Customer Case Study

Nortel
Nortel Boosts Sales Productivity and Centralizes
Access to Sales Information with CRM

STORY AT A GLANCE
Nortel is a telecommunications leader that found itself facing a distinctly
changed business landscape in the new millennium. In this new market,
its sales force needed to work more productively to generate the same THE NEW WORLD OF WORK
revenue. Also, with diverse sales tools, Nortel management needed a
Companies of all sizes strive
more accurate view of its business with global customers. to make their sales force more
efficient, because they understand
that sales productivity translates
To improve sales productivity and visibility into accounts, Nortel created a directly into revenues. Nortel uses
new, consistent global sales process and rolled out Microsoft Dynamics® customer relationship
CRM, a customer relationship management solution. By involving the management (CRM) software
to help salespeople focus on
sales team throughout the process, Nortel experienced a smooth, rapid, the right opportunities and give
and highly successful rollout of its new CRM system. management instant insight into
the sales pipeline.

For every hour that Nortel salespeople spend inputting data into the CRM
system, they get at least two hours back in selling time. They have a
much clearer view of their accounts and where they need to focus their
efforts each week. Hundreds of employees across the company pull data
from the CRM system to make better decisions on everything from
marketing to manufacturing, and management can accurately view
customer relationship status.

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Customer Case Study
As a leader in the Global Forecasting
organization for Nortel, Dan Evans
struggled to produce sales forecasts for
the global telecommunications giant. With
2,000 salespeople working on 30,000
active deals across 150 countries, data
arrived in a variety of formats, currencies,
and languages. Evans’s organization spent
several days each month normalizing and
aggregating the figures.
In just nine months, things changed. After
implementing new sales-tracking software,
Evans can now get a snapshot of the entire
global sales pipeline in less than an hour.
Managers throughout the company can get
comprehensive, up-to-date views of the
business. The sales force has more time
to sell. And Nortel has created a wealth of
sales best-practices and customer
intelligence that it can use to extend
sales and deepen customer intimacy.
CREATE A MORE PRODUCTIVE
ENVIRONMENT
Based in Toronto, Canada, Nortel is a
global communications company that offers
a variety of carrier and enterprise solutions.
Nortel successfully rode out the global
telecommunications bust of the late 1990s
and found itself navigating a subsequent
slow market recovery as overbuilt capacity
was consumed and demand picked up.
“The IT, telecom, and media industries
are converging, resulting in a much more
competitive landscape with fewer large
players,” explains Peter Finter, Vice
President of Marketing for Nortel.
“The large carriers have slowed their
infrastructure purchases, but business
enterprises are investing in
communications technology to drive
growth. These market changes impacted
our sales productivity. Instead of selling
very large solutions to solution providers,
our salespeople are now chasing smaller
deals. To generate the same revenue, they
have to sell more product.” With a relatively
smaller sales force, by industry standards,
Nortel needed to make its salespeople
more productive.
However, Nortel’s sales process and
data-tracking tools were disparate and
inconsistent across the organization.
Each country managed its sales pipeline
using a variety of customer relationship
management (CRM) systems and
spreadsheets. It was difficult for
management to get an accurate view of the LESSONS LEARNED
pipeline and of how much business Nortel • Engage users in the CRM
was doing with large global customers. selection process to ensure
buy-in across the company.
The sales force spent hours each week
filling management reporting requests, • Make sure that the CRM
which took them away from selling. “When system integrates with
executives visited a big customer, they scheduling, e-mail, contact
wanted to know how much business we managers, and other tools
were doing with them,” Finter says. “Those that the sales force use.
requests took days to fulfill. Plus, because • Announce that the company
data collection methods varied, data will use CRM data to run the
accuracy was low and required many hours business—and then use it.
of manual work to validate the figures.” Don’t wait until the data is
clean. Devise incentives to
To succeed and grow, Nortel needed to drive data cleanliness.
create a single global sales process and
• Be clear on the data needed
implement a central sales-tracking tool to
to run your business, and
help its sales force focus on the right
resist the temptation to create
opportunities and work more productively.
too many CRM fields. Data-
Having centralized sales data would also
collection time will reduce
give Nortel management instant insight into
sales activity and promote better decision timesaving returns.
making across the business.
CREATING A NEW SALES PROCESS
“We understood that simply deploying a
new CRM across the company would not
drive the business results we expected,”
Finter says. Instead, the marketing teams
worked with the sales organization to
create a completely new sales process.
The team worked with an outside
consulting firm to pull best practices from
other organizations and combine them
Nortel’s own. Nortel piloted the new
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Customer Case Study
process with seven sales teams, and within
five months, the company introduced it to
its 2,000 salespeople worldwide.
However, Nortel realized that it needed
to support the new sales process with a
global sales-tracking tool that would create
a single repository of data. Nortel turned
to its sales teams for guidance in selecting
the right tool. A team of 14 sales
representatives and managers from four
regions selected Microsoft Dynamics®
CRM business software. “The Microsoft
solution was the hands-down favorite,
chiefly because of its familiar look and
feel,” Evans says. “Our users were
comfortable with it from day one.”
Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides
seamless integration with familiar products
in the Microsoft® Office system, including
the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging
and collaboration client and Microsoft
Office Excel® spreadsheet software,
reducing learning and data-entry time
and contributing to increased productivity.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM also integrates
well with non-Microsoft applications, so
salespeople can access all the tools they
need from a single work pane.
Within four months of finalizing its new
sales process, Nortel began to deploy
Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Full global
deployment of the tool to more than 3,500
users (2,000 salespeople and 1,500
technical sales, support, and management
staff) in 80 countries took just nine months.
“Adoption of CRM systems is legendarily
abysmal,” Evans says. “We knew that if we
asked salespeople to spend time putting
information into the system, they would
need to get twice as much information out
of it to make it worthwhile.” To ensure that
productivity gain, Nortel performed face-to-
face training with sales teams around the
world to explain the new tool and the new
sales process. “We also created a
comprehensive communications strategy
to support the move to this new process
and program,” Finter says. “We used
executive webcasts, regular written
communications, sales conferences,
and other avenues to explain to the
sales force how the new sales process
program would benefit them.”
GREATER DATA ACCURACY
The Nortel sales team embraced the
new sales process and software with
enthusiasm. “Our initial reaction was
‘Wow,’” says Sean Fleck, Global Account
Services Sales Leader for Nortel.
“Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrated
very well with what we were already doing
in Office Outlook and Office Excel. The
salespeople didn’t even realize that they EXECUTIVE BIOGRAPHY
were using another tool.”
Dan Evans’s position at Nortel
is Leader, Global Forecasting
To ensure that salespeople were inputting Process/Tools. During his 24-year
complete and accurate data, Evans career with Nortel, Dan has held
provided an incentive. “We made it clear positions in Manufacturing,
that this was our one and only sales Production Control, Materials
Planning, Quality, Purchasing,
system, and if their deals weren’t in there
Marketing Operations, Sales
accurately, they didn’t exist,” Evans says.
Operations and Forecasting. A
He created a weekly data cleanliness
graduate of North Carolina State
scorecard that he publishes to the entire University, Dan is based at Nortel’s
sales organization. “When people know Research Triangle Park offices in
that they’re being measured, they make a North Carolina.
much bigger effort to be correct,” he says.
“Plus, salespeople are very competitive.
Using these public scorecards, we were
able to improve data cleanliness from 68
to 91 percent in just three months.”
INCREASED SALES PRODUCTIVITY
Salespeople now have a personalized,
concise view of their accounts and an easy
way to monitor sales progress. For each
account, they can see revenue year-to-
date, lifetime revenue, quota, and target
revenue plan. “We have a much clearer
view of what we need to do in each
account,” Fleck says. “We can see the
must-wins for the week or month, and
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Customer Case Study

