Karl Strauss Brewing Company Uses Salesforce.com and the AppExchange to Create a Custom Mobile Solution for its Field Sales Team
Karl Strauss Brewing Company Uses Salesforce.com and the AppExchange to Create a Custom Mobile Solution for its Field Sales Team
AppExchange applications help the brewery integrate back-office data within Salesforce for a single, centralized source for sales operations
SAN FRANCISCO — December 20, 2006 — Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Karl Strauss Brewing Company has customized its Salesforce SFA and Apex Mobile applications to meet the specific needs of its field sales teams. The brewery is also using partner applications from the AppExchange directory to integrate data from Microsoft Dynamics GP with Salesforce, creating a single, centralized source of customer data for sales operations. Applications available via the AppExchange directory are built using Apex, the world’s first on-demand platform.
Karl Strauss Brewing Company is one of the 27,100 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of October 31, 2006. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.
“Our company is successful and growing, and we were looking for a way to help our field reps transition from order takers to service and relationship managers; to take that extra step for our customers,” said John Snead, Director of Beer Operations at Karl Strauss Brewing Company. “AppExchange has allowed us to provide our field team with complete access to information they need — while in the field — to provide the best possible service. We’ve been able to create new selling opportunities because our reps have more flexibility and are empowered with a richer amount of customer knowledge to better define our customer needs.”
The brewery used the Apex platform to build and customize applications to suit its unique business needs and optimize sales operations. It customized Salesforce to track multi-leveled relationship information about current and potential beer customers including funnel-status for in-process opportunities, demographic profile data, potential volume, alcohol licensing status, geographic detail, and customer contact personal information. The company also developed a tailored application to track brewery vehicle repair and maintenance expenses, for comparison against territorial profitability and to identify areas for improved performance.
Additionally, the Apex mobile solution maximizes efficiency for the brewery’s field service representatives by allowing them to easily complete all necessary order forms via a Blackberry mobile device without changing screens. Within a matter of minutes, the account data is wirelessly transmitted to the home office, an order invoice number is assigned and all of the data is available in the Salesforce application.
To help integrate back-office data in Salesforce, Karl Strauss Brewing Company deployed partner applications from the AppExchange directory, including:
* Scribe Sales Order Component — extends the functionality of Salesforce to support order integration with ERP systems, enabling users to convert opportunities to orders and automatically pass those orders to the back office
* Scribe Insight for AppExchange — seamlessly integrates the Salesforce environment with existing on-premise third-party and custom applications in a simple, customizable, cost effective, and straightforward manner
* Salesforce Integration for Microsoft Dynamics GP — provides real-time integration of customers, products, orders, and invoices between Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Microsoft Great Plains)
“With Salesforce, our field team is more effective and business data is readily available for our sales, finance and management teams,” added Snead. “By integrating data across our organization, the Salesforce solution has enabled us to more accurately forecast our sales and manage our overall costs. It’s been a great success and key to growing our business.”
Applications available via the AppExchange directory are built using Apex, the world’s first on-demand platform. The Apex platform, formerly known as the AppExchange platform, is available today. As previously announced, the next release of the Apex platform is currently scheduled to be available in conjunction with the release of Winter ‘07, and the Apex programming language is currently scheduled to be available during the first half of 2007.
Filed under: Salesforce.com
