Extending the reach of CRM with Vmoso

Galaxy Equipment is a world leader in professional network equipment, providing top class devices to companies all around the world. Their Sales teams use SugarCRM to track their sales cycle. Traditionally, this tracking has been limited to the Sales staff only.

In this video we’ll see how Galaxy Equipment manages to extend the reach of its CRM beyond the Sales team through an integration of SugarCRM with Vmoso.

Tom is part of the European Sales team in Galaxy Equipment; he’s been there for some time and can answer any prospect question regarding the world-renowned integrated network elements that Galaxy Equipment has been selling for the last 10 years.

A couple of days ago, he got news about a new line of network monitoring devices and software that Galaxy Equipment has been selling in Asia and is now introducing to Europe. He had a quick look but was too busy preparing for an important event in Berlin, where he is exhibiting.

During the event, he meets Helen from ACME Airways. Helen is managing her company’s network, and she’s seen a tremendous increase in usage over the last few years, which she’s spent endlessly upgrading her equipment to catch up.

Now she finally has some time to plan ahead, and wants to find a good monitoring solution. She’s read in the press that Galaxy Equipment is now selling their new solution locally, so she approaches Tom.

Tom’s caught off guard, as he’s only got a very basic knowledge of the solution which Helen is interested in, and was not expecting a question about it so soon. ACME Airways is one of those large accounts that Galaxy Equipment has never managed to get into, and he’s very eager to make a first sale here.

He notes down the details given by Helen, and as soon as he can he enters this as an opportunity in SugarCRM. He mentions that he needs help with this opportunity.

Typically, such an opportunity entered in SugarCRM would be shared only with the rest of the Sales team, and remain mostly unknown to the rest of the company. But that’s not the case for Galaxy Equipment. A few months ago, they integrated SugarCRM with Vmoso, the company’s platform for collaboration and communication inside and outside the company.

When Tom’s opportunity is added to SugarCRM, this triggers the creation of a Vmoso chat to discuss the opportunity with his manager, and a Vmoso post which is a collaboration conversation shared in the company to encourage serendipitous discovery by the relevant people. One of those people is Jeremy.

Jeremy is the head of European technical presales. He has just started to study the new monitoring solution, and the opportunity described in the post grabs his attention. To him, this opportunity looks like a perfect chance to let someone in his team acquire the right skills for the new product, but he needs to act fast and help Tom give the right answers to the prospect.

From his limited knowledge, Jeremy gives a few answers to the questions that Tom has written in the opportunity. He also shares the document that he has been using to train himself on the topic.

But Jeremy knows that this is not enough, he needs to find more detailed information in order to answer the question that ACME has submitted to Tom. He needs to investigate further. The self-training document was originally shared with him through a chat with Bruce, the presales VP, but it surely came from somewhere else.

So Jeremy switches to the Vmoso Knowledge Map which lets him see where the document has been referenced from. He can see his chat with Bruce, but also several other activities which have referenced the same document.

By clicking on each of those activities, Tom can see who’s involved in each of them, other related documents, and which other activities are referenced from there.

Most of the activities visited are discussions between the Asian sales team in languages that Jeremy doesn’t understand. By clicking on the users referenced in the various discussions, Jeremy manages to identify a couple of people in the US presales team. He discovers that Jeff, a consultant in the US, has been able to get himself up to speed with the solution and has now good working knowledge of it

Jeremy suggests to Tom that Jeff should be included in the tender response, because he’s probably the only person able to help them in the short term.

Tom includes Jeff, who is more than happy to have a real prospect case where he can use his new skills, and together they are able to build a well-articulated response to the request from ACME.

This has only been possible because the integration between SugarCRM and Vmoso has enabled the collaboration around the prospect’s requirements, involving the right people from the company.

As a result, Galaxy Equipment is able to increase significantly the quality of their responses to prospects, making it more likely that their Sales teams close new deals.

All of the information exchanged during this collaboration is retained and transformed into corporate knowledge meaning that the global sales team all benefit from the work Tom, Jeremy and Jeff have done on this account.

Integrating Vmoso with SugarCRM increases the reach of information held in the CRM improving the efficiency and accuracy of the sales team, leading to shorter and more successful sales cycles.