Let’s say you are with a company that has been around for some time, perhaps 100 years. You would probably have a good understanding of your customers, otherwise you wouldn’t have survived and thrived for so long.

As time has passed, your business has evolved and your customers have too (and many have been replaced with new customers along the way). And while your core internal systems have also evolved over time, they have been more focused on transactions than interactions, leaving your sales and marketing teams to figure out their own ways to manage customer relationships and grow the business.

Well, as I’m sure you have guessed, this is not a theoretical example, but a real-world story. The Standard Register Company has existed for 101 years, specializing in a number of print products and communication solutions, with customers including half of the Fortune 500 across a number of industries.

New Services = New Buyers

As with many mature companies, Standard Register was experiencing an issue with expanding their customer relationships as they moved into new business areas. The company is focused on transforming from its traditional printing business to providing digital content and communication services. Of course, this transformation presented a set of sales challenges:

• How could they reach new types of buyers, and how would they enter new industries where they weren’t well known?
• How could they extend their existing customer relationships beyond the typical procurement roles?
• How could they provide ways for their entire company to be able to work together in creating a true 360-degree view of their customers?

Creating a Single, Complete Customer Master

To tackle this challenge, Standard Register closely examined both its customer data and sales process. Based on their analysis, they made the following changes to improve their customer interactions:

• Implemented Salesforce.com as their corporate-wide customer master with Data.com providing the definitive source/validation of customer data
• Created new processes within Salesforce (and leveraging Data.com) to ensure that they have the right customer/prospect information and insights to effectively identify and advance sales opportunities
• Adopted Salesforce Chatter to improve collaboration during the sales cycle across all parts of their organization

To learn more about the Salesforce solution at Standard Register and the benefits they realized, check out the recently published IDC Research customer spotlight paper, Salesforce Data.com Helps Standard Register Evolve to Compete in a Digital Marketplace.