Many of us who have grown up with technology or work in the tech industry have become so accustomed to the cloud and cloud-based apps, that we forget the old-school ways we used to work and live. We’re glued to our iPhones, responding to emails, and scrolling social media feeds. We check the Yelp reviews for the new restaurant down the street, and then make a dinner reservation through OpenTable. We request a taxi by simply touching an icon, before checking the Chatter feed in Salesforce. This is daily life, isn’t it? 
 
The fact of the matter is, in more traditional industries with a veteran workforce, daily life looks quite a bit different. The “cloud” isn’t so commonplace and apps can seem troublesome and confusing. In this world, pen and paper are king, to-do lists are tracked by memory, and rolodexes still exist. 

While manual tools and methods may have been sufficient 10 years ago, they just don’t cut it in today’s competitive marketplace. Today’s customers are empowered to own the buying process, and they won’t remain loyal simply because they’ve done business with you before. You must continually meet or exceed their expectations, and they require a personalized experience.

A challenge that more and more companies are facing today is getting seasoned and tenured employees to adopt new technologies and processes. A prime example is Australian-based company Wilson Fabrics. Established in 1926, Wilson Fabrics is one of Australia’s largest drapery and soft furnishing wholesalers. For the past 20 years, daily operations, client records, and appointments have been maintained in notebooks and diaries. To place orders, customers would send faxes, phone in, or simply visit the office. 

Wilson Fabrics’ General Manager, Chris Sencek, saw a discrepancy between what customers wanted and what the sales team was delivering. Most of the knowledge the sales team had about accounts and customers was kept in their heads, and Sencek wanted better transparency of the interactions between customers and employees. He wanted something cloud-based, where any employee from any location could see customer data. About a year ago, Sencek and his team decided to deploy Salesforce®–but it was not welcomed with open arms. 

 “Trying to convince people who’ve used a diary for the past 20 years to use an iPad and log into Salesforce.com has been the biggest hurdle,” Sencek said in a recent article in The Australian. 

In order to convince everyone to use the new system, Sencek used a combination of training, encouragement, and reinforcement. Bluewolf provided customized manuals and helped to foster a “power trainer” so that future training could be met using internal resources. For encouragement, Sencek equipped his staff with iPads, and for reinforcement, he made use of Salesforce as part of the sales team’s key performance indicators (KPIs).

Although they’re not using cloud apps for every aspect of daily life just yet, Wilson’s employees have definitely crossed the chasm into the cloud. The company has increased efficiency by 30%, and is now collaborating as a team to provide a better experience for its customers.

To learn more about the benefits Wilson Fabrics achieved, click here.