Travelex Provides Access to Real-Time Data

Managing Global Customer Accounts
Travelex is a global provider of foreign exchange and international payment solutions. The company operates in over 100 countries serving over 29 million customers. In 2001 Travelex acquired Thomas Cook Global & Financial Services and today employs approximately 6,000 people.

Brian Eagle-Brown is business manager for Travelex globally, reporting directly into the group's COO, Nicholas Page. Eagle-Brown's remit includes business development, process improvement, and acquisitions.

Travelex has grown rapidly from its original bureau de change operations and has maintained its reputation for customer service. However, a recent senior management conference concluded that a major barrier existed to continued rapid growth combined with great customer service—the absence of a global, real-time, consolidated customer database.

Travelex is regionally managed but globally coordinated. Different regions had adopted disparate Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) solutions including Siebel, Salesforce, GoldMine, and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. "As a result, we did not have a consolidated global view of corporate customers," comments Eagle-Brown. "Different regions could be dealing with the same customer, but the diversity of systems made it difficult to identify this interaction."

Collating data and developing global reports and forecasts took significant management and administration as well as sales time. "In addition, the data was less than accurate," says Eagle-Brown. The complexity of some of the existing systems meant that many salespeople were not using them properly. "Any CRM system is only as good as the data inputted. If it is too difficult to use, you have a problem."

Seamlessly Implemented Across Almost 100 Countries
Eagle-Brown was appointed global project leader to find a solution. The selection criteria included user adoption, ability to implement globally, short lead time, and total cost of ownership. "Rather than reinvent the wheel, it made sense to examine if we could expand what we already had," he says.
He initially conducted research amongst Travelex users of its existing CRM programmes. The most enthusiastic feedback came out of North America, which had implemented Salesforce. "Salespeople found Salesforce easy to use," said Eagle-Brown. "They could input data offline. Administration time on reporting was minimal, as they only had to input data once. Salespeople like to be selling or be with the customer—they don't like sitting at their desks filling in reports."

At the same time, Eagle-Brown implemented a major cost-benefit analysis programme, looking at total cost of ownership from implementation and licensing to IT maintenance and support. "Again Salesforce came out top because of its business model," comments Eagle-Brown. Salesforce provides the power of enterprise-class CRM software as an on-demand Web service for a monthly subscription per user.

Because Salesforce was Web based, it made it much easier and quicker to implement across the Travelex network. "The thought of implementing a traditional client/server solution across five continents was daunting in terms of internal resource, cost, consultancy, and lead time," says Eagle-Brown.

Following tenders from the major vendors, Travelex selected Salesforce Enterprise Edition for an initial 305 users. Enterprise Edition includes Offline Edition, which enables users to update contacts on a plane, in a coffee shop, or anywhere there is no Internet access. Data is then synchronised at the click of a button once the Internet is available again.

No Hidden Costs
"The beauty of a solution like Salesforce is that you know exactly what you're going to pay for," comments Eagle-Brown. "There are no hidden costs in terms of ongoing maintenance, hardware, software, or hosting. Indeed there are significant cost savings in terms of ongoing maintenance, support, and upgrades—all of which are free to customers."

Salesforce was implemented in three months across Travelex divisions on five continents. One of the benefits of a Web-based solution is that it is customised centrally, which provides a consistent picture across the globe. "We achieved in a short time frame and very cost effectively one of our key objectives, which was a consolidated, real-time, customer database," says Eagle-Brown. This has major advantages not only in terms of customer service but also in revenue potential. Time to market in rolling out new products has been significantly reduced.

"We now know who our major global customers are, whereas before it was difficult to identify this across regions and across different CRM systems," continues Eagle-Brown. "We now also have a much more coordinated approach to our key global customers."

Time spent on consolidated reporting and forecasting has been axed. "Senior managers can see what's going on anywhere in the world and get a consolidated global view of our business in minutes," says Eagle-Brown. "In the past it would take weeks to access similar information and you could not rely on its accuracy."

Travelex is making use of the cases facility in Salesforce, which boosts customer service and response times. "Sharing of information between sales and service means that salespeople can be part of the solution, and this makes them look smarter and more responsive to their customers," says Eagle-Brown.

Travelex is also starting to implement the marketing campaign tools in the system. "The beauty of Salesforce is that it can be as comprehensive or as stripped down as you need," says Eagle-Brown. "You can have an A to B saloon car, but you don't need armies of outside consultants or engineers to turn it into a Ferrari."

