EXPERIAN CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Headquarters: Ballyoaks Office Park, Johannesburg
Industry: Finance, Data, Transaction Processing, and Credit
Website: experian.com
Background
Experian is a multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company that collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more than 25 million U.S. businesses. The Experian South African business unit is pioneering a combination of data, technology, and advanced analytics that can unlock insights and for their customers to make decisive credit decisions. Their global coverage and flexible technology mean we can scale to meet the needs of businesses of any size, anywhere in the world.
The Challenge
Experian SA was struggling on enabling their Sales team members with a quoting solution for global collaboration. Customer data is spread across multiple systems siloed by region and with no way to truly visualize performance across the organization. The legacy quoting process limited functionality, pricing standardization, visibility to discounts, and the opportunity pipeline. Sales reps were making pricing decisions based on Excel spreadsheets resulting in unmanaged discounts and non-standard quote templates. The lack of a single standardized system was prohibiting the company from providing a consistent model across the global organization.
- Quoting accuracy was inconsistent across the organization due to multiple offline calculators
- Limited data governance created legal risk and revenue loss
- Data entry was difficult and labor-intensive driving up costs across the organization
- User adoption was low due to the complexity of the various system and inconsistent process
- Manual renewal process resulting in significant revenue loss
- Poor communication between sales, pricing, contracting, billing, and fulfillment teams
- Capturing billing data was a complete offline and often from multiple sources
- Executive reporting suffered as data was spread across multiple systems
“Cirrius are an excellent vendor to partner with. We engaged them to support our first implementation of SFDC CPQ and were hugely impressed with their knowledge, expertise, willingness to learn and understand our business needs, and ultimately their ability to deliver, particularly with the tight timescales associated with this project.
Their approach to projects is unique and the pod model brings with it a tight unit of skilled resources that ensures continuity and collaboration which helped build a solid rapport between the partner and the internal team, leading us to a successful outcome.
Alongside the project, Cirrius were also willing and able to run training sessions to transfer knowledge to our internal support teams which were invaluable in transitioning from the Project into BAU.
We are extremely happy to have chosen Cirrius and look forward to continuing our partnership with them in the future.”
– James Weatherall, Director
Global Sales Automation Strategic Initiatives
The Solution
The Experian business teams worked with Cirrius Solutions to implement Salesforce CPQ in alignment with the global core architecture. The implementation included a globally aligned sales process that optimized the flow of data through pricing, and approvals, all the way to order processing. The completed quote subsequently notified the fulfillment and billing teams to speed revenue recognition.
- Re-architecture of CPQ products, pricing, approvals, quote, order, and fulfillment process
- The Quote-to-Order process was improved to make fulfillment more efficient by fixing and grouping products correctly on all supporting documentation
- Introduced term-based price concessions for longer-term engagements
- Implementation of revenue uplift into Experian-optimized pricing strategies
- Creation of bundling strategies through value mapping across products and market segments New automation of terms and fee tables based on product configuration
- Creating enterprise-level reporting by business function for better decision making
The Result
A better customer experience! Experian is now fully utilizing Salesforce CPQ and has been able to increase efficiency and maximize its investment in Salesforce. The quoting process has been greatly simplified and users are saving a significant amount of time.
- User Adoption Increased – Sales teams now have the necessary tools to quickly configure, price, and quote complex solutions globally
- Data Governance – Significantly improved quote accuracy to increase revenue by 15%
- Quoting Speed – Faster quote-to-cash process through the addition of bundled discounts, simplified pricing, and automated approvals
- Quote generation decreased from days to hours/minutes
- Increased Renewal Performance – Automated renewal process increased volume by over 50%
- Automated Document Generation – Improved accuracy and output of customer documents
- Revenue Increases – Improved cross-sell by offering value-added services within core products
- Improved Customer Experience – Clients perceive price advantages as loyalty driving higher consumption
- Better Enterprise Reporting – Executives will gain far greater visibility into discounting and price achievement metrics across global sales teams
The Experian implementation was completed quickly and efficiently in order to meet the strict budgetary requirements of the executive team. The effectiveness of the new process is continuously being measured by new analytics to monitor installations and customer satisfaction.
“The Experian team was an absolute pleasure to work with. The strong leadership provided by Gary and Robin was a perfect fit for the Cirrius team. The success of an implementation is directly correlated to the strength of the partnership and the effectiveness of the communication throughout the project. They held us accountable and together we delivered under the vision of extreme ownership.
We are built on integrity and greatly appreciate every client relationship. We are proud to partner with high-quality firms like Experian and we look forward to earning your business!”
– Chad Anderson, Founder
Cirrius Solutions