3. Abstract
In the current day scenario attracting new customers as well as retaining existing customers plays a vital role in
improving business. One of the main objective of our supply chain is meet customer expectations. Customer
plays a vital role in the company’s success. Providing good customer service helps in the long term in retaining
customers better. There are many new technologies available in the market which can help companies in this
area but choosing a technology which suites their business model and would help them in a way needed plays a
vital in the selection. Current paper talks about Zero Motorcycles which is first ever electric bike manufacturing
company. Zero Motorcycles is disrupting the biking industry with a combination of innovative products and
state of art service. Company is very rapidly growing at a rate of 100% every year. The paper talks about how
implementing Salesforce in their company helped them in understanding the endless possibilities of expanding
their business and how well it has helped them in understanding their customers. This paper also provides
various insights on the timeline involved in the project, Return on Investment (ROI), and the pros/cons of using
salesforce and its tools.
Company Overview
Zero motorcycles are first ever electric motorcycle manufacturing company which is leading the pack with a
combination of innovative products and state-of-the-art service. Hailed by Forbes as the “Tesla of motorcycles,”
Zero has quickly become the industry leader in high-performance electric motorcycles that surpass traditional
gas-powered bikes in almost every metric. Despite their reputation for technological innovation and a made-in-
America pedigree in one key area Zero was not firing on all cylinders: customer service, for both owners and
dealers. “We knew we had a great product,” says Mike Cunningham, Director of U.S. Sales and Dealer
Development. Zero Motorcycles follows an order to cash process with an annual revenue of $25 million
per/year.
3. Challenges
Zero motorcycles business boomed suddenly as soon as people drove their vehicles. Company wanted to
improve its revenues by attracting new customers. The main goal of the company was to bring in new
customers and increase the cash flow. But, the technology which Zero Motorcycles was using was very
outdated it dealt with suppliers in terms of order slips and even used fax in some cases. There was no proper
system in place. It maintained its customer records, inventory count, supplier information on excel and always
4. complained about missing spreadsheets. The company was also spending a lot of time for maintain invoices,
entering data manually and managing customer, dealer data was one of the biggest issues with Zero
Motorcycles.
1. Manual Data Entry: Information on customers, dealers, day to day orders was done manually on
spreadsheets and in physical accounting books which many times led to information loss and
misplacement of books. This manual data entry slowed down the entire process and often led to
mistakes which one of the issue which in turn sometimes led to a loss of crucial information which could
have helped company in landing a client.
2. Inadequate Collaboration Practices: Zero manufactured its bikes on its own as they were the first to
launch electric bikes. Bike manufacturing was labor intrinsic and involved many employees. As the
company was new one of the main criteria which they should be concentrating is to collect feedback
from their customers which could help them in improving the product which could meet the customer
expectation. There was no proper system in place for the information and feedback to flow from one
department to another.
3. Use of Outdated Technology: The company did not have any modern technology. It was still using
Excel, Access, Outlook etc in their business. Company had to put in some extra work just maintain these
records. These outdated technologies were not helping them in analyzing other important metrics which
help their business in many ways. The company did not have any analysis on how it was meeting its
customer expectation and customer service levels, sales, marketing, dealers had different databases and
were not integrated properly to each other.
4. Problems with Customer Service: Customer Service plays a vital role in any business so knowing what
customer needs and meeting his needs can help us in long run in increasing our customer base. Giving
customer what really want will help us in gaining good reputation and also attracting new customer.
Zero was not addressing its customer concerns properly and service levels were not so good due to ths
Solution - Salesforce
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is the best in class Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and was initially started as a
Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM company. Salesforce provides users with great customizability to fit their
CRM needs and for developers to build and distribute custom software.
What is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer Relationship Management is a technology which helps company’s in managing their relationships
and interactions with their existing customers and potential customers. CRM helps in staying getting connected
to customers, streamline processes and maximize profitability.
How not implementing CRM effected the Zero Motorcycles business?