Source: http://www.salesforce.com/customers/financial-services/case-studies/travelex.jsp

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Konica Minolta Uses On-Demand Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) Solutions

Konica Minolta is an organisation in motion. Its European head office is located at Langenhagen in Germany. Konica Minolta provides printing solutions for the business market, working closely with its own sales offices and several partners. Products reach end-users via distributors and resellers. Konica Minolta is a growing organisation with subsidiaries in countries including Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the Benelux.

Requirements for a new Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) solution

The previous CRM solution at Konica Minolta no longer met the company's wishes and requirements. It was being used only for service and support but there was a great desire to expand the package to use it for marketing and sales purposes. Konica Minolta: “Our inventory of the requirements which we wanted a new CRM system to meet revealed a number of criteria - among other things we wanted a system that could be developed and implemented quickly. It also had to integrate with ERP. What's more, we were keen to keep investment costs low, to be able to implement the system in several countries and to burden our IT department as little as possible.”

Konica Minolta strives to become a more service-minded company with service provisioning within sales processes. To achieve this goal Konica Minolta need a detailed insight into customer data. Using on-demand solutions enables Konica Minolta to move towards supplying more solution-driven products and services - it is the most effective way to give the sales process greater added value.

Choosing the right partner: salesforce.com

"It was an intensive effort to find the right partner for a new CRM solution", says Konica Minolta. “We started by looking into the on-premise products of various providers but soon discovered that we preferred the speed and flexibility of an on-demand solution.

Salesforce.com was clearly the provider best able to support our processes. In July 2006 we implemented Salesforce within our sales department, taking just three months to complete. The definitive version has been running since October 2006 and we are now able to monitor sales processes continuously and have improved them significantly. We noticed that we preferably also wanted support within our servicing and support department. Within just one year salesforce.com was additionally able to deliver this for us in the form of Salesforce Call Centre, so in that respect too we have found a fully-fledged partner.” In Europe Konica Minolta uses the Salesforce SFA product to support its sales, marketing and servicing departments. Konica Minolta has also implemented the Force.com Sandbox, a test environment for testing new features and customisations that do not make any demands on the capacity of the production CRM system. Separating the test area from the CRM system avoids potential problems capable of disrupting the business process, enabling Konica Minolta to innovate quickly and efficiently. Konica Minolta uses premier support from salesforce.com, which means remote support of the very highest service level.

Additionally, Konica Minolta uses salesforce.com’s partner relationship management solution, Salesforce PRM, to support the indirect channel. “We chose salesforce.com for numerous reasons. The most important one was that it took only a short time to implement the CRM system. Moreover, the initial investment costs for the system are low”, says Konica Minolta. “All the IT activities necessary to manage the system are carried out by salesforce.com without us having to get involved. There is no burden at all on our own IT department. Through our cooperation with salesforce.com we have in effect gained a complete servicing organisation.”

As with all large enterprises, Konica Minolta deploy a variety of software packages and one of the deciding factors to engage with salesforce.com was the possibility to seamlessly integrate with all software currently in use. In due course Konica Minolta wants a complete solution that integrates all its software across Europe. Commenting on the benefits of the multi-tenant model provided by Salesforce which allows companies to receive regular automatic product upgrades with no disruption to the business, Konica Minolta said “Our experience is that salesforce.com issues new versions a number of times each year. We naturally manage our own processes within our sales department.

The IT department of salesforce.com is not involved in this matter. We don't seek the assistance of a partner unless it starts to become technical.” Business benefits after implementation As Konica Minolta has partnered with Salesforce, the company possesses an on-demand CRM solution that can grow in step with its business. Compared with the previous system, there are far greater possibilities for combining information, so there are also greater reporting capabilities. What's more, thanks to the on-demand concept, Konica Minolta employees now have round-the-clock access via the Internet to complete customer information. “Sometimes we need specific solutions for an issue within our CRM application”, says Konica Minolta.

