Configero

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the VP of sales for a trucking company. We're a truckload asset carrier based in the Southeast. We have around 750 trucks, and about 3,500 trailers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Configero

Previously, there was very little visibility of sales activities and results.  We needed a CRM to add visibility and have a tool that would better enable us to effectively manage the sales team. We needed a better way to determine what they are doing each day in terms of activities, have an accurate view of our pipeline, measure how effective they are with closing deals, and also have a better way to measure results.  We also needed a pricing request tool, which we created with the help of Salesforce and Configero, to use for all customer rate requests.  All requests for pricing/rates start and end with this tool which helped control document integrity. It also automated the rate confirmation and contract document signing and storage processes.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The pricing request process of salespeople within the company had been very manual and involved a lot of emails back and forth, manual document imaging, and document integrity was an issue. We sign contracts on a very regular basis with customers, and the control of the documents needed improvement.  With Salesforce, in coordination with DocuSign, Configero was able to create a tool within Salesforce to tighten up our processes.  It's now very efficient and effective. All pricing requests are stored for each customer, and all associated signed rate agreements and other contract documents can be accessed with ease.  In addition, all internal communication regarding individual pricing requests is stored as well. We can immediately research customers and review the history of any account and review past pricing decisions.

What is the team composition?

We had one main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Configero?

Salesforce led us to Configero. At the time, they had a history of dealing with transportation. When we were describing what we needed, it was not completely foreign to them, and we didn't have to describe the trucking industry to them.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested approximately $30,000. For what we've asked them to do, it has been very cost-effective.  Long-term, it will save us countless hours and prevent numerous errors. The ROI is hard to quantify in some areas, but just with automating document imaging processes, we will see an immediate return that will justify the expense in well under one year.  There are countless other benefits that we will derive from establishing accurate customer lists, customer contact information, and having the ability to view historical information about each account with the existing sales team and especially for new employees in the future who won’t have to start from zero.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in August 2018, and our relationship is ongoing. We still have some tweaks we would like to make and should have most of them wrapped up in another month.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They've been able to do exactly what we've asked of them. Since we've only been up and running recently, I've just started to keep track of sales calls and customers' pricing requests they enter, the revenue growth, and the addition of new customers. There are no metrics for win percentages yet, but that will be coming along with many other KPIs.

We had very little visibility into what salespeople were doing on a day to day basis. We manage people by results, but if the results aren't there, we want to take a look at the activities. They did a nice job of accommodating our company's needs, especially with the pricing request tool. It was a complicated piece we were able to get up and running in a very short amount of time, especially since it was an entirely home-built process and program within Salesforce. It wasn't a small project by any means.

How did Configero perform from a project management standpoint?

We found it helpful to meet face-to-face while looking at the screens, rather than talking back and forth on email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their in-depth knowledge of Salesforce is immeasurable. It was very impressive how in tune they were with the Salesforce technology and its capabilities.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to always be prepared in order to utilize their time wisely so you don't waste your resources. IT hours are expensive, and my suggestion would be to constantly be mindful of the large differences between “Like to Have” items vs. “Need to Have” items. If you're not careful, you can end up spending a lot more money than you've intended to.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of business engineering for a company that manufactures and sells nuclear safety equipment. I’m responsible for our global operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Configero?

We have at least 10 ERP systems across the country, so we needed to be able to pull information out of each of those for new orders and invoices. We reached out to Configero to create a data warehouse that combined our SalesForce instances and ERPs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We originally started working with Configero to do some Sales Force work for us, but then moved to building the information warehouse and fleshing out the data housed within it. In order to do that, they had to configure each of those systems to map to appropriate fields.

From there, they helped us to design was of leveraging the information that we pulled out of those systems by creating an inventory of the data and connecting it to our accounts receivable invoices.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager who I requested, and a few other teammates working on various aspects of the project. They have one person in charge of ETL work, one handling the mapping of that using Jitterbit, and then we have one of our team members doing reporting out of the warehouse.

