Salesforce Partner Q&A: Len Couture of Bluewolf Explains CRM Customization

Len Couture is global managing director of cloud computing services for Bluewolf, a CRM integrator whose clients include Warner Cable, ADP, Dow Jones and Company, United Way, and Chevron. Bluewolf was selected 2009 Authorized Training Center (ATC) of the Year by Salesforce.

Selling Power (SP): Why is sales technology so popular right now?
Len Couture (LC): In the past, software vendors developed software tools and told the business users to adapt their processes to the tools. Today, the technology has become adaptive to the business process. Rather than try to rework your entire business, you can look at specific business steps in your sales process and then automate and improve those steps. At the risk of mixing metaphors, you can make surgical strikes, rather than try to boil the ocean.

SP: What advice do you have for sales groups looking at new technology?
LC: Don’t get hung up on the applications. Instead, focus on the information and what happens to it. Once you understand how the information moves around the organization, you can find tools to help that process along and eliminate bottlenecks.

SP: Can you give us an example?
LC: Sure. I previously served as the CIO of several firms. When I went into one position, I discovered that in order to get an item from the point at which the sale was made to where the order got to manufacturing, the information had to go through 17 people; the process included uploading and downloading data into spreadsheets. We replaced that jury-rigging with a Web-based application where all the updating took place online, which vastly reduced the amount of time and money it took to fulfill an order.

SP: Are such problems common?
LC: Definitely. Another company where I was hired as CIO had a problem with excess inventory, and the “answer” to fixing the problem had been defined (by my predecessor) as a major upgrade of our SAP ERP system — a process that would have taken months of complicated labor. Instead, I pulled back from that solution and viewed the problem purely as an information issue. It turns out the sales organization was making changes to the demand plan that weren’t getting to manufacturing, so manufacturing ended up making the wrong things. By building an uninterrupted flow, we made sales demand immediately visible to manufacturing, thereby radically reducing inventory.

SP: What role does AppExchange play in making sales technology more accessible?
LC: It plays a huge role. Because you can adapt an application into the existing environment, you can make quick changes to the business process or sales process in a much shorter time frame. That allows you to show results much quicker so that you can then move to fixing the next hot spot. Rather than a massive project, improving the sales process becomes a matter of implementing bite-size chunks.

SP: What should sales groups be looking for in a system integrator and customizer?
LC: A company that has experience working in the framework of your sales technology. What you don’t want is somebody who comes in trying to get you to rethink everything you’re doing. While they should be able to bring to bear some best practices from other industries, you want to work with somebody who’s comfortable with an iterative model and making incremental changes, rather than launching big, bloated projects that may never pan out.