Customer: Genband

Interview:
Angie Reese, CRM Business Analyst, GENBAND

GENBAND is a telecommunications company that provides next-generation network solutions. GENBAND was founded in 1999 and we're headquartered in Plano, Texas. We currently now have about 2,100 employees.

I'm the CRM Business Analyst, so I take care of anything and everything that touches Salesforce.com.

Business challenge

Before we chose to look for a tool such as BI OnDemand, we were faced with a dilemma of not being able to deliver a report that was eye-appealing and that captured all of the data that we needed in one report.

We would typically have to create multiple reports to get to the same solution as one BI OnDemand report.

By purchasing BI OnDemand and using that reporting solution, it has saved us a minimum of 8 to 10 hours a week.

We had an extensive amount of time that was needed on a weekly basis to come up with all of the metrics. We would typically run several different reports, extract that data into another database, manipulate that data, and then upload into a PowerPoint presentation with graphics. And since using BI OnDemand, we totally bypassed that whole process and can get the desired results right out of BI OnDemand.

Implementation experience

After purchasing and installing BI OnDemand, I immediately got working on some reports that GENBAND's customer support team had wanted for well over a year. So once I was able to deliver that report, we immediately got great satisfaction from that and user adoption was fantastic from that moment on.

We have a couple of developer licenses, so we actually develop the reports for the users, publish them, and then they can pull the data anytime they want, knowing that it's the latest and greatest.

Our employees are definitely satisfied with the BI OnDemand solution because it provides them some really complicated reports that otherwise they would not have been able to get.

We have currently some customers who want to trial our product and when they want to do that, we take them through a business review process. And in the old days, the sales guy would fill out a business review form that was basically a PowerPoint template and then they would have to go into Salesforce.com and actually update all of those fields as well.

Now, with this solution, they go into Salesforce, update all the fields one time, and this business review form automatically kicks out and they hold meetings for this and decide whether that customer would be a good trial prospect or not. So we've seen about 10 or 12 of these deals come to fruition since we implemented that business review form process.

Security

One thing that I really like about the solution for BI OnDemand is the single sign-on capabilities. Using that technology, we have embedded it right inside of Salesforce.com so when my users go to access their reports, they're actually signed on automatically through the single sign-on authentication of their Salesforce login credentials.

The solution addresses some security needs that I have internal to our internal users where I can utilize the folder-level security - so I can segregate out the support from the sales team and keep those reports in the correct folders where only the people who need access to them can get to it.

I would definitely encourage anybody to purchase BI OnDemand if they're looking for a simple way to combine multiple different objects in Salesforce and come out with a really nice-looking metric package.