How did you come to work with Configero?

They helped with Salesforce implementation in our Atlanta location and then were brought in when we were looking at combining our Salesforce instances. We liked the work they had done previously as well as the proposal for the warehouse that they had put together, so we decided to hire them for the project.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe the working capital for the project is around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working on this project with them in August 2018, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve been trying to improve our working capital for quite a few years now without success, including several partnerships with consultants who didn’t deliver the improvement that we wanted. I went out on a bit of a limb and told my boss that I thought that we had a lot of the information that we could leverage already.

Because of the work done by Configero, I’ve been able to not only deliver those improvements but allow people to drill in on the details associated with that. Just having the baseline ability to track the direction of our data has really pleased the executives at our company.

How did Configero perform from a project management standpoint?

We met once a week throughout the project. Management was a pretty big weakness on our side, and it took us a while to find a rhythm on that, but since I requested a second project manager, we have done a great job staying on track. They do a great job of keeping us updated on the project’s status so that we can stay on top of our side of the work as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really feel like we’re on the same team. Configero has stepped up to the plate on every deadline, no matter how much we put the pedal to the metal, and we really appreciate the commitment to our success that they’ve demonstrated. They do a fantastic job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think that the issues with communication we had at first were a result of miscommunications from our side of the project, so I don’t think there’s anything specific that I wish they would do differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My only advice would be that if you don’t have the bandwidth to aggressively manage the project on your own, insist on a good project manager. It will be worth the investment.

BACKGROUND

Please provide a brief description of what your company does?

We do mobile implementation in terms of the enterprise. We target the enterprise of Fortune 1000 companies and we implement mobility. We work with Apple products, Samsung tablets, Panasonic tablets, whatever the client needs. We have partnerships with a lot of the major hardware providers. We then add our value through the services and management we offer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main objective when starting the project with Configero?

We started with Configero as our developers at the point of integration, and we chose Salesforce as our new CRM tool. We looked for a local development company that could help us get up and running. They were engaged from the initial project and are still our developers. It has probably been one-and-a-half to two years. 

How did you originally discover and choose Configero to work with?

At the time, the manager who I reported to was under operations management. We were looking to upgrade our CRM tool from an inflexible platform to one that would be cloud-based. We have remote sales reps who need to access the network without having to go through multiple steps. Salesforce was a solution to maintain our CRM in the cloud so that our local or remote users would be able to input their information from their pipeline to their forecasts. They used it to manage their contacts and leads.

Why did you choose Salesforce instead of other platforms such as SugarCRM or Microsoft Dynamics?

I think a lot of that had to do with our current partners at the time; our biggest partner was a hardware company that was on Salesforce. We looked at the partnership and wanted to find some commonalities around the tools and platforms we were using. Salesforce offers the partner portal or the ability to connect and transmit data via the cloud to your partners. That was a big plus.

SOLUTION

Can you tell me more about the work Configero has done?

When we first implemented Salesforce, there were some out-of-the-box functionalities. If you look at Salesforce now, a lot of those needs have been met with some standard functionalities. In 2010, some of those were not available. We engaged Configero to customize, namely our quoting and forecasting processes. Those were the first two projects that Configero aided us in terms of tightening up our processes and more importantly, our data quality.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How do you feel about the work they’ve done so far?

We still continue to engage Configero. They know our SalesForce organization very well, probably the best. We haven’t really engaged many other developers. We have looked at a few applications and had a little bit of development work done through those. If it was something that wasn’t available, Configero has the know-how and the response time to really meet our needs and requirements.

How do you feel about Salesforce as a platform so far?

As the admin, I couldn’t ask for a better CRM tool. However, I haven’t really used other CRM tools that compete with SalesForce. So far, so good. I would not change the CRM tool we’re currently using.

When working with Configero, is there anything unique about them compared to other developers or consultants that you’ve worked with?

