Data Display Systems Case Study

Alias Case Study

Data Display Systems

Version 1; 12/15/20

Salesforce Maximizer Delivers

Quick ROI for Tech Sales Team

STORY

When Sales Transparency Is Critical

Like many CEOs of medium-sized business services companies, Bob Gatta of Philadelphia-based Data Display Systems felt his Salesforce ROI was falling short of expectations. The company’s sales team members, managers, and Bob himself had been using Salesforce for several years without significant gains in reporting efficiency, sales transparency, or actionable insights into how to better manage projects through the sales funnel.

However, a casual meeting at a Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce event sparked a Salesforce CRM conversation that would have an immediate impact on Data Display’s sales staff productivity. At that event, Bob met Chris Dohl, CEO of The Alias Group, a Salesforce CRM consulting company in Delaware specializing in optimized sales processes. Bob expressed to Chris his frustrations with finding affordable Salesforce consulting, and Chris explained that Alias offered a suite of Salesforce optimization services that deliver quick turnarounds on a budget.

For instance, the Salesforce Maximizer Service by The Alias Group is a Salesforce sales process assessment tool that enhances the efficiency of sales teams almost immediately. Salesforce Maximizer delivers ROI on Salesforce subscriptions by exploiting functionality that keeps clients, leads, and contacts and moving through opportunity stages—and to close.

Bob Gatta explained that he was never fully satisfied with the dashboard metrics or the reporting outputs that Salesforce provided. The common refrain in many companies is: “We’ll clean up Salesforce when we have time.” Of course, that time never comes, because system administrators’ other day-to-day activities are constant distractions. There’s just no denying that time and effort are required to keep Salesforce optimized and reporting functions up-to-date. Finally, Bob had to admit: “We’re not getting enough out of Salesforce.”

STRATEGY

More Usable Data for Data Display

From The Alias Group’s point of view, Chris Dohl was glad to have a client who both recognized the shortfalls they faced and who was prepared to present their most pressing goals. Data Display presented Alias with an intricate list of dashboard metrics and reporting requests that would provide up-to-the-minute transparency across the entire company, from the frontline sales staff to the CEO. In a little over four weeks, Alias addressed all of the company’s requests and instituted new Salesforce Dashboard and Reporting functions that achieved Data Display’s goals.

Data Display Systems’ engineers develop electronic systems for point-of-purchase display systems. These are often custom products that have to balance the goals of the installation with the budget of the client. The sales processes and progress expectations can vary depending on the size and sophistication of the display system project, from as short as 10 days to as long as 18 months.

With Salesforce, CEO Bob Gatta wanted to gain greater visibility into how the company’s sales processes were actually achieving, or not achieving, their sales targets. “CRMs are great at looking backwards,” Bob explains, “but not always good at projecting forwards.”

Among the knowledge Bob hoped to gain with an optimized Salesforce were:

Actual Hit and Close ratios
The time projects spent in sales “stages”
Sales insights broken down by size of project
Projection reporting to manage staff and resources

The first items Alias addressed were initiating new rules of reporting so that everyone in the sales department would be notified of events when they happen. This increased functionality also included adding “triggers” that push key sales activities and opportunity stages along as well. Previously, staff would get bogged down with time-consuming tasks like manually updating Salesforce fields, prioritizing tasks, and assembling progress reports.

The Alias Group also recognized that extracting the most useful insights had been difficult because Data Display defined too many stages inside Salesforce. Alias reduced the 25 sales stages down to eight, instantly making it easier to input sales data and output projection reports. The secondary benefits were better dashboard functions, automated field updates and reminders, and reporting that provided actionable insights.

Alias also parsed out reporting summaries to provide the actual sales “macro” close ratios in four “buckets” based on project size: Up to $50K; $50K to $100K; $100K to $200K; over $200K. This reporting answered a critical question Bob always had: “How much time does an order stay in each bucket stage before it is moved forward, closed, or lost?”

SUCCESS

Accessible Data is Useful Data

The new status dashboards, sales timelines, and progress reports for Data Display automatically combine variables to provide more accessible metrics. These metrics in turn predict how many opportunities the company needs to create each week to keep the sales pipeline full. What Bob used to call “back-of-envelope” projections are now provided by Salesforce using real data. And now he can concentrate on a bigger question: “Where are we looking for new leads?”

Data Display’s CEO Bob Gatta was glad to find Alias because, as he discovered, no salesforce consulting companies in the Mid-Atlantic were offering what Alias was offering. That is, a quick and cost-effective way to improve all the critical functions of Salesforce and maximize sales staff efficiency.

After the first initial implementation of Alias’ Salesforce Maximizer service, Bob relayed his immediate Salesforce benefits in a quick email: “Just wanted to say how thankful I am for all the work you guys are putting into Salesforce! When I logged in this morning, I was amazed to see a dashboard that provided real data! I’m sure there’s a lot to go over—but I wanted to take this opportunity to say Thank You!”

VISUALS

Dashboards
Report details, Buckets
Stages from 25 to 8
Automated field updates