TOP COMPANIES BELIEVE THAT BUSINESS GROWTH SHOULD BE IN FOCUS!
That was the main topic discussed at the "8th Annual Salesforce Conference", organized by Next Consult and Salesforce.com at the end of March this year
02.04.2021, Sofia - The annual conference of Next Consult and Salesforce.com was held on March 30th and 31st. This year the conference was held online over 2 consecutive days in Bulgaria and Romania. The event brought together senior managers and owners of leading companies in the region. The speakers of the event shared their personal experience on the journey of the digital transformation of their business. Among the guest speakers at the conference were owners, managers and CxOs of leading companies on the market such as CEZ, Postbank, Steelmet, DPD Romania, Global Brands Distribution, Nick Electronics, Trade League, eBag and GTS Romania.
During the conference, the guests were presented with the new trends and technologies that support the inevitable digital transformation of the business today. It became clear that aside from the technology changes, the business processes also need to be updated.
Six months after the implementation of Salesforce's marketing automation platform - the most innovative solution for customer communication management – Postbank reports a significantly better results and increase of efficiency in the targeted segments. This was noted by Lina Varbanova, head of the bank’s CRM department. She also pointed out the design of the business processes as a prerequisite for the success of any implementation:
Lina Varbanova
CRM Head, Retail at Postbank
"I will confirm that the processes are also changing. If you try to buy and integrate such a platform without updating your processes accordingly, will practically result in a lack of any significant change. We use it precisely to change the processes and to improve them! It was very important for us to be able to manage it completely independently. Salesforce gave us significant freedom to work without being dependent.”
The need of changing business processes was confirmed by Ivo Kumanov, Owner of the innovative company Nick Electronics, which provides solutions for agriculture business and works with some of the most successful companies in the sector such as Bayer, BASF and others. He shared his experience with various business systems, incl. FinancialForce, and explicitly stressed the importance of the business consultant in the process:
"When you implement a software that should help you manage your business processes, you need not only IT people, but also business consultants, or at least we needed a business consultant who understands the logic of our processes! Some processes need to be slightly modified (almost always) and that is why we needed the help of experienced business consultants. I think that we found those people in Next Consult, and I believe that we will make even better decisions in the future."
Ivo Kumanov
Chief Executive Officer at NIK Electronics
All the speakers at the conference agreed that more than ever before, the focus is on business growth. And to achieve this, companies need to change according to the current conditions, with a clear view of the future, which seems to be more digitalized, and with the customers – even more demanding.
Milena Ibisheva from Global Brands Distribution, official representative and distributor of a number of luxury fashion brands, including Guess, Ralph Lauren and Superdry, touched on this topic when she described how they see the future and how prepared they feel about it. She was happy to point out that their company does not stop innovating in its efforts to provide the customers with a real fashion experience from anywhere at any time. That is actually why they choose to implement Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform.
Milena Ibisheva
Head оf Marketing and E-commerce at Global Brands Distribution
"In 2020, we were faced with the need to move to a platform that meets our desire for innovation and development. We were looking for a partner that speaks our language and with whom we can go quickly through every step and while being adequate to the consumer requirements and the market competition. That is how we met Next Consult ", commented Milena Ibisheva, Head of Marketing and E-commerce.”
In one of the first sessions of the conference, perhaps surprisingly, the participants learned that the well-known company CEZ Electro does not adhere to the status quo but works hard to modernize itself. Thus, the company successfully implements several Salesforce solutions, that cover not only the sales processes, but also provides for better customer service and last but not least, improves the ability for self-service at any time. The executive director of the company Dimcho Stanev was pleased to say:
"We believe we have found a reliable partner in Next Consult. The success of the implementation does not depend on buying the best or the most expensive solution, but more so on knowing what you want to achieve with it and on having someone with solid experience in this area that will help you find the right answers to the questions you ask yourself.”
Dimcho Stanev
Executive Director at CEZ Electro Bulgaria
Service is definitely at the forefront of the business transformation. It is also a major competitive advantage of any company, and the speed and pace of change are crucial for the future success!
Five years ago, Steelmet, a company of the Viohalco group (owner of several manufacturing companies in Bulgaria, including Etem, Stomana Industry and Sofiamed) launched a large-scale project to unify its customer base, to build a 360-degree view of the customer, to automate the whole sales process, and prepare extremely complex quotes, which are typical for their business. Yannis Giannoutsikos, Head of Digital Transformation, commented on the project and his work with Next Consult with great satisfaction:
"Salesforce helped us understand the basics of the customer journey. Now we have a full view of the customer. We did an amazing quotation tool too and we are very happy with the cooperation that we have with Next Consult so far.”
Yannis GIANNOUTSIKOS
Head of Digital Transformation at Steelmet SA
The courier company DPD, which is a long-term client of Next Consult in Bulgaria (Speedy) and in Romania, also took part in this year's conference. Claudiu Ascunseanu, Regional Director of DPD Romania, spoke about their joint project and highlighted several key aspects as a success factor:
Claudiu Ascunseanu
Regional Sales Manager at DPD Romania
“We realized that we need to improve not only the internal processes, but also to focus more on our customers and be able to offer them the services they are looking for, just when they need them. Salesforce has provided us not only with technology for digitalization, but also became a starting point in imposing a new way of working and transforming into a customer-oriented company. And nowadays, being customer-oriented is becoming more and more important!”
This is what the 8th annual Salesforce conference presented to us - 9 well-known market leaders, 9 shared success stories, 9 satisfied customers of Salesforce and Next Consult. Everyone with its individual, unique professional and personal experience, but all united behind the idea of the future and the digital reality!
