Littelfuse Integrates Salesforce with SAP and ... - Salesforce.com
Littelfuse Integrates Salesforce with SAP and ... - Salesforce.com
Littelfuse Integrates Salesforce with SAP and ... - Salesforce.com
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CUSTOMER CASE STUDY<br />
<strong>Littelfuse</strong> <strong>Integrates</strong> <strong>Salesforce</strong> <strong>with</strong> <strong>SAP</strong> <strong>and</strong><br />
Speeds CRM Implementation<br />
Streamlined Workflows Shorten the Sales Cycle <strong>and</strong> Eliminate<br />
Departmental Communication Gaps<br />
As a longtime <strong>SAP</strong> professional, I have been pleasantly surprised<br />
at how easy it has been to link these two products together. <strong>Salesforce</strong><br />
knows how important other systems are to our overall success, so the<br />
investments they’ve made in the AppExchange API will truly benefit<br />
customers like us.<br />
—Bill Schlemm<br />
IT Systems Project Manager<br />
Industry<br />
Manufacturing<br />
Geographies<br />
Global<br />
Challenges<br />
:: Obtaining up-to-date information on the<br />
<strong>com</strong>pany’s 50,000 parts, critical to the<br />
sales process<br />
:: Establishing specific workflows <strong>and</strong><br />
collaboration between sales <strong>and</strong> product<br />
management to identify the right parts<br />
for customers <strong>and</strong> prospects<br />
:: An integrated CRM solution to bridge<br />
the gap between <strong>SAP</strong> <strong>and</strong> product<br />
management<br />
:: Anytime, anywhere, offline access in a<br />
multicurrency <strong>and</strong> multilingual system<br />
Solution<br />
An <strong>SAP</strong> shop, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> selected <strong>Salesforce</strong><br />
for its internationalization, Web-based<br />
access, offline capabilities, flexibility,<br />
workflow, <strong>and</strong> integration capabilities. With<br />
help from salesforce.<strong>com</strong>’s Professional<br />
Services organization, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> used the<br />
AppExchange API to integrate the <strong>SAP</strong> parts<br />
master into the <strong>Salesforce</strong> product object;<br />
the solution went live in 12 weeks<br />
Results<br />
:: By streamlining the part selection <strong>and</strong><br />
refinement process, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> shortened<br />
its sales cycle <strong>and</strong> increased customer<br />
satisfaction<br />
:: Sales, engineering, <strong>and</strong> product<br />
management groups now collaborate<br />
during the sales cycle to ensure the correct<br />
parts are specified<br />
:: Parts created or modified for one customer<br />
are productized <strong>and</strong> easily added to<br />
the parts list to be available for other<br />
customers<br />
:: Product marketing uses <strong>Salesforce</strong> to<br />
underst<strong>and</strong> what parts will be driving<br />
future revenue; manufacturing can better<br />
anticipate production requirements<br />
:: Sales reps enjoy anytime, anywhere access<br />
to multilingual sales information<br />
Link my enterprise ERP system <strong>with</strong> cost-effective CRM—<strong>with</strong>out involving my IT staff. Make the<br />
system easy to use, <strong>and</strong> let my employees connect to it from anywhere, any time, in any language. And<br />
implement in less than a month. For global electronics supplier <strong>Littelfuse</strong>, those were just some of the<br />
requirements for a new customer relationship management system.<br />
The <strong>com</strong>pany, which sells more than 50,000 electronics parts to the automotive, tele<strong>com</strong>munications,<br />
<strong>and</strong> consumer electronics industries worldwide, managed its deals in spreadsheets, <strong>with</strong> no integration<br />
into a back-end <strong>SAP</strong> system holding all the critical parts information. With sales cycles that could<br />
stretch over many months, during which time new parts were often created <strong>and</strong> modified to meet<br />
customer requirements, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> needed to provide up-to-date parts information; anywhere, anytime,<br />
<strong>and</strong> offline access; <strong>and</strong> multilingual, multicurrency capabilities to its global sales force.<br />
Could <strong>SAP</strong>’s CRM offering fill the bill?<br />
As an <strong>SAP</strong> shop, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> did look at <strong>SAP</strong>’s CRM offering first. But the <strong>com</strong>pany didn’t believe<br />
the <strong>SAP</strong> CRM was ready for prime time <strong>and</strong> felt its users were not ready for the level of systems<br />
sophistication required by the <strong>SAP</strong> solution. An <strong>SAP</strong> implementation also promised to be more<br />
<strong>com</strong>plex than <strong>Littelfuse</strong>’s overworked IT staff could tackle in the required timeframe.<br />
“ We had acquired numerous <strong>com</strong>panies, <strong>and</strong> our IT staff was inundated <strong>with</strong> projects to integrate<br />
these operations <strong>and</strong> get them up <strong>and</strong> running on our <strong>SAP</strong> system,” explains Bill Schlemm, IT Systems<br />
project manager. “In addition, <strong>SAP</strong>’s CRM module lacked some of the key features we needed as a<br />
global <strong>com</strong>pany.”<br />
After evaluating several leading products, the <strong>com</strong>pany selected <strong>Salesforce</strong> for its internationalization,<br />
Web-based access, offline capabilities, flexible customization, <strong>and</strong> workflow features.<br />
A key measure of success, however, would be how well <strong>Salesforce</strong> integrated <strong>with</strong> the <strong>com</strong>pany’s <strong>SAP</strong><br />
system. “Because parts are such an integral <strong>com</strong>ponent of the sales process, having up-to-date parts<br />
information, which is managed in our <strong>SAP</strong> system, available to sales teams was critical to the efficiency<br />
<strong>and</strong> effectiveness of the sales process,” says Schlemm.<br />
“Opportunities typically require two to four months to be<strong>com</strong>e qualified,” he explains. “During that<br />
time, the sales team works closely <strong>with</strong> the customer to select the right parts. Often, we may have to<br />
modify an existing part or prototype a new one to meet the customer needs. This process dem<strong>and</strong>s<br />
that sales teams have accurate <strong>and</strong> timely parts information <strong>and</strong> also that engineering has visibility into<br />
customer needs. With <strong>SAP</strong> managing master parts information, we needed to push that information<br />
into the <strong>Salesforce</strong> system so everyone has easy access.”<br />
Integration: A Two-Week Affair<br />
To perform the integration, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> decided to leverage the tools provided by <strong>SAP</strong> <strong>and</strong><br />
salesforce.<strong>com</strong> rather than invest in expensive third-party integration products. “Our needs were<br />
relatively straightforward. The parts data just needed to flow from <strong>SAP</strong> to <strong>Salesforce</strong>, <strong>and</strong> the rate of<br />
change necessitated only a weekly update, although we wanted the ability for ad hoc updates,” says<br />
Schlemm.
