Optimized Sales Cycle through Salesforce Industries CPQ Implementation

Situation

ENGIE Netherlands is a leading energy provider in Europe focused on the production and distribution of electricity, natural gas, renewable energy and related services. Through a constant focus on innovation and sustainability, ENGIE Netherlands strives to ensure the future of the energy sector.

Wanting to provide their customers with the best possible experience, they conducted a thorough analysis of their business. This analysis revealed that their quotation process consists of:

• A diverse range of programs to serve various customer segments
• Inconvenience and burden on their sales teams
• The system is error-prone
• It largely proceeds manually
• The size of their B2B relationships also makes it challenging to manage.

It was almost impossible to effectively manage leads, prioritize and focus on the most promising customers to close deals. This process often led to missed opportunities due to errors and wasted time. In addition, it was difficult to maintain an accurate and up-to-date database of potential customers. Since leads have choices from multiple vendors, it is crucial to send quotes quickly to prevent them from choosing a competitor. These complicated processes cost money both directly and indirectly, and it was clear that a complete redesign was needed. An automated system that unified all the various elements of opportunity management and quotations into a single, robust solution was necessary.

Impact

ENGIE turned to CaseNine, a Salesforce Partner specializing in technically complex Salesforce CRM and Customer Experience (CX) projects for energy and utility companies, to implement a new CPQ (configure-price-quote) solution.

Work began on designing and implementing a new process for standard customers that included all steps from opportunities to quotes. By starting with the standard customers, who had simpler products and requirements, CaseNine was able to get feedback early in the process and make changes quickly. In addition, they built all integrations between external systems such as Oracle Utilities and SAP and supported ENGIE in the installation of third-party middleware.

Once the solution worked well for standard customers and all issues were resolved, CaseNine turned to the next level of customers: high-volume companies. This step was crucial because for ENGIE, these companies have a different risk profile that can affect margins. However, CaseNine has extensive experience with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) which allows them to work smoothly in the background of an IT landscape, ensuring a seamless implementation for ENGIE.

Next, CaseNine focused on resellers, who were a major revenue source for ENGIE. ENGIE needed a solution that would streamline the referral process and ensure margins were maintained.

Result

ENGIE's new solution makes it possible to serve high-volume, reseller and standard customers all from a single console within their Salesforce CRM.

Now they can:

• Efficiently implement different workflows for different types of customers
• Use quote management to speed up the sales cycle, customizable by customer type
• Offer multiple maturities (with prices and margins varying by term) to increase their profits
• See that prices and data are always up-to-date

Outcome

ENGIE Netherlands has increased revenue by reducing the time and steps required to serve different customer types. The new CPQ solution allows them to better manage leads, prioritize and focus on customers with a higher probability of success.

With Salesforce Industries (SFI), they can now offer indirect customers quotes and handle indirect sales. Managing relationships with intermediaries and partner sales channels is easier than ever, and they can now create and maintain loyalty incentives as well.

In terms of sales support, ENGIE's team now also uses SFI to handle tasks more efficiently. Finally, they now have a simplified sales console with all the information needed for different customer types embedded in sales intelligence. This enables them to close deals faster with better margins.

With these steps, Engie Netherlands has optimized the entire sales process.

See how Engie Netherlands is striving for a Net Zero Future

Go to Engie.co.uk