Customer success story
Contract signed on Friday, data in Salesforce by Monday
Lindab USA had chosen Salesforce and could not find anyone to connect it to an old, heavily customised Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0. Vendor after vendor had no answer, and the ones that did suggested typing the data in by hand. Rapidi said about two days. The team laughed, tried it anyway, and had their data over by Monday morning.
Lindab is an international group that develops, manufactures and distributes steel products and systems for ventilation, building components and buildings. Its US business ran Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0 and picked Salesforce as CRM. Rapidi loaded the existing data into Salesforce automatically and now keeps 200–300 accounts in two-way sync, with inventory, price lists, open sales orders, and sales and payment history updated hourly and daily inside Salesforce. Implementation took two days.
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A CRM chosen, and no way to connect it
Lindab ran Microsoft Dynamics AX for customers and inventory. The US business was still on AX 3.0, an older version and an extremely customised one. After researching CRM systems the company settled on Salesforce, but there was a missing link between the ERP and the CRM.
Many vendors were asked. None of them seemed to have a way to connect Dynamics AX with Salesforce. The search ended on the Salesforce AppExchange, where Lindab found Rapidi.
What the US team needed was specific: a link between Salesforce and Dynamics AX 3.0, an automatic initial load to populate Salesforce, up-to-date and accurate information on customers and dealers, help getting the two systems to work together, and an integration flexible enough to grow with the business.
“Yeah, right”
The first call set the tone. “Already at the initial contact Rapidi was extremely nice and helpful,” says John Bender, IT Director at Lindab USA. “Michael took his time, even though it was pretty late for him, to listen to the challenges we faced and assured us that this could be done in approximately two days.”
The claim was not taken at face value. “We at Lindab USA were kind of giggling and thinking ‘yeah, right’,” Bender says, “but we decided to give it a go, arranged a demo, got convinced and signed the agreement with Rapidi. Returning from the weekend we were certainly not disappointed.”
We signed the contract on Friday and had our data over by Monday morning. That is remarkable!
For Bender the contrast with the rest of the market was the point: Rapidi delivered what it said, on time, where the other vendors did not have the competence to build an integration between Salesforce and Dynamics AX at all.
The data nobody else would load
A new Salesforce customer starts with an empty CRM. “All the other vendors we talked to told us to type in the data manually,” Bender says. With a large amount of data to move, the team almost gave up on the idea. Rapidi populated Salesforce from AX automatically instead, which saved a great deal of time and gave the team confidence that the data arriving was correct.
That initial load had a second effect nobody had planned for. Once the sales team saw their real AX data inside Salesforce, user adoption of the CRM was 100%, and instant. Before, a salesperson who needed a figure had to email the AX people and wait. Now it is at their fingertips.
Pre-built integration templates did much of the rest. The most common integration points between Salesforce and Dynamics AX come already mapped, so once Lindab decided what to transfer it was a matter of enabling it. As Bender puts it, Rapidi had done the homework on the business processes tied to the integration.
Without Rapidi we wouldn’t have gone further with the project – we wouldn’t have bought salesforce.com and our sales people would still be searching for their data.
What sits inside Salesforce now
The integration covers what a sales team selling through dealers actually asks about:
- 200–300 accounts and customers in two-way sync
- Product inventory, including stock on hand and what is coming in
- All price lists, updated automatically
- Open sales orders, transferred and kept up to date
- Orders, invoices and ledger entries, with sales and payment history on each account
“Having all this information right there available to us from anywhere at any time, we now know straight away what we can deliver, which saves us a lot of time and effort,” Bender says. The data synchronises hourly and daily, and because it is accurate, it shows what each client has bought, whether and when they paid, and which items dealers are reselling. That gives Lindab the means to market, respond and upsell to customers and partners alike.
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Salesforce joined to Dynamics AX 3.0 in two days, the initial load other vendors said could not be automated, and what Lindab USA’s sales team sees now.
Better decisions, and a partner
“Informed decision-making relies on more comprehensive views of data,” Bender says. Understanding customer behaviour is the first step towards cross-selling, upselling and targeted marketing, and that knowledge sat split between the ERP and the CRM. With it visible inside Salesforce, Lindab can respond to customers more proactively, and the same holds for procurement and purchasing.
The time saved started with not keying the initial data in by hand. It continues because quick, easy access to data from both Salesforce and AX makes the entire working process more efficient, gives a better overview and, as Bender puts it, “empowers us to make strategic decisions – quicker.”
Not only are they experts in data integration, but Rapidi also has a high expertise in understanding our business processes.
Bender describes the Salesforce and AX integration as working like plug-and-play: once set up, it runs seamlessly in the background and the customer barely has to do anything. He credits the people as much as the product, for taking the time to understand Lindab’s needs and following up.
Rapidi has made such a big difference to our company and has opened more doors for future projects. We very much regard Rapidi as our strategic partner.
Lindab is an international group that develops, manufactures, markets and distributes products and system solutions, primarily in steel, for simplified construction and improved indoor climate, across three business areas: Ventilation, Building Components and Buildings. At the time of this project it had net sales of SEK 6,527 million (2010), a presence in 31 countries and around 4,400 employees. More about the company at lindab.com.
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