SmartMoney Projects 570 Percent Return on Investment in First Three Years on Salesforce CRM

Challenge

• SmartMoney, a Hearst Corporation and Dow Jones & Company media organization, needed a single centralized CRM application
• A handful of disparate, individual applications such as Excel and ACT! were used to access and collect customer information
• Without accurate and comprehensive data, users lacked a long-term view of the sales pipeline and had no easy way to forecast sales
• SmartMoney wanted to avoid the upfront costs and implementation burden of an in-house, on-premise software rollout

Solution

• After evaluating Relationals, SmartMoney selected Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition for its scalability and functionality
• With help from Salesforce.com Consulting, the company easily swapped out ACT! and other applications with Salesforce CRM in just a few weeks
• Microsoft Outlook integration enables users to view information in dashboards and access Salesforce CRM directly from their e-mail client
• Salesforce.com Training & Certification provided training, ensuring users get the most from the CRM solution
• Custom tabs quickly tailor Salesforce CRM to reflect SmartMoney’s actual sales processes
• Real-time reports and dashboards encourage users to forecast revenues more regularly

Results

• SmartMoney achieved payback in less than two months after deploying Salesforce CRM
• The organization projects a 570 percent return on investment in its first three years using the cloud-computing CRM solution
• Increased sales follow improved pipeline visibility and faster and easier access to vital information
• Centralized information and reporting dramatically reduce the time needed to analyze data and develop sales reports
• Timely and accurate data empower management with better short- and long-term forecasting
• By automating manual processes, the company can now focus resources on maximizing opportunities