Transforming the quoting process

Gilson is a life science company that develops products used in labs around the world to help advance the pace of discovery. Best known for PIPETMAN® pipettes, a lab tool used to transfer or measure liquid, Gilson holds 750 patents and includes 14 organizations around the globe.

Gilson had used the Salesforce platform in its United States organization for 10 years with great results. To improve efficiency throughout all their organizations, they sought to deploy it globally. Their goal was to upgrade and improve their quoting process through an integrated automation platform.

Challenge

Inefficient processes, manual data entry, and lack of self-service options

Solution

Salesforce CPQ implementation that automated quoting

Results

Integrated data, faster resolutions, and automated ticketing

The Challenge

A Needlessly Complex quoting process

Penrod reviewed Gilson’s quoting system and process and learned that the current configure-price-quote (CPQ) tool was inefficient and unwieldy. Creating and sending quotes was a lengthy, manual process. It took the sales team up to an hour to create quotes, resulting in missed opportunities and a poor user experience.

In addition, the current CPQ platform did not integrate well with other platforms. Throughout the sales and quoting process, Gilson staff relied heavily on third-party products. Because Gilson’s CPQ tool did not work seamlessly with these other products, it took the team extra time to toggle between platforms in order to ensure data stayed clean and accurate across all platforms.

Due to of the nature of Gilson’s global business, the sales team outputs a high volume of documents throughout their quoting process for different countries across Europe. Their existing system did not support this large volume of output, so ensuring customers and partners had the documents they needed was challenging and time consuming.

Gilson needed a solution that would allow them to use all of their tools in a unified, streamlined manner. Additionally, the team required a CPQ that was able to accommodate multi-language templates. After reviewing Gilson’s current system and discussing their needs and desired outcomes, Penrod offered a solution: Salesforce’s Configure, Price, Quote software.

The Solution

Salesforce CPQ

Salesforce CPQ software was a natural fit for Gilson as their sales team was already using Salesforce Sales Cloud. One of the key benefits of Salesforce CPQ was the ability to use the native Salesforce Product and price book objects. This made it much easier for administrators because they no longer needed to add or update products in two distinct platforms (Salesforce and a separate quoting tool).

Because Salesforce and Salesforce CQP were designed to integrate seamlessly, using these two tools together enabled Gilson’s sales team to automate and streamline their entire sales process. One of the key benefits Gilson found with using Salesforce CPQ was the ability to use the native Salesforce Product and price book objects. This made it much easier from an administrative perspective because the team no longer had to worry about adding or updating products in two separate locations (i.e., Salesforce and separate quoting tool). With the new platform, the team can now configure products and generate quotes easily and efficiently.

Salesforce CPQ was developed with the flexibility to allow customers to add and customize their CPQ tool as much or as little as they need. Penrod did an out-of-the-box implementation of Salesforce CPQ to keep Gilson’s system simple, while leaving room for the team to customize and add on to as their business needs change. In addition, with the new platform, Gilson was able to integrate all other tools used throughout their sales process, eliminating the need for the sales team to toggle between platforms and helping to ensure the data was accurate at every step in the quoting process.

Long and tedious processes were made shorter and more streamlined with the new tool. With Salesforce CPQ, the Gilson team was able to add in a discount structure and approvals through Salesforce, allowing greater visibility for the team. Salesforce CPQ provided the option to turn output documents into templates, reducing much of the time-consuming, manual document creation for the team. Automation that is built into Salesforce CPQ also means Gilson’s quotes are sent quickly and, because automation reduces the potential for human error, are accurate and sustainable by Gilson’s team.

 

The Results

Streamlined, Efficient Quoting

Prior to the Salesforce CPQ implementation, Gilson’s previous quoting process was time-consuming, complex, and challenging for the sales team to navigate. Adding to these difficulties, the previous platform did not sync well with necessary third-party integrations, disrupting the process. Now, with Salesforce CPQ working seamlessly with Gilson’s existing Sales Cloud and other third party tools, the quoting process is streamlined, efficient, and user-friendly.

Instead of moving from tool to tool, wasting valuable time on duplicate work, and creating high volumes of output documents, Gilson’s sales team can start and finish a quote in about half the time than before. As a result, the team delivers quotes out faster, produces output documents with the click of a button, and are able to respond to more sales opportunities than ever before.

Faster Quotes

Quotes can be generated in about half the time as the previous system

Increased Efficiency

Sales reps focus on one tool and avoid duplicate work

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