Full Case Study

Indian service provider Tulip Telecom Ltd delivers innovative IP based

infrastructural solutions to enterprises across 1,415 locations nationwide. Tulip is
the only service provider in its domain to provide end-to-end connectivity
solutions, including network integration, enterprise data services and managed
services. Its leased line, fibre and wireless services, which span metropolitan and
rural India, are poised to expand out onto the global landscape via its US
operations centre.

Tulip is currently ranked as the number one MPLS VPN service provider in India.

A need for gaining better control over growing a customer base

With 2,500 professionals looking after the current and future corporate
networking needs of 1500 customers, Tulip recognised the advantages to be
gained from a professional CRM solution.  In examining its primary CRM-related
requirements, the service provider was able to define that its chosen CRM
system should meet two critical objectives: to provide it with greater control of
resources, and to increase sales team productivity.

Tulip had established an in-house solution for sales force automation in the early
days, but soon realised its limits, in that it was only able to cater to its very basic
requirements and lacked the capacity for establishing and promoting industry
best practices. In searching for a new solution Tulip was looking to significantly
extend the boundaries of its approach towards CRM.

Cloud CRM offers rapid expansion path

After evaluating various Indian CRM providers, as well as one or two major
global players, Tulip settled upon a cloud-based CRM solution from
salesforce.com. Tulip Telecom subscribes to a Salesforce CRM service, hosted
in the cloud, which means it pays only for the number of users currently on the
system. Unlike on premises solutions that require a large initial investment in
infrastructure and software, expanding Salesforce CRM is as simple as picking
up the phone to add more licences.

“One of the biggest deciding factors was that salesforce.com was able to offer us
an account model that suits us down to the ground,” explains Deepinder Bedi,
Executive Director, Tulip Telecom Ltd. We were looking for something with a
great deal of flexibility and the scalability to grow rapidly with us.”

And, Tulip is in fact a fast pace business with an impressive rate of growth,
having expanded its sales team from 40 to 200 within three and a half years.
Company policy dictates that each newly recruited sales representative within its
12 sales offices receives a Salesforce CRM user license and user training.

“A distinct advantage of salesforce.com is that it is incredibly intuitive. We are

able to integrate new employees through a mix of online tutorials and on-site
training, which typically runs for one hour.”

Information stored centrally in the cloud is universally accessible

Tulip is using Salesforce CRM as a means for managing its entire end-to-end
sales process. Leads are manually input or automatically captured from the
website and guided through the system using workflow, to close of sale. All
customer interactions are recorded at every stage and stored centrally against
the client account to assist with ongoing customer service.

In Bedi’s opinion; “Having this wealth of knowledge at our fingertips when dealing
with clients significantly increases our efficiency and professionalism. It also
means that when a representative leaves or receives a transfer, someone new is
immediately equipped to pick up where they left off.”

More recently Tulip has incorporated the function to generate customer

proposals within the Salesforce CRM application, realising its objective of
completing the end-to-end sales process in a single application.

“It makes sense to centralise all customer related data at a single location,” says
Bedi “and when that location is in the cloud, new information can be deployed to
all of our offices simultaneously through a single system update. This allows
geographically separate teams to collaborate easily to meet customers’
requirements and service their needs with the greatest possible efficiency.”

More targeted campaigns and PR accountability with Marketing

Tulip subscribes to Marketing, which allows them to launch targeted campaigns –

for example electronic DM (direct mail) – in response to the sales patterns
identified in Salesforce CRM. In addition it offers the capability of measuring
campaign ROI to gain an insight into which ones are achieving the greatest
success and to repeat successful formulas.

Furthermore, the salesforce.com Marketing module provides Tulip with the

critical ability to track public relations activities, encouraging the PR agency to
remain proactive and giving Tulip a means for comparing budget against
outcomes.

Flexibility to create a custom CRM solution

The flexibility of Salesforce CRM has allowed Tulip to make several

customisations, creating an industry specific CRM solution, including managing
the sales team’s compensation system within salesforce.com.

“Everything we do that is sales related can be accessed from within a

salesforce.com window - essentially, we are using one interface across all sales
processes” says Bedi.

“Salesforce CRM’s easy reporting templates give us the ability to set realistic
KPIs based on accurate performance knowledge, as well as to calculate sales
employees’ bonuses.”

AppExchange dramatically reduces development time and resources

Tulip is a big fan of the salesforce.com AppExchange application marketplace,

where users can go to find additional applications to extend their use of
salesforce.com. It was here where Tulip sourced the PR manager tool it used to
build its PR application;
“It took us 30 minutes to develop our PR application from an AppExchange
template, as opposed to a possible seven days for developing the application
from scratch,” says Bedi.

The service provider has also expanded its system by adding Salesforce for
Google Addwords, the Wikiforce package and Hoovers using plug-ins available
through the AppExchange, saving on time, effort and development resources.

Dashboards give an at-a-glance overview of operations

Dashboards are a key feature for Tulip, which has configured real time
dashboards for senior managers, regional heads and one level below (the top
four levels of management) plus separate ones for the marketing and PR teams,
giving them valuable insights into business performance in the areas relating to
them.

“Dashboards give us an at-a-glance reassurance that our people are out there
making calls and meeting goals,” says Bedi. “If something isn’t going to plan,
more often than not it will show up on a dashboard, so we have the chance to
address the issue early.”

Tulip is using salesforce.com reports effectively for forecasting monthly revenues

based on recent past trends. Previously it relied on Excel spreadsheets, which
were time consuming to create and made it near impossible to maintain a
corporate standard.

“The reporting process is heavily automated within salesforce.com, which creates

huge time savings. But even more compelling is the accuracy with which we are
able to set realistic goals and work towards using those to drive momentum in
growing the business,” says Bedi.
Process efficiencies lead to increased productivity

Bedi estimates that the number of effective calls made by sales teams per week
have roughly doubled as a direct consequence of the process efficiencies
enforced by Salesforce CRM. The major advantage the system gives them is that
they are simply far better prepared – they know exactly who the customer has
met with in the past, what proposals have been sent, and so forth.

Tulip plans to continue to evolve its CRM system. It is currently looking at the
future integration of a telecoms prefeasibility program that  carries out vital
checks prior to picking up an order (for example, if a city bank requests
connectivity with a regional branch, this application is used to check what type of
services it is possible to run into that region).

However, Tulip is convinced its CRM is already providing a good return on

investment, “we know exactly what is happening on the ground at all times, who
is performing, who is not, which press releases have been issued, how many
case studies we have completed, what events are going on – it is all revealed by
looking at one screen!” states Bedi.

Tulip Telecom

Challenge

 Gain control of company resources

 Increase sales team productivity
 Improve accuracy of sales revenues forecasting
 Deliver value to customers

Solution

Tulip Telecom has deployed Salesforce CRM for 200 sales and service employees
across 12 offices throughout India. Marketing has added the ability for launching and
tracking relevant and measureable marketing campaigns, as well as providing a tool
for monitoring the success of PR. Tulip has enhanced its system with a number of
AppExchange applications including Salesforce for Google Addwords, Wikiforce and
Hoovers.

Results

 Centralisation of data in the cloud for instant roll out of updates to all users
nationwide
 Effective sales calls per week roughly doubled
 Ability to measure PR outcomes against objectives
 PR application developed in 30 minutes from AppExchange template as
compared with one week for developing a similar application from the
ground up
 Easy forecasting through Salesforce CRM data analyses
 Fast integration of new users through online tutorials and one hour on-site
training