Zero did not have any CRM before and used outdated technology to store information. So, whenever sales,
marketing teams collected feedback, review and rating from customers there was no platform established for
them which could help them in accessing that data. This data is very useful and when used properly can make or
brake a company. Not only in managing data company did not have any platform to contact other departments
apart from traditional methods of calling so they’re was a good chance that the people might be uninformed
about the meeting etc. Sorting customer data to find the customers who are very interested in the product was
5. not possible with existing technology as they lacked resources to do that. Zero Motorcycles main goal was that
if they can find a potential customer and make him test drive their product then they were confident that the
customer will sure comeback to buy the product. But in order to do that did not knew how to find that customer.
The only way in which customer could contact the company was via phone, email etc. Zero lacked common
platforms which could bring customers, sales, marketing together and analyze the data collected from them and
use that information to prepare reports, find potential customer.
Various Cloud Services offered by Salesforce
1. Sales Cloud - The Sales Cloud is a CRM platform that enables Zero Motorcycles to manage their
sales, marketing and customer support roles. The company is engaged in business-to-customer
making sales cloud the service the sales team needs.
2. Marketing Cloud - The marketing cloud platform enables Zero Motorcycles with a powerful digital
marketing platform. The marketing team can use it to manage customer data, personal information
of customer such as email, mobile, social media, web personalization and and provides marketing
with performing data analytics to look at the best possible results.
3. Service Cloud - The Service Cloud platform enables Zero Motorcycles customer service and support
team. It helps them by case tracking and social networking plug-in for conversation and analytics.
This not only helps the agents to solve customer problems faster, but also gives customers the
answers to there questions.
4. Analytics Cloud – The analytical cloud enables Zero Motorcycles to have a business intelligence
platform for the organization to work with large data, and draw conclusions by creating various
graphs, charts from the data gathered. It can also be on mobiles can be integrated with other
Salesforce clouds.
5. Community Cloud – Community Cloud enables Zero Motorcycles platform to connect and facilitate
communication among the employees, partners and customers of Salesforce Community Cloud. This
community cloud in a way acts an social networking platform for an organization.
6. Application Cloud – Application cloud enables companies to develop custom apps that will run on
the Salesforce platform. Companies can also use the Salesforce App Cloud which provides them
with a collection of development tools that allows them to create custom applications.
7. IOT Cloud – IOT cloud enables companies to store and process Internet of Things data, they can
utilize the service of Salesforce IoT cloud. The platform is built to take in massive volumes of data
generated by devices, sensors, websites, applications, customers and partners. On receiving this data,
the platform initiates actions to give real time responses.
Terminology
1. Leads – People who you could do business with. It is not sure if they are going to buy from you or
not. They can be called as our potential clients.
2. Contact – Someone with whom you have business relationship with. They are our existing customers
3. Account – Accounts is a business entity with whom you have an existing business with and contacts
work for accounts.
4. Opportunities – Opportunities can be defined as the potential sale of product/services to account and
contact.
6. Solution/Improvements
Proper management of customers can help in the business growth. So, there is need to emphasize on the
customer relationship with the company. In case of Zero Motorcycles Salesforce CRM can help them to be
more connected with each other and as well as their customers which in long run can lead to business
improvement, company growth and deliver service which they actually intended to deliver and meet
customer expectations.
1. Finding the right customers: In the current data driven world finding right customers have become
easy only if right resources and right technologies are used. Pursuing right customer plays a vital in
business especially when companies are trying to expand and grow. Zero Motorcycles never actually
used any modern technologies to target customers they followed a traditional method of acquiring
customers. They followed regular methods of marketing like email, social media etc but one way in
which they can completely make use of that technologies is by connecting them to CRM platform by
doing this both sales and marketing will have complete data on leads and potential customers. This
would help them in improving their efficiency and make complete utilization of data. This in turn
help in faster decision making and improving overall efficiency and find right customers.
2. Reducing Manual Data Entries:
• The sales cloud can have helped Zero Motorcycles to automatically prioritize leads using its
smart AI features. It automatically prioritizes the best leads, autodials the next number, and
stores information regarding that lead. Sales cloud also uses automation which in turn eliminates
the need for manual entries.
• When customers spend money on Zero Motorcycles products and services, they enter into a
relationship Zero. Marketing Cloud provides opportunities for the company to build those
relationships with their customers, users, and subscribers. Marketing Cloud is used to connect to
a customer through email, mobile, social media, advertising, and the web to create a complete
package.
• It also helps marketing in improving their advertisement content by providing with advertising
analytics which help them in refining their ad content and the minute customer clicks on the ad
7. sales tracks the data till he exits and provides with a potential lead.
3. Improving Communication:
Chatter is an interactive and collaborative platform on Salesforce which can help Zero Motorcycles to
bring together different departments and have and collaborative functioning with each other. On chatter
everyone has an opportunity to talk to one another post comments, set up meeting and one most
convenient feature of charter is that it is available on mobile, laptops, desktop etc. It helps in improving
the overall flow of information between teams and their members. Teams can work together on projects
and send files, images, charts etc and can even comment on each other work. In other words, it is the
social media of workplace. Salesforce provides an interactive mobile application so that people can
have access to salesforce from anywhere and the app is called Salesforce1.
4. Access to Cloud Data:
The cloud-based platform of salesforce can help in maintaining data online on a cloud platform rather
than maintaining an on-premise server which is very expensive. Zero Motorcycles have plans of
expansion so having a cloud-based application of salesforce will help them in reducing cost and solve
scalability problems. Using Salesforce cloud enables employees to work on same information so even if
someone makes any changes to the system everyone in the team can view the changes and in terms of
customer acquisition perspective if a sales rep finds a potential customer then can update the information
about the customer through his mobile after which marketing team can follow up with them and the
chance of turning this lead to potential customer increases.
8. Potential Alternative Products-
1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Product mainly focuses on sales, marketing, customer service in help desk
sector and is mainly based on .NET framework and is part of Microsoft Dynamics family.
2. Oracle Siebel: Oracle Siebel mainly focuses on transactional, analytical, and engagement features to
manage all customer-facing operations. Siebel CRM delivers comprehensive on premise and on demand
CRM solutions.
9. Salesforce vs Microsoft Dynamics Vs Oracle Siebel
Salesforce Microsoft Dynamics Oracle Siebel
Data Management 8.5 7.8 7.5
Communication 8.8 8.2 7.9
Automation 8.0 7.3 7.3
Customer Support 8.0 7.6 7.6
Customization Capacity 9.0 8.5 7.4
Ease of use 8.5 7.8 7.2
Analytics & AI 8.4 7.6 7.8
• Al the above values are rated out of 10
• Based on our current requirements salesforce best fits our requirement
• Salesforce has products and services which rightly align with our problems and tools such as chatter, their
mobile application will help in solving our problems. The reason for selecting Microsoft Dynamics and oracle
Siebel is because of the Gartner quadrant classification. Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Siebel fall under the same
Leader quadrant as Salesforce
Implementation
Timeline
The project is expected to take around 52 weeks (1 year) to be completed considering an addition tolerance
just in case the company encounters any problems during this implementation process.
• Gain Board Approval/Budget Allocation:
Gaining approval.
Estimating and allocating budget to each domain of the project.
Estimated time = 3 weeks.
• Vendor Presentations/Negotiations:
Having different vendors present their software solutions.
Initiating negotiations and closing the deal with one vendor.
10. Estimated time = 4 weeks.
• Implement Project Team:
Choosing the right people to head and manage the project from start to finish.
Estimated time = 2 weeks.
• Define Company’s Goals:
Define and prioritize what the company is looking for by implementing this project.
A clear vision is necessary.
Breakdown the goals into manageable steps.
Estimated time = 2 weeks
• Process Map/Future Process Map/Fit Gap Analysis:
Define the current process map.
Understand Salesforce Key Terms.
Define future process map.
Conduct Fit/Gap Analysis.
Analyze results and modify process map to fit the company’s needs.
Estimated time = 5 weeks
• Notify and Engage end users:
Let the end users know about the project.
Give them a brief overview to get them started.
Estimated time = 1 week.
• Setting Up Salesforce CRM:
Processes start from setting up company profile to company-wide defaults for basic data access.
Start importing data onto the CRM platform.
Modules needed: Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud.
Estimated time = 10 weeks.
• Customization:
Customize based on fit/gap analysis based on company’s requirements.
Estimated time = 6 weeks.
• System Training/Training Users:
Start training end users to use the software. Keep it simple so as to not overwhelm users.
Include change management.
Estimated time = 12 weeks.
• Data Cleansing:
Start the process almost simultaneously with setting up the software.
Erase all unwanted data.
Gather data from different systems and import, required data only.
Estimated Time = 15 weeks.
• Go – Live:
Deploy the application. Officially announce the CRM system is ready to be used.
Estimated time = 3 weeks.
• Post Go – Live/Postmortem Review:
Review the CRM system once it has been deployed.
Make reports about company’s progress.
Estimated time = 4 weeks
11. Risk Management
Risk Management activities are mainly implemented to protect company from potential events which can
negatively affect the company. Now a days Risk management is implemented in almost all industries and is
given significant importance during implementation.
Potential Risks and Failures
1. Implementation Failure:
Implementing a software can always be challenging especially when there was no existing software
present before. The implementation process needs to be planned before and right amount of resources
should be allocated for implementation. If right amount of resources is not provided, then it can
sometimes lead to failure and may also cause delay in the implementation. Selecting right personnel for
the project also plays an important role in the implementation.
2. Adapting to New Technology:
Employees are often resistant to change and implementing something this big need approval from
everyone. So, the advantages of implementing new system should be explained to them properly and
how crucial the product is for the success of an organization. For Zero data utilization was never done
properly so by showing them the advantages of using data, analytics would allow them to adapt more
easily to the process.
3. Training Failure:
This is one of the most common and biggest risks companies has to face today while implementing a
new system. Training plays a vital role in both success and failure of the project. So, selecting personnel
who have prior experience of implementing systems plays a crucial role. Allocating sufficient time
training also a vital role sometime companies try to accelerate this process which in turn leads to short
training time.
Costs
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the entire costs that will be incurred throughout the project’s implementation
and several years after the system goes live to capture recurring maintenance costs.
Using an online TCO Calculator, we can estimate the following costs to be incurred:
Inputs:
1. Basic Questions:
Estimated Report Complexity = More Complex
Estimated Data Complexity = High
Number of Licensed Users = 200.
2. Multiple Instance/Region Questions:
Number of Languages = 2
3. Continuous Improvement Questions:
Number of Post Go – Live Functionality Improvements = 4
Number of Post Go- Live Assessments = 2
Outputs:
12. COSTS AMOUNT DESCRIPTION
Software $2,100,000 This is the Initial purchase price.
Implementation $604,322 This is comprehensive estimate including both
external/consulting costs as well as costs of the internal
resources assigned to the project.
Maintenance $5,966,515 It Includes both software vendor’s supports costs as well as
IT costs.
Application $302,161 These costs include costs from Post Go – Live functionality
improvement and audits.
TCO/Year $1,281,857 Total Cost of Ownership for 7 years.
TOTAL TCO $8,972,998
CRM Benefit Calculator Report
Benefits of implementing Salesforce are generated from the CRM benefit calculator
Inputs:
• Annual Sales Revenue = $25 Million
• Number of Sales Rep = 40
• Reporting & Activity Tracking (hours/week) = 15
• Planning & Scheduling (hours/week) = 15
• Administration & Paperwork (hours/wk) = 25
Outputs:
Increase in revenue by $3.93M just by adopting to Salesforce Sales Cloud as we are automating the revenue
increase is not a surprise as it aligns is It shouldn't be a surprise that automating business boosts revenue and
streamlines processes. By implementing Salesforce, we will be reducing our time on planning and arriving at
leads and improving communication among different departments.
Average increase after implementing Salesforce are as follows:
13. Conclusion
Zero Motorcycles have a great product but are lagging in the technological aspect of their business. If salesforce
is implemented into their business, then they can improve in the areas where they are lagging and will also
boost their business to great extent. For a company which is aiming high implementation of Salesforce would be
a great fit to it.