I think the relationship is what continues to extend our business with Configero. I believe their IT director, Alex, has made a great impression internally with our management team. We are impressed with his knowledge, know-how, experience, and drive to ensure that their customers are successful. I think they're aware that if their customers are successful, then they also will be successful. They're very mindful of our time constraints. They are able to turn around proposals fairly quickly.They are a great bunch of folks to work with. I believe they also help promote some of the services that we offer. In a way, I think we’re able to help each other build relationships in the community. They are local and expose the services that we offer, whether from a Salesforce perspective or a mobility implementation perspective.

Is there anything that you would do differently a second time around or think that they could improve upon?

Every time that I think we could have done things differently, it was more of a timing issue with what Salesforce could offer at the time than what our current requirements were. So, we were always a little bit ahead of the curve, Configero was always there to guide us in the right direction. Since all of the customizations, there have been a lot of standard applications now that plug and play into Salesforce. Since the customization has worked so well for us, we maintained that even as standard out-of-the-box functionalities are being released through Salesforce.

BACKGROUND

What does your company specialize in for some background information?

We are a software company that specializes in network security. The software will watch the traffic on a company’s network to see what’s coming and going. The software identifies items that are harmful. It doesn’t fix the problem but it helps identify it.

In what region do you focus on in the US?

We are a worldwide company. The company is headquartered in Atlanta.

What’s your position within the company?

I am the Sales Operations Manager and my main focus is being our Salesforce.com System Administrator

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your company’s reason or goals for undertaking the project with Configero?

We had been using Salesforce for a while, primarily within the sales side of the organization with marketing getting more involved. The CEO and CFO took a look and decided they wanted more focus to be through Salesforce. One of the main reasons for bringing in a consultant was we wanted to enhance what we were currently doing. The focus was on the sales side initially. We were quoting through an Excel spreadsheet. And we really wanted to automate more of the process and that started the conversation.

What was the process you used to choose Configero?

We took a look at three companies. Our Salesforce.com account representative provided a couple of names and Configero was one of the ones they mentioned. We met with two companies, one isn’t local. My company recognized immediately that the two main people at Configero, Jody and Bradley, are just very personable. They stand behind the company. They are truly invested in what they can do for their end customer. It was a good fit from the beginning. It was nice. It was beneficial that they were local but that wasn’t our only deciding factor.

Why did you decide to continue building on Salesforce?

A lot of it really is ease of use. It was very easy to use and find add-on products. The products are separate from Salesforce but integrate within it. For example, Marketo integrates seamlessly into Salesforce, and the marketing side was growing with it and liked it. A lot of it really is ease of use.

Just looking back at the projects that you already have completed, can you just give me some statistics or metric, or improvement in efficiency or effectiveness from employees or customers?

I don’t get to hear the customer part so much but it’s nice with the sales reps. Sales people get in their groove and they don’t like change. The sales reps that have been here a long time and were here for the Excel spreadsheets aren’t so happy with change. The sales people will always find any small problems in the software. The sales people are great for testing the software. They don’t like to adjust but they agreed that the new software made the process better.

Our company was using Excel spreadsheets that administrators didn’t always have access to. In Salesforce, we have full visibility for the various areas that need it. And just the visibility was huge. New sales employees and experienced sales staff all enjoyed the changes. I think it saved on training because it’s very easy to navigate. It’s very easy to put something together.

Since building on the application, how do you feel about your decision to customize on Force?

I think it’s fantastic. For me personally, I needed somebody to do some custom coding behind the scenes. As the assistant administrator, I must be able to make a quick change or work with a consulting group that knows the system and external applications. Configero knows how to go in there and lay it all out. It’s nice to have that, either I can do it or I know who to go to to set something up for us. It is super easy.

SOLUTION

Can you tell me a little bit more about the scope of the project? Did it include like the design, the development and the support work?

Yes. We’ve done smaller side projects but one of the main ones was the quoting tool and Salesforce.

