October 25, 2017 | Andrew Lawlor

In just 3 months, Aptaria built a solution that connects 2 integral client processes, produces more leads, and saves employees’ time.

Challenge: Insufficient Marketing Tools and Third-Party CRM Licenses

Salon Plaza is a growing family of salon brands. To support ongoing development into more locations, the company planned to launch a series of email marketing campaigns. However, its old marketing platform could not handle large-scale data collection and analysis.

Managers knew that Salesforce could gather and organize customer information for the widespread recruiting push. In fact, the salon chain already used an operations system built on Salesforce—but it was dependent on third-party licences.

In December 2015, the company decided it was time to move to its own licensed Salesforce implementation.

As general manager Timothy H. explains, “We don’t just use Salesforce to manage relationships. It’s a key component our business. The transition from the old system to the new one had to be seamless.”

The team needed a certified Salesforce partner that could build new marketing and operations systems in a short time frame. They contacted Aptaria.

Solution: A Single Platform for Recruitment and Management

At Aptaria, once we absorbed Salon Plaza’s goals and challenges, we proposed a 2-pronged plan linked by one system:

Set up Pardot, Salesforce’s marketing tool, to manage email campaigns and strategically recruit stylists.
Migrate the company’s database onto Sales Cloud, to replace the third-party Salesforce operations system.

The client now owns its system’s Salesforce licenses. Employees no longer have to depend on an outside company to modify or protect the database. The new Salesforce CRM set-up offers all the functionality of the old one. Salon managers can send lease contracts and invoices to stylists.

Our team also devised a way to give Salon Plaza staff the access they need without expensive full Salesforce licenses. We built a Partner Community, allowing local managers and regional supervisors to organize daily operations on reduced-price community licenses.

Aptaria duplicated the clients’ processes with exacting attention to detail in a short period of time. As Timothy H. notes, “There are a lot of little behind-the-scenes pieces that need to work together each time you click a button to make it an easy process.”

Results: Better Prospects, Less Time on Sales Processes, and Only One Login

When Salon Plaza hit its set March deadline, all locations kept right on working in the new system—with no lost time or transition crises.

On both the recruitment and operations sides of the business, the client is now witnessing the benefits of Aptaria’s Salesforce implementation. Pardot produces reliable marketing intelligence and generates a pipeline of stylists that staff can count on.

Aptaria’s Sales Cloud solution greatly reduced the amount of time spent on paperwork. In the old system, administrators had to fill out many forms, field by field. Now they can simply select an individual customer, and Salesforce will automatically fill out the document. Instead of around 10 clicks, it takes just 2 clicks to create and send a contract.

General managers can organize themselves more effectively. The Partner Community gives regional supervisors the ability to coordinate faraway locations—without having to drive across states on a weekly or daily basis.

Most importantly, marketing and day-to-day operations systems can share information through Salesforce. As a contact becomes a prospect, and possibly a customer, the database continues to offer the most up-to-date, synchronized information about that individual. Not only does the marketing team have richer data to draw on, but the operations team can also save time with less data entry.

Before March 2016, staff had to create a new record in Salesforce each time a prospect (tracked through HubSpot) became a customer (tracked through Salesforce). With Aptaria’s solution, Salon Plaza can track an individual record through the sales cycle.

Moreover, employees sign in to only one system in order to work on both marketing and sales processes. “Simplicity for the user was the goal,” Timothy H. says. “Not having to log in to 2 different systems is a big deal for efficiency.”

Indeed, Timothy is pleased by both the business results and the implementation process itself: “Aptaria stayed on the timeline I needed to follow, and I really enjoyed my working relationship with them. They understood the vision we had and were able to execute it.”