It’s a nice closedloop<br />
process enabled<br />
by <strong>Salesforce</strong> <strong>and</strong> the<br />
integration <strong>with</strong> <strong>SAP</strong>.<br />
The net effect is to<br />
shorten the sales cycle<br />
<strong>and</strong> increase customer<br />
satisfaction.<br />
—Bill Schlemm<br />
IT Systems Project Manager <br />
To meet the sales team’s product-visibility needs, <strong>Littelfuse</strong> had to move six fields from <strong>SAP</strong><br />
to <strong>Salesforce</strong>. <strong>SAP</strong> experts at <strong>Littelfuse</strong> collaborated <strong>with</strong> salesforce.<strong>com</strong>’s Professional Services<br />
organization for the integration. “We used <strong>SAP</strong>’s Advanced Business Application Programming<br />
(ABAP) language to extract the parts information from the materials master to a flat file in the<br />
structure <strong>Salesforce</strong> needs,” Schlemm explains. “From there, it was easy to use salesforce.<strong>com</strong>’s<br />
AppExchange API to get the data into <strong>Salesforce</strong>.”<br />
With the Web services-based AppExchange API, customers can connect to <strong>Salesforce</strong> using<br />
virtually any programming language. To ac<strong>com</strong>modate the various tools <strong>and</strong> platforms of its<br />
customers, salesforce.<strong>com</strong> offers developer toolkits for Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, <strong>and</strong> Ruby on Rails.<br />
For <strong>Littelfuse</strong>, the salesforce.<strong>com</strong> Professional Services team developed in .NET, writing a program<br />
to load product data from the flat file into <strong>Salesforce</strong>, overwriting existing data if necessary.<br />
The integration took about two weeks. “We used the st<strong>and</strong>ard <strong>Salesforce</strong> products object but added<br />
a couple of fields to ac<strong>com</strong>modate all the parts data,” says Schlemm. “The AppExchange API is<br />
easy to use <strong>and</strong> very robust, which made the project painless.”<br />
Closing the Loop Between Departments<br />
With the integration, sales reps can now accurately select the correct parts based on product name,<br />
description, catalog number, product code, <strong>and</strong> so on <strong>and</strong> associate them <strong>with</strong> an opportunity.<br />
More importantly, workflows <strong>with</strong> engineering <strong>and</strong> product management teams—also users of<br />
<strong>Salesforce</strong>—allow collaboration during the sales cycle to ensure the right parts are specified.<br />
“A customer may often require a prototype part or an existing part <strong>with</strong> a slight modification,” notes<br />
Schlemm. “With engineering involved, they can work <strong>with</strong> the customer <strong>and</strong> produce the required<br />
parts. These new parts are then added to the parts list <strong>and</strong> be<strong>com</strong>e available to all customers. It’s a<br />
nice closed-loop process enabled by <strong>Salesforce</strong> <strong>and</strong> the integration <strong>with</strong> <strong>SAP</strong>. The net effect is to<br />
shorten the sales cycle <strong>and</strong> increase customer satisfaction.”<br />
Others <strong>with</strong>in <strong>Littelfuse</strong> also benefit from the integration. Product marketing uses the opportunity<br />
data to underst<strong>and</strong> what parts will be driving revenue moving forward, which allows the group to<br />
revise forecasts, modify product strategy, <strong>and</strong> make planning adjustments. And the manufacturing<br />
group can anticipate production requirements while waiting for deals to close.<br />
<strong>Littelfuse</strong> plans more integrations between <strong>Salesforce</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>SAP</strong>. “Our parts integration was so<br />
successful, we’ve decided to integrate our customer master <strong>with</strong> <strong>Salesforce</strong>,” says Schlemm.<br />
“As a longtime <strong>SAP</strong> professional, I have been pleasantly surprised at how easy it has been to link<br />
these two products together,” Schlemm adds. “<strong>Salesforce</strong> knows how important other systems are<br />
to our overall success, so the investments the <strong>com</strong>pany has made in the AppExchange API truly<br />
benefit customers like us.”<br />
For More Information<br />
Contact your account executive to<br />
learn how we can help you accelerate<br />
your CRM success.<br />
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CS - <strong>Littelfuse</strong> - V1 - 5/06