Salesforce Powered Quote-to-Cash Innovation: Success Stories from Global Businesses

Stuck quotes, slow approvals, and piled-up invoices are common issues businesses face across industries, all wishing for a seamless and more efficient quote-to-cash (QTC) process.

Why QTC is Critical

For any sales operation, QTC is the backbone. This is where the initial quote to the final cash collection happens. A faster sales cycle, satisfied customers, and a rock-solid bottom line are the results of a streamlined QTC process.

This is where a robust technology stack like Salesforce comes into play. Salesforce is a world-class business automation enabler that comes with the proven benefits of curtailing the sales cycle, ensuring customer satisfaction with faster service, and boosting profit growth and ROI.

Read this article as we deep dive into real-world customer success stories where businesses have leveraged the power of Salesforce backed transformation to improve the efficiency of their business operations.

Success Story #1: Media SaaS Company Grows Sales Velocity

A major media SaaS business with $20+ million in revenues and 500+ employees faced a fragmented sales process due to reliance on Excel and Word for quotes and revenue management. This caused varied issues such as inconsistent discounts, multiple handoffs, resource-driven onboarding and billing operations, and more. While the client used Salesforce for managing the opportunities, the decision to store the product configurations and pricing data in Google Drive hampered their sales cycle and caused revenue loss mainly because approvals were not tracked and sales initiatives were disjointed.

Forsys, as a quote-to-cash solution expert, conducted a detailed review of the client’s existing processes and implemented a customized Salesforce CPQ and Billing solution, which successfully:

• Streamlined 90% of the business workflows through automation
• Fast tracked sales velocity by 80%
• Reduced deal cycle time by ~40%
• Improved upselling by ~19%
• Expedited quote generation by ~33%
• Cut down errors by ~38%
• Enhanced sales productivity by ~25%

While the impact was significant and immediate, the custom solution also streamlined their operations across different geographies, ensured 100% integration with JIRA & NetSuite for unified revenue processes, standardized the quote processes, automated the invoice generation, and implemented multi–level approval workflows.

Success Story #2: Manufacturing Company Boosts Sales Productivity

Next up is a speciality chemicals manufacturer based out of India. The company faced issues with their manual and outdated quote-to-cash (QTC) process, resulting in frequent errors. For the client, the lack of automation complicated the situation and made it more challenging due to the need for manually tracking inquiries, client assets, and machine defects.

Forsys, a Salesforce consulting partner, was roped in as the transformation partner. After thorough due diligence, a custom solution using the Salesforce Sales Cloud was designed that automated the client’s lead-to-quote process and integrated it with their ERP platform. This CRM solution provided end-to-end visibility into sales and business processes, optimized the customer service and approval workflows, and enhanced defect management. Also, the mobile capabilities ensured that the sales team successfully generated quotes despite being on the go.

The outcome:

• 44% growth in sales productivity
• 37% jump in their win rate for deals
• Improvement in customer retention
• More insights into sales performance

Success Story #3: Technology Business Grows Sales Efficiency

Data integrity and customer collaboration are critical in the technology and business consulting domain. A prominent data storage solutions provider encountered a series of issues related to customer engagement, data analytics, and maintenance of a holistic view of the customer interactions. Additionally, their decision-making and overall customer experience often fell short due to their community portal that didn’t allow easy search, self-service, and real-time reporting.

Forsys’ end-to-end quote-to-cash expertise and Salesforce solutions proved beneficial for the client. Forsys designed and implemented a custom solution using Salesforce Service Cloud and Community Cloud. It streamlined their sales and customer service and infused a fresh lease of life into their community experience.

Post the implementation, the outcome for the client has been remarkable.

• 36% more sales success
• 26% more deals closed
• 28% growth in sales revenue
• 38% better forecasting
• Improved community collaboration
• Quicker resolution of queries
• Lesser maintenance costs

Success Story #4: Research Services Business Revitalizes Support Mechanism

While efficiency and precision are the cornerstone of research services, a prominent player in this sector struggled to resolve customer queries and complaints promptly. Too much reliance on manual processes resulted in delays and poor customer experience. Additionally, complaints often went unresolved due to the lack of an automated system to capture, track, and analyze complaint data.

Forsys provided a Salesforce Service Cloud-based solution that automated the complete process, starting from case creation across different channels to automated responses and seamless internal communication. Also, MS Project Online and SAP were integrated to ensure data from different sources were easily accessible, resulting in the streamlining of operations further and offering real-time insights.

The client witnessed outstanding results:

• 27% lower support costs
• Improvement in E2E service process
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Unification of sales, service, & executive stakeholders
• Holistic service management

What Makes Salesforce QTC Work

Well, industry insiders claim the perfect combination of automation, integration, and world-class user experience make businesses rave about Salesforce QTC, it is designed on the world’s no #1 CRM platform. Here are its key features:

• Salesforce quote-to-cash includes CPQ, Billing, and lightning into a uniform, CRM-driven powerhouse. It ensures sales managers have complete control over their sales process, streamlining all the steps right from quote till cash.
• Automation is the name of the game. Salesforce QTC ensures that manual dependency is zero and all the steps are automated from quote generation to invoice collection, while maintaining accuracy and speed, curtailing errors and saving time.
• Salesforce QTC seamlessly integrates with all your platforms, be it ERP, or any other platform. This removes all the data silos, unifies the sales processes, that bolsters efficiency and collaboration between teams.
• Analytics is a critical component of Salesforce QTC as it enables organizations to keep a close watch on the performance, find the bottlenecks, and make continuous optimization of the QTC processes.
• Salesforce QTC’s mobile-first design ensures sales teams can generate quotes, track orders, and manage approvals while on the move.
• The intuitiveness and clean interface of Salesforce QTC allows your team to be more productive and spend less time on training, resulting in faster adoption and improved efficiency.
• Salesforce QTC’s built-in dashboard enables users to automate quotes and invoices, collect payments, manage subscriptions, adjust terms, and generate reports, simplifying the entire sales process.

Conclusion

Join the ranks of forward-thinking businesses by embracing the power of Salesforce QTC and watch your business grow by leaps and bounds.