where we need to put our focus to achieve
sales goals.”
Sales managers and the forecasting team
no longer need to request data from the
sales force; they simply turn to Microsoft
Dynamics CRM. “We have hundreds of
reporting-only users that use the CRM
system to get the information they need,”
Evans says. “Our salespeople probably
spend an extra hour a week inputting
information, but they are getting two or
more hours back to spend with customers,
create presentations, and perform other
sales activities. In time, we hope to process
and win more deals, improve best practices
and upsell opportunities, and, of course,
increase revenue.”
“As a sales manager, I am saving three to
six hours a week in phone calls tracking
down data, and a day per week in report
creation,” Fleck adds.
INSTANT SNAPSHOT OF SALES
PIPELINE
Nortel now has a highly accurate, up-to-
date view of all deals in its sales pipeline
and of all customer accounts. Evans’s
team can now produce an accurate sales
forecast in about an hour versus the two to
four days required before. “Our view of our
sales funnel for the next four quarters has
grown significantly,” Evans says. “That’s
a huge help in making business decisions.
With the increased visibility and control,
we can make better decisions about
which business to pursue, make sure that
our sales opportunities do not get stuck
in one stage of the sales cycle, and
manage our pipeline on a weekly versus
a monthly basis.”
sales practices, the supply chain, inventory,
marketing, and manufacturing operations.
“Seeing sales trends helps ensure that
we’re building the right products,” Finter
says. “We can improve sales performance
by seeing whether specific marketing
programs are working. It’s all about
optimizing our people and serving
customers better.”
Nortel plans to integrate Microsoft
Dynamics CRM with other tools to drive
deeper customer intimacy. For example,
it wants to merge data from its CRM and
supply-chain systems to provide a better
view of the company’s ability to fill orders.
The company also wants to build an online
sales forum where salespeople can discuss
opportunities and seek best practices.
“Our CRM solution helps us create an
incredible amount of business intelligence,”
Evans says. “It’s making a huge difference
in the effectiveness of our sales team and
the success of our company and our
customers.”
CUSTOMER DETAILS:
Nortel
Phone: (800) 4NORTEL
Web site: www.nortel.com
THE PEOPLE-READY BUSINESS
A people-ready business is one
where people can apply their unique
skills, insights and experience to
create new products and services,
work responsively with customers
and partners, and drive operational
excellence in every aspect of the
business. People-ready businesses
support people with knowledge,
practices and tools so that they
can add the extra value that
helps differentiate successful
organizations in a competitive,
fast-moving global economy.
www.microsoft.com/peopleready
SOFTWARE & SERVICES
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
2007 Microsoft Office system

IMPROVED CUSTOMER INSIGHT

By continuing to build best practices and
business intelligence, Nortel can better
manage and improve customer service,

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2008 4