“When this occurs we frequently use salesforce.com's partners. Salesforce.com has built up an enormous partner network over the years so the solution is never far away. Salesforce.com likes brainstorming with us and puts forward suggestions regarding partners.” For example, Konica Minolta is keen to learn more about the ins and outs of interconnecting its ERP system with other applications. “For advice on this matter we enlist the help of salesforce.com partners.” The AppExchange has become an important source for Konica Minolta as they use various applications easily deployed with just a few click including Advanced Professional e-marketing and the Advanced Management Data Tool. “As integration is one of the unique advantages of Salesforce, we are eager to see what other developments might also be possible in the future. We are thinking for example of managing invoicing by means of a salesforce.com application”, says Konica Minolta.

“For the time being we will continue monitoring the deployment of the current project together with the customer success managers of salesforce.com. Konica Minolta and salesforce.com attach utmost importance to achieving a high degree of acceptance by users – after all, they are the people who use the new system, which makes them the project's key success factor.”

Source: http://www.salesforce.com/customers/hi-tech-software/case-studies/konica_minolta.jsp

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Citigroup to Install Customer Relationship Management (顧客關係管理) Product from Salesforce

The San Francisco customer relationship management (顧客關係管理)software provider Salesforce.com Inc. has completed its biggest sale to date, to Citigroup Inc.

The vendor announced the sale last week during a conference call to discuss its earnings for its fiscal third quarter, which ended Oct. 31.

"We believe this is the largest and most important CRM agreement of 2007, and our largest deal ever," Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's chairman and chief executive, said during the call.

Citi has plans to have about 30,000 financial advisers use Salesforce.com's "financial adviser desktop" application. Mr. Benioff said Citi is his company's fifth customer with 25,000 or more subscribers. The others are Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Japan Post, Dell Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc.

The banking market is an important target for Salesforce.com, he said. Citi "is not the only transaction we signed in the financial services industry" in recent months. "We're seeing a lot of purchasing there, obviously, as well."
Salesforce.com's revenue for the quarter rose 48% from a year earlier, to $193 million. Its net income ballooned to $6.5 million, from just $339,000 a year earlier.

The figures do not reflect any revenue from Citi. Mr. Benioff said his company will begin receiving revenue from that deal when Salesforce.com hits specific goals, and that it expects to hit them this quarter.

"The revenue is ratable over the life of the agreement and is incremental," he said.

For the full fiscal year, Salesforce.com expects to report earnings of 12 to 13 cents a share on revenue of $737 million to $739 million. For the current quarter, it expects earnings of 3 to 4 cents a share on revenue of $206 million to $208 million.

Steve Cakebread, Salesforce.com's chief financial officer, said that it expects its revenue to top $1 billion in the next fiscal year.

"Our No. 1 priority will be continuing to grow," he said. "We are executing on our strategy of growing our installed base accounts, along with a strong pipeline that once again brought us an excellent mix of new business."
Salesforce.com is investing in its global sales capacity, Mr. Cakebread said. The international market "remains mostly untapped."

The company said it will provide more detailed guidance for the next fiscal year when it announces its fourth-quarter earnings in February.

In addition to earnings and customer wins, Mr. Benioff also highlighted the stability of his company's technology.

"During the third quarter our system availability exceeded 99.98%, a remarkable achievement when you consider that our transaction volume now frequently exceeds 125 million transactions per day," he said.

Salesforce.com's fiscal third-quarter transaction volume doubled from a year earlier, to 8 billion. "There is no greater measure of success than customers actively using our system," Mr. Benioff said.

Still, the company did not avoid analyst scrutiny over its security. In a letter to customers posted online this month, it admitted to a breach caused when an employee fell for a phishing scam.

"A phisher tricked someone into disclosing a password, but this intrusion did not stem from a security flaw in our application or database," the letter said.
The phisher got a list of names, employer names, e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers for Salesforce.com users and used the contact details to send fake invoices to its users, some of whom were duped, the company said. A second wave of phish e-mails included malicious software that could log keystrokes.

Mr. Benioff told analysts last week that there were phishing attacks "on less than 1% of our customers, and we have not seen any change in business because of these attacks."

Nonetheless, Salesforce.com said it is installing new technology, beginning this week, to protect itself against such scams.

Christine Barry, a research director at Aite Group LLC of Boston, said that Salesforce.com's success reflects growing interest in customer relationship management products, particularly in the banking industry. "Banks are focusing a lot more on cross-selling and better understanding their customers."Though Citi is a big customer to have, the interest extends beyond the top-tier banking companies, she said. "That's a trend from the largest financial institution down to the smallest. There's just a lot of emphasis lately on growing revenues."

Source: SourceMedia, Inc.


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