Sharp Electronics (Sharp Middle East & Africa) in Dubai builds CRM on Salesforce, optimised for 'channel sales'
The Business Solutions Division at Sharp Electronics in Dubai hired Tenacre to replace their legacy CRM platform with a bespoke system built on Salesforce. The new system was designed from the ground up to meet Sharp's sales and reporting processes.
One of the core feature's of this CRM is that it's designed for selling via channel partners such as integrators, logistics companies and OEM businesses rather than directly with the end user.
Designing a bespoke solution
Sharp made the decision to upgrade their CRM to Salesforce as their legacy system didn't fit well with their sales processes. The specific issues that the Salesforce upgrade with Tenacre were targeted to fix included
- Improved data quality
- Speed of creating quotations
- Improvements to sales forecasting based on a channel sales model
- Speed & automation of approval processes (such as discounting)
- Enable all salespeople with mobile solutions for their smart phones and tablets
- Ongoing user support and continuous development of the CRM
Tenacre focused heavily on 'process mapping' the marketing and sales activities in detail. The design meetings captured detailed 'current state' and 'future state' requirements. This information was then used in the System Design Documents which the Tenacre development team used to build the initial beta versions of Salesforce.
Customised for Channel Sales Forecasting
Sharp Electronics sells via a partner network of resellers and distributors across the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia regions. It's common that multiple partners will request a quotation for the same project.
Tenacre customised the CRM so that salespeople can create a single project with multiple quotations while retaining control over an accurate sales forecast. Levering our experience in similar projects that use Channel Sales CRM features, Tenacre built in additional workflows and time saving devices to make the sales process easier to handle, and the sales reports more accurately reflect the true value of the sales pipeline.
Each project contains multiple quotations, with the true project value reflected in the sales pipeline.
Sharp Electronics salespeople use the Salesforce mobile app as well as via their laptops.
Beta Testing with Agile PM
The Sharp & Tenacre team agreed that the CRM should be delivered using an Agile project management methodology.
This in effect meant that the Sharp sales & sales-administration teams were actively involved in the solution development from the beginning. As the Tenacre developers released modules of the CRM, the Sharp team tested and provided feedback in real time.
This agile method of working resulted in the CRM being released early and bug free due to the amount of testing that was undertaken prior to its release.
Process Automation
Built in approval processes for quotations and automatic quotation document creation via a single button click
Speed and efficiency were two of the required outcomes from the new Salesforce platform. Tenacre has built in a series of of workflow automations such as approval processes (pricing terms etc.), document creation (quotations, proposals) and automated alerts to users when that are triggered at key events such as a deal closing or a quotation expiring.
The process automation in the Sharp Electronics Salesforce platform has been one of the key drivers to achieving significant improvements in the speed and quality of proposals, approvals and reports for the sales and sales-management teams.
Onsite Salesforce training at Sharp Electronics.
Training & Support
Tenacre provides ongoing support to Sharp Electronics and each of their salespeople. The annual support agreement follows multiple training sessions that were undertaken at the Sharp Electronics building in Jebel Ali Free Zone.
The training provided to the team included user training for sales and sales administration teams, and basic system administration.
Tenacre and Sharp Electronics are also committed to continuous development of the CRM platform to keep pace with the evolution of the Sharp Electronics sales processes and business model.
“The upgrading of our CRM was identified as a strategically important project for Sharp Middle East & Africa (SMEF). Having considered multiple technology vendors, we selected the Salesforce Sales Cloud based on the experience and capability of our consultants, Tenacre Group here in Dubai.
The Tenacre team was obviously highly skilled from a technical and project management perspective, and this gave us a high degree of comfort that we were working with great partners. More importantly, Tenacre were unique in their understanding of our sales processes. They have worked with other companies that also have an indirect or channel model. They were able to guide us to include features and enhancements that have proven to be highly valuable in creating automation and significant improvements in the speed of creating and approving quotations.
The team at Tenacre have been great partners, and we would recommend them to any company that is considering a Salesforce CRM implementation in Dubai. ”