Fagerhult Lighting builds Salesforce CRM, CPQ and Pardot with Tenacre
Fagerhult Lighting is one of the worlds leading producers of professional lighting technologies. Established in 1945 and with over 2,600 employees globally, Fagerhult operates across MENA via a regional sales office on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai.
Their sales process is via a network of channel partners such as lighting designers, architects, and contractors in the construction industry. Keeping track of sales pipeline value and maturity is a complex undertaking, as each project may have multiple quotations to various channel partners. Additionally, each quotation requires a carefully designed lighting solution where each product and component is correctly configured.
Fagerhult began working with Tenacre Group in 2015 to develop a highly customised Salesforce CRM solution to help manage their channel partner-focused sales effort.
CRM built for channel sales
One of the first challenges that Tenacre grappled with was the need to fundamentally change how the sales opportunities and quotations were handled in reports and forecasts. In a traditional sales model, each quotation that is issued is included in your forecast, as this represents a unique sales opportunity. But with Fagerhult's channel sales model, their channel partners (lighting designers, contractors, architects) are usually bidding against each other for the same projects.
This means that Tenacre had to customise Salesforce to split out 'Quotations' from 'Projects' so that the forecasts didn't include duplicated values.
The solution that was developed has enabled Fagerhult to see accurate sales forecasts in real time. The process of creating and issuing quotations has become faster, as a quotation for a specific project can now be 'cloned' and reissued to a second channel partner within seconds.
Managing products & technical Details
In a technical industry like lighting, managing the information on products is an essential element of the sales process. While consulting with customers, Fagerhult staff need to be able to recommend products that meet certain criteria such as light distribution or dimming.
This information is then used on all;
- Quotations
- Sales orders
- External goods orders to the Fagerhult factories around the world.
To meet these requirements, Tenacre used the standard Salesforce features (Products, Price Books), but customised them so that each product contains in-depth technical and sales data. Fagerhult has a product list of over 180,000 different items. The data points that Tenacre has built into Salesforce for Fagerhult has streamlined not only the sales process but also reduced delays and errors post-sales with the ordering and shipping.
Systems Integration
One of the key benefits of using Salesforce CRM is that it gives all employees a 360-degree view of a customer. For Fagerhult this was very important, but it required synchronising data from the Sage ERP platform into Salesforce.
Tenacre achieved this by creating the records for sales orders, invoices and other formats from Sage. The data contained within both platforms was then set up to sync at specific intervals and on specific triggers.
The value to Fagerhult of the ERP data being accessed in the CRM is that salespeople can view the progress of orders or back orders directly from their iPhones when they are out on site with their clients. From an operational perspective, the extensive products database that was created in Salesforce is now synced to the ERP. When deals are 'closed/won' in Salesforce, the order data is sent to the ERP with exact product and configurations specified.
CONFIGURE/ PRICE /QUOTE
('Salesforce CPQ')
Configuring complex lighting solutions is not straightforward, particularly when there are over 180,000 products and multiple bundles and configurations. There is a high probability of making a mistake in the solution configuration. When this happens it can cause serious problems with shipping the correct components, not to mention the impact on the profitability of the order.
To address this risk to their business, Fagerhult Lighting decided to implement Salesforce CPQ with Tenacre. Salesforce CPQ ('Configure - Price - Quote'), is a tool that applies hardwired configuration rules to all products to ensure that there are no mistakes being made. Secondly, it provides 'guided selling', so that the system automatically notifies the person creating the quotation if there's a better product or a product with has a better profit margin.
It's anticipated that Salesforce CPQ will have a significant impact on the quality of quotations being created, a reduction in configuration errors and most importantly, an increase in the profitability of all orders.
Pardot Marketing Automation
Fagerhult operates within a diverse customer case (contractors, architects, lighting designers etc.), and across a wide geographical region. It was decided to create a marketing automation programme to communicate to this large group of prospects and influencers. The solution that Tenacre deployed for Fagerhult was Pardot Marketing Automation. The Pardot platform is a Salesforce system and integrates into the existing Fagerhult CRM / CPQ platform.
Having switched to Pardot, Fagerhult was able to replace the various marketing tools that had been used, such as
- Mailchimp for email marketing
- Hootsuite for social posting
- Website CMS for landing pages
- Spreadsheets of email address for mailing lists
The marketing campaigns are now completely automated and integrated into the sales processes. These automated marketing programmes provide a steady stream of qualified, lead scored and graded leads for the sales team to work on.
Over time, the integrated Salesforce technologies (CRM, CPQ & Pardot) and integrated third-party applications (Sage ERP) extended across multiple business units within Fagerhult and even extended to external vendors. Tenacre and Fagerhult progressively automated tasks and actions once it became clear where tasks could actually be designed as a workflow within Salesforce. Some of the key automation that has been developed include,
- Approval processes for discounts on quotations are now completely automated and is controlled via messaging within Salesforce and the mobile app
- Purchase orders to factories are created automatically, and logically split out based on the product vendors when a sales opportunity is 'closed/won'
- When a 'Project' has been set up on Salesforce, all quotations to the channel partners automatically inherit all of the key information (preventing the need for data to be re-keyed). Existing quotations can be 'cloned' for a second channel sales partner in seconds