John Lange, Senior Manager, Product Marketing
It’s a far too common tale: sales teams in quickly growing companies are plagued with siloed processes, disparate legacy systems, and reporting inconsistencies. These inefficient workflows and outdated applications can risk a company’s future by restricting visibility into its most important asset: the customer.
Even with the proliferation of cloud-based customer-relationship-management (CRM) solutions, companies often underinvest in the vital tools that will help them run their sales teams and manage accounts.
But when a company does say, “Enough is enough…we need a modern CRM!”, the results can be startlingly impressive. This case study summarizes how Spinnaker Support’s implementation and managed services launched a global company from an outdated sales operation and into the Salesforce ecosystem to enable a customer 360 view.
“Spinnaker Support…We Have a Problem.”
Cobham Mission Systems (CMS), a global space and defense contractor, needed new sales management infrastructure to keep up with their frantic pace. With legacy systems lacking an enterprise and customer 360 perspective, CMS needed a modern customer-relationship-management (CRM) platform that would scale with their growing business.
They wanted a solution that would bring sales visibility and reporting consistency across their entire organization. The COVID-19 pandemic added urgency as the entire sales team was working remotely. This project needed to get done quickly.
CMS selected Spinnaker Support as the best implementation partner based on its aggressive agile approach and timeline, experienced team, and combined service offering of implementation and long-term support. The project included the standardization of sales processes across business units and geographies to facilitate consolidated pipeline tracking, executive reporting, and sales, inventory and operations planning processes (SIOP).
The Spinnaker Support Solution
Spinnaker Support and CMS established a six-week project timeline to deliver the refined minimum viable product (MVP). This aggressive global rollout required rapid stakeholder alignment, highly engaged business change champions, and a skilled and integrated team. “An amazing amount of experience came together to make it a very easy discovery period,” said Dione Fultz, Business Development & Strategy Operations Lead at CMS.
To meet the short timeframe required to complete the project, Spinnaker Support used an agile software development methodology. The team used project management and ticketing software to manage the sprints and track progress to coordinate the agile framework. The Spinnaker Support team conducted two build sprints, delivered remote global training to change champions and end-users, and deployed the finalized solution.
Quick Results and the Foundation for Success
The primary objective of the Sales Cloud project was to build a new CRM platform that would scale with CMS’s growing business and to create a foundation for a customer 360 view.
Key outcomes of the implementation project:
- A single data source to analyze global sales activities across the entire company
- New strategic business conversations that were not previously possible
- Clarity of the origination of future revenue, by channel
- Reduction of over 60 hours per month needed to create and manage pipeline reporting
- Lead tracking for multi-year deal cycles up to five years
Day-to-day process improvements:
- Real-time sales metrics (previously was monthly)
- Standardization of sales vernacular and processes
- Consistent use of data fields to create reliable pipeline reports
- Increased data hygiene and forecasting accuracy
- Consolidation of historical customer data
Finally, Continuous Salesforce Improvement Through Managed Services
CMS realized that, with no in-house Salesforce expertise, they would need ongoing assistance if they wanted to continuously improve their Salesforce environment. They decided to enlist Spinnaker Support’s managed services team for ongoing Salesforce development and management.
Every month, the Spinnaker Support team works with CMS to understand what stakeholders need from Salesforce for continuous improvement. The team then defines the solution architecture, reviews the proposed approach with CMS, and confirms release timing. A few weeks later, Spinnaker Support releases the planned features and enhancements, creating a best-in-class monthly update process.
This proactive approach to long-term support moves the business forward and allows CMS to rapidly adapt to changing business needs and requirements in the aerospace and defense industry.
“Because of the success we’ve experienced with Spinnaker Support, we are looking to move faster with adding new functionality. We have a lot of confidence in achieving our Salesforce goals because of our great relationship with Spinnaker Support,” said Fultz.
Read the entire case study to learn how Spinnaker Support quickly launched Sales Cloud for Cobham Mission Systems and continues to deliver Salesforce improvements on a monthly schedule.