The quoting tool?                                                                                            

Yes, the quoting tool. Salesforce does have an out-of-the-box quoting tool. We tried it. And we just couldn’t get it to fit how we wanted the look and feel to be for our particular business. It wasn’t fitting. That was one of the larger projects that we brought Configero in for. And we explained what we were doing. They asked a lot of questions about many different areas. Not just questions about the management and operational sides but all the way down to the end user. They wanted to know how they would see it and how it would function for them. Configero really scoped out all areas that would be involved in it.

 And there was a lot of coding because of the way we wanted the quote to work. Our price list isn’t extensive, it only has about 100 products. I give them credit for dealing with organizing our product groups together and discounting levels together. We put that feature in and later enhanced it. Certain reps have one level of discount and then their managers can approve another discount. They build all that into all this process and the second phase was tweaking what we originally did. It’s not just all custom coding behind the scenes, but includes adding in pieces that our administrator can update as we need to. That was definitely a plus. It was something I was thinking of but didn’t even have to bring it to the surface.

Were any parts of the project in-housed specifically, like any of the designing?

No. They did it all. We went through many conversations about what we needed. We had an idea of how we wanted it to look as far as design and development. They would set it all out and set up an example and say, “How about this?” They really listened to how we wanted it to function and worked accordingly.

Were there any other technologies that you either had customized or any kind of programming languages you used?

I know that they used Apex because I was able to tweak one item on it. I knew just enough to be dangerous. It was easy enough to follow what they did so I could manipulate the PDF of our quotes. I could understand enough to do set-up and do it myself. They used Visualforce, Apex code. I give them the idea and let them run with it.

And can you just give me a sense of the size of the initiative, in dollars?

It’s a broad range but around $25,000 to $40,000 because we started that one project back in beginning of 2011. Then we had phase two of that project. However, I am not involved with billing so cannot say for sure.

How recent was the last project finished?

We just did a small kick-off for our January sales meeting. After that meeting, we received a couple of requests out for additional projects. We’re just waiting to get the statement to work back and signed off here internally and get those kicked off. We’ll have at least two new projects. We’ll call it a wish list based off of some of the stuff they’ve already done for us. We’ll do a wish list this year as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How do you feel about the performance of Configero?

Absolutely, 100 percent for all aspects. They are extremely easy to work with. They’ll listen. Then they’ll make suggestions. And they’re also not afraid to say, “But if you do it that way, here’s the pitfalls.” It’s nice to have that. Even if it doesn’t make sense, they’re not just going to do it because that’s what’s requested. They’re going to reply, “Are you sure you want to do it that way? What about this?”

They’ve kept to the statement of work. We’ve gone through everything even when there’s tweaks along the way we didn’t think of this. It’s very easy to integrate that into the project. They inform us of all delays and the reasons behind it. They’re definitely great on the communication piece. I like the fact that they’re coming out with their own products now. A couple of their products are based on something that they’ve built for us. So I felt really good about that. And Configero’s rate is very reasonable.

Just looking back on your experience with them, did you feel anything was unique or special about them in comparison to any other companies that you’ve already worked with in the past or interviewed?

We were very comfortable with Bradley and Jody after interviewing two companies. They were very professional. They talked about their company and then they listened to what we were looking for. The other consultant couldn’t have cared less whether he was there or not. He didn’t ask any questions. He really didn’t talk about the company he was working for. So it was a very short conversation.

Our Project Manager, Jen Nelson, tells us about new products and features. She stays involved with us and what we’re doing. She brings ideas to us, which is very nice. I can’t say enough about Alex and his mad skills behind the scenes. He can create anything.

Looking back on the project, was there anything you felt like they could have improved on or would have liked them to do differently?

No. I’m the one that works with them more closely than anyone else in the company. We hope that I would pick up on something like that, but they’re great. They’re my first thought for anything that I need to do. They will teach my company how to do things on our own so we aren’t reliant on vendors.

BACKGROUND

Please provide a brief description of what your company does?

Person 1: We’re in a niche in the energy market. We sell something called demand response, which helps utility and systems operators reduce the demand on the grid or on their electrical system at specific peak times.

Person 2: We keep utility companies from getting gouged on the incremental price of electricity at peak times.

What areas of the US do you serve?

Person 1: We’re all over the US. We’ve got major offices in several states

What are your positions within the company and responsibilities?

Person 1: I am the manager of integration

Person 2: I’m the director of sales operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your company’s business goals or reasons for undertaking the project with Configero?

Person 1: I’ve been using them since I started about two years and eight months ago. They helped us do the original needs assessment and rollout for the Professional version of Salesforce. They helped us do the training, build out the dashboard and figure out the next steps. We upgraded to the Enterprise version based on their recommendation.

They helped us customize our major sales groups. We have one group in Philadelphia that represents about thirty percent of our gross revenue. We did a lot of customization for them. We added a lot of fields into the contract section of Salesforce, which we hadn’t been using. That work helped us set up a custom object in registration that we could use to amend information from the PGIM registration platform into Salesforce.

The changes allowed us to consolidate a lot of reports that had been in multiple places in Word documents, PDFs and Excel files. Our CEO was getting into the business and wanted to understand it a lot better.

The model we were using was the PGIM open market. It was a model where we would have an obligation to sell megawatts to PGIM at a specific price for a JLDA. They would have specific numbers of megawatts. I make the analogy that it was like having seven different buckets. If you fill the bucket exactly to the top, that’s where you want it to be. You get the maximum amount of revenue out of that situation. If you under-fill the bucket, you didn’t get paid as much as you should. If you over-fill the bucket, you received all the money you should but you’ve increased your cost of sales and potentially made it less profitable than it could have been.

Alex [Configero Principle] taught us how to use Visualforce and made a slick application. It was a visual that showed a picture for each of the different delivery areas. It was a comparison bar chart showing one bar chart where the obligation is. It showed what our company was supposed to sell to PGIM. Next to it, was a stacked bar chart that pulled together some disparate information, closed opportunities from the prior season. It also included renewals and new business. It was all in a stacked bar chart.

You could see the status of everything, under or over. It helped our management group because Configero built a cool product that gave us exact numbers. The numbers were laid out in a very organized fashion.

I was able to use that and cut and paste it into PowerPoint for presentations. This really helped the executive management of that function, including the CEO and senior sales team to view the product status.

We also had another function in finance where they were able to go in and take a look at some of these areas where we had more obligation than we had the ability to fulfill. Our team can now go into incremental auction with PGIM and reduce our positions and actually cash out a fair amount of profit. At the same time, we avoided risk that we couldn’t avoid previously.

The CFO was using some of this same information to talk to private equity firms and we ultimately were sold. We were at risk of not being an ongoing concern at some point if we didn’t get an infusion of capital. This helped the management determine where they needed to be and where they needed to avoid risk and sell it off.

We’ve also continued to use Configero. They’ve done a couple of other projects for us. Since then, we’ve set up a team in South Africa with Configero. They figured out what they needed to do in terms of customization for currencies. Configero knows that their business process and products were a little different. Since we were in the Enterprise version, they could customize it so it looked more similar to the language that team uses.

Person 2: We were in desperate need of a project-tracking type of application. We decided to move forward with the Milestones PM module with Salesforce. It was not exactly what we needed. I had the process basically worked out when I meet with Configero. Configero put the whole thing together with templates, rules, processes, documentation and some tweaking at the end.

Can you describe what applications were used?

Person 2: We needed to be able to track projects. We have five different organizations that need to communicate closely to complete any integration project.

Integration means the installation of hardware, control, and metering flash control hardware at customer locations. They’re all over the country. With different project managers, there’s a different sets of rules for each group. We had project management and account management. At our network operations center, we have administrative functions that have to occur. We also have engineering functions that must function properly.

Each of the different organizations has a role in every project that we do. Before, we had problems with communications between groups. We also had trouble with how people were notified of new projects. We had problems with tracking the equipment ordered, site surveying and notification of project start dates. Configero and our team work together to lay out the process for the workflow. They built the template and the notifications that we’re using Chatter. At that time, that was quite an undertaking for us. We use Chatter to do all the notifications between all the groups. The information flows from opportunities into the milestones. The templates were set up. They also created dashboards for us.

Person 2 (Person 1): How does your mobile app work?

Person 1: We also did something new with the Conga apps because we had things like site surveys and hardware configuration sheets. We had these documents that we wanted to pull from Salesforce with all the fields filled in and get rid of some of the work duplication. It is typically a walking exercise to do site surveys on iPads. We were able to implement that with iPads and it’s working very well.

Configero added a button on the project page that basically allows us to create a form with that customer information. Typically, the customer in the region gives the contact info. We duplicate all of that on these forms. We press the button on the iPad. It allowed us to fill out the rest of the form on the iPad and then email it back onto the Chatter link. It comes into Chatter in the notes and attachments on that project. It also comes out in the Chatter feed for everybody in the Chatter group. They also did this in a way that allowed us to set up opportunity roles and have those opportunity roles automatically roll into the templates showing who has what task. That opportunity role also created its own chatter group for each project.

The nice thing about Chatter is it’s not like email because anybody can go on Chatter. Anybody that has a pet project and senior management that wants to follow a specific link can follow that project with all the Chatter feed notifications. All of the notifications are automated based on task completion and milestone completion. The notifications also have the next task to do. This has been completed. Some are concurrent, some are end to end.  It’s fairly complex but the system came out very well.

SOLUTION

What was the process for selecting Configero as your contractors?

Person 1: I actually was introduced to them when I first started working here. I think Salesforce put us in touch with them. Our company was going through a lot of hiring at that point. The person who was in charge of sales and marketing was new. He wanted to use Salesforce. He had come from SAP previously. They put us in touch with Configero just to do the basic out- of-the-box work. They did a needs assessment and asked what else we needed customized.

We have been using Configero for a couple of years. I never tried to find anybody else. I asked Salesforce to find what I needed. Configero determined that I couldn’t do what I needed to in native Salesforce. A week later, Configero came up with a solution that worked for us. We haven't looked for any other vendors and have used them for over two years.

Why did you decide to build on Salesforce instead of another platform?

Person 1: For what I was doing, all the information was already in Salesforce. We had decided when we did the customization for PGIM, we wanted to get everything into Salesforce. It’s a logical place to build. As for project management, we already had the sales reps doing it. It made more sense to keep it integrated with Salesforce. Changing to another platform would have interrupted our processes and made it hard to know who was assigned to which tasks.

Person 2: It’s hard to know with other platforms who the project manager is. I interrupted it for the purpose of notification so that we could know when a new project was taking place. We had some issues from an operational side. We were given contracts after they were signed, to fulfill. There was no notification at that point in our organization, causing great confusion.

Person 1: Ittook two to three weeks just to get equipment. We used this to drive the sales team towards notifying us before they got the contract. They are using us to get pricing and timing information for their terms of the contract. When the contract was executed, we then execute a project plan that was already created. This is better than trying to figure out how we were going to get this done for a cost and timeline that we had no control over. That’s why I interrupted the sales process.

There was a new notification process for the sales team when the contract got into stage 4.

We also used Conga Composer to build pre-populated forms to improve the process.

Person 2: We would attach that form back through Chatter. We can include pictures and things like that, which we all enjoy.

Great. Can you just tell me more about just the scope of the project? Was any of it in-housed?

Person 2: I did the process.

Person 1: He did a really beautiful PowerPoint, a flow chart nf how the steps needed to work. He had never touched Salesforce before and didn’t have a license in Salesforce when he started. They developed everything. We just told them what our company wanted.

I told them what I wanted. The PowerPoint that he was talking about just helped me illustrate what I wanted. It really was beautiful and multi-colored.

Person 2: They did all the work on Salesforce.

Person 1: I asked Alex from Configero to look at pictures of what I wanted. He told me that what I was trying to do wasn’t basic functionality. It was going to take a little bit more customization. It was definitely worth it to create a really easy-to-see product. We had a double bar chart. If you were in a situation where you had more demand than supply, that was another opportunity where the group doing the incremental auction could sell some the extra product. We could also cash out of position and take the money. But having the graphic and the table, was exactly what I was looking for.

Can you provide a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms?

Person 2: With all the customization that I did for PGIM and the visual stuff, it was probably $15,000 to $20,000. Configero did some of the mapping to pull that data in and use the data loader to force some of that information from PGIM into Salesforce and attach it to the contracts.

Person 1: You’re in the process of rolling the milestones out for the US and South Africa, right?

Person 2: That’s correct. I think it was about $12,000 to $15,000.

Person 1: That included a fair amount of customization and there was some Conga Composer licenses. They were pretty inexpensive.

When did each of your projects finish or are they still ongoing?

Person 2: He finished with his US version at the end of 2012.

Person 1: I had finished everything in March 2012. I needed to show it graphically after the work was done.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Once you did the rollout, what were the outcomes of the projects, do you have any statistics or metrics?

Person 1: The feedback that I got was great since there was a wow factor. Our sales management is a little bit older and they haven’t necessarily adopted. The management team wasn’t going to sign into Salesforce and drill down to the opportunities and look through everything. They‘re the dashboard group.

They were waiting for somebody to package some of the information. Configero actually helped me on another project. I was at Dreamforce and received an email from the CEO asking to build several dashboards. They helped me build a series of dashboards; I think there were 10 or 11, showing the different sales organizations.

It’s like the big brother report since you can track usage. It records the accounts they’ve added in the last seven days, and last 30 days. It describes the meetings they’ve attended in the last week. It’s a good series. The CEO was getting it ready for the COO, who was taking a different role to manage that side of the business. Configero got all the reports in place for him so he could click and print it. He had a sense of what was going on in the organization. He could assess the performance of the sales team very well.

Do you still feel the performance is still effective and do you feel that you made the right decision to use Salesforce?

Person 1: Yes, absolutely.

Person 2: Yes. We got more embedded in Salesforce because all the functions are included. Our staff is used to it. It’s becoming harder and harder to get away from it because there aren’t other good options to replace Salesforce.

How do you guys feel Configero performed overall?

I’ve been really happy with everybody that I’ve worked with. I’ve done Salesforce training with them numerous times. When we first did the rollout in October 2010, we hired many people in Pennsylvania and had Configero train them. I‘ve used them for a lot of functions. I’ve used Configero as an outsourced systems admin for a lot of functions. They've helped us for complex stuff as well as some of the basic things.

Person 2: My experience with Configero is very positive. On a scale of one to ten, all their staff gets a ten. I've worked with multiple members of Configero, and they've all done great.

Is there anything unique or special about them in comparison to other vendors?

Person 1: That’s hard to say because I haven't worked with many other companies. I would say that they’re a tremendous source of information because you can give them a half-baked idea. They give you a lot of different options and directions.

They’re a great source of information on current available apps. They notify me of new apps, which is handy when you’re trying to test something with people in the wrong systems. They’ve been a really good source of information for us.

Person 2: I’ve done development of our own software working with the software team in-house. Working with Configero is as good as an experience as I’ve had at developing software modules.

Looking back, is there anything that you feel they could have improved upon or done differently?

Person 2: No, I don’t think so.

Person 1: No, because all of the problems come back to our organization. We could have been better trained on Salesforce before starting the work with Configero.

We needed help selling to our small clients, or participants. They’re small, commercial and industrial customers. It’s much more of a transactional sale. Being able to do customization is key. We have an enterprise group with one product set and a small CNI with a transactional model. We have different sales cycles, different selling times, different rules, and different products. It would have been better if we had learned more and bought the right version of Salesforce to start with.