processes. By migrating the client’s data over to Salesforce, we provided an efficient management dashboard with underlying details and visibility into each deal stage within the pipeline. In addition, the underwriting team now has all the necessary information in one place to optimize their approach to deal applications. The teams saw a 25% increase in sales efficiency and a 40% decrease in average contract offer, which further derisked the underwriting team’s decision making.
