08/11/2017 | Hardis Group
The French medical technologies specialist is deploying a customer information system based on Salesforce technologies to cover the whole sales process from making initial contact through to monitoring repair requests.
Hardis Group, a consultancy firm, digital services company and independent software vendor, is helping medical technologies specialist Acteon Group to implement a customer information system based on Salesforce technological components. Today, a quarter of the group's employees use the deployed solutions to monitor sales activity, consult customer histories (orders, invoices, after-sales requests, etc.), administer sales and manage repair requests.
Centralize customer data from initial contact through to after-sales service
French medical technologies specialist Acteon Group develops, produces and distributes products for dentists and surgeons under the brands Satelec, Sopro, de Götzen, Prodont and Pierre Rolland (ultrasound equipment, instruments and consumables for dentistry as well as dental and medical imaging systems). The company has five industrial sites in France, Germany and Italy. With 800 employees at its head office in Mérignac (near Bordeaux), 26 offices and subsidiaries and its international distribution network, Acteon Group operates in over a hundred countries.
Taking over the helm of Acteon as CEO in October 2014, Marie-Laure Pochon launched a project in spring 2015 to provide the group with a customer information system. The aims were to improve knowledge of customers, have a tool for managing the sales activity more efficiently, share customer information among the different departments in contact with them (sales, sales administration, telemarketing, after-sales, etc.) and unify processes (sales and after-sales) to increase customer satisfaction and the business portfolio.
Salesforce was chosen for its ability to cover requirements which go beyond managing the customer database and business opportunities. The decision was also made to receive support from an integrator specializing in Salesforce solutions. Bluetis, which is now part of Hardis Group, was chosen for its geographical proximity (also located in Mérignac) and benefits in terms of being able to deploy the first phase of the project within a matter of weeks.
Deployment of a customer information system fully based on Salesforce components
At the end of September 2015, the first component in the customer information system was implemented. In just one month in the United States and Canada, and three months in France, the customer database was transferred to Salesforce and the initial data from Sage and M3 ERPs could be accessed by Acteon Group's sales forces. "As the first project was carried out according to our expectations, despite our demanding timescale, we decided to continue working with Bluetis", explained Olivier Blanc, Acteon Group's digital director.
Since then, the functional scope of the solution has continuously expanded: tighter integration with ERPs to view the progress of deliveries and the whole order history, sales administration, event and training management and telemarketing campaign management when there is no salesperson. The geographical scope, which was initially limited to teams based in France and North America, has expanded to those in Benelux, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Since December 2017, it has been the turn of the after-sales service in the five factories to be integrated with the Salesforce platform with a component (Service Cloud) enabling them to respond to equipment repair requests, draw up a quote, loan equipment and monitor the progress of the repair. For this project, Hardis Group teams helped Acteon Group employees to formalize their processes and developed a specific feature to enable technicians to create quotes directly using Salesforce. "Eventually, we would like this quote creation function directly in the tool, combined with electronic signature, or rolled out to salespeople", explained Olivier Blanc.
But the Acteon Group is not planning to stop there. A customer portal project, using Community Cloud, is being developed to facilitate the exchange of documents and information with customers (orders, invoices, after-sales requests, etc.). In the coming months, a new component will be added to the platform to manage calls (telemarketing and after-sales), as well as a system for automating satisfaction surveys. Repair management will be rolled out to subsidiaries.
