December 05, 2011 | Andrew Lawlor

Aptaria worked with a top audio/video hardware maker to implement a custom Salesforce CRM solution that removed numerous hurdles in the sales process while providing a complete picture of the customer.

Problem: Sales Process Inefficiency

For years many movies, TV shows, albums, and commercials have relied on Avid’s innovative digital audio and video technology. Until recently, however, Avid had a decidedly low-tech approach to managing its sales process and customer relationships. Its 200+ sales reps had only limited knowledge about customers when they called, as most customer interactions were never captured in a central system.

Further adding to the sale team’s headaches, each customer-facing quote had to be created from scratch. This was especially problematic given that Avid products have lots of options but can only be sold with certain feature combinations. The manual quoting process often led to invalid combinations and “unsellable” quotes.

Finally, when customers were ready to buy, the fulfillment team had to retype all product and customer information from the quote into a sales order in SAP, Avid’s ERP software. This led to frequent errors and delayed order processing, and therefore frustrated customers and staff.

Action: Salesforce CRM Implementation & SAP Integration

Aptaria collaborated with the Avid team to document processes, gaps, and opportunities. It then designed and implemented a complete Salesforce-based CRM solution featuring:

360 degree view of the customer. When a customer calls, sales and service staff can now quickly see all of that customer’s prior touch points on one screen.
“Clone-able” quoting. When prospects have the same requirements, sales reps can now create identical, repeatable quotes in a few clicks.
Quote-to-order integration. When a customer signs a quote, all information from that quote is now automatically injected into a sales order in SAP – no re-keying required.

Result: Faster Path to Revenue

Aptaria’s Salesforce.com solution has led to major wins for Avid’s business, including:

Quote accuracy increased significantly and the number of “unsellable” quotes dropped to nearly zero.
Sales and service reps now spend much less time on tedious, repetitive tasks such as re-entering quote information. This has led to lower staffing costs, higher team morale, and more focus on revenue-generating activities.
Quote injection into SAP has allowed Avid to realize sales revenue approximately 1 week earlier than before CRM implementation.