The days of closing deals from the office several days or weeks after a prospect agrees to a general proposal are over. The modern B2B salesperson is in the field, and the applications that support them need to be, too.

Yet even with all the sophisticated mobile devices availables, a vast number of companies’ salespeople are hindered by outdated, on-premise IT systems that are unable to support mobility. Until creating and closing opportunities, updating forecasts, and managing day-to-day activities are built into the mobile workflow of a salesperson’s day, they’ll continue to be cumbersome tasks that have to be completed after the job of building and managing relationships are attended to. As long as that is the case, pipeline and forecasts will be inaccurate, salespeople will find their own tools like email and Excel to manage their day-to-day, and management will miss opportunities to increase revenue because they cannot trust the data they access.

The solution comes from flexible cloud technologies like Salesforce that enable organizations to overcome back-end system complexity to do business in real time. Whether a company is heavily invested in SAP, Siebel, Microsoft, or a homegrown collection of applications, Salesforce can replace or integrate with them to provide an intuitive and mobile experience for salespeople.

We’ve chronicled the dramatic transformations of several innovative companies that have made the transition to Salesforce. In doing so, sales efficiency, forecast accuracy, and access to customer buying data have all increased.

One of the companies we profiled, The Standard, is a 100