Biosystems Applies CRM to Global Network

Despite data collection forming the basis of the company’s marketing campaigns, pharmaceutical research firm Applied Biosystems Group had no central database or CRM system in place.

With sales representatives located across the globe, data entry methods varied at each location and local data was encrypted in foreign languages.

But the biggest problem was the use of time-consuming tools such as spreadsheets.

Anthony Watson, Applied Biosystems senior IT shared commercial systems manager, said the company needed to deliver sales and forecasting reports to regional, national and corporate levels, while accommodating foreign languages and allowing access for its partner network.

“We didn’t really have a common view of the customer and who we were selling to or even to what account,” Watson said.

“There was no central database and spreadsheets were our primary marketing tool, and because of the time the spreadsheets took to compile, they were filled with information that could be weeks old, so any management decision was in danger of being based on outmoded data. We wanted users to store notes in their native languages and record addresses that made sense locally.”

The company selected Salesforce.com’s CRM software modules: SFA, Marketing, App Exchange Builder, and Analytics as its hosted, Web-based solution, which allows sales staff to store sales data in a central database that facilitates multiple languages.

Watson said the multiple languages facility makes campaigns more effective and allows its partner sales network to log and retrieve information more easily.

“[Multiple languages] make it easy for our partner network to enter and access data in their native tongues, with only a few critical fields requiring English, while we benefit from the availability of local data which we leverage for local campaigning,” he said.

The implementation began 12 months ago and is operating in the Asia Pacific and the United States with a pilot program under way in Germany.

However, Watson said it will be operating globally by 2008 across the rest of North America, Europe, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea.

The two-year deal with Salesforce.com cost 500,000 Australia dollars (US$379,376).

-Darren Pauli, Computerworld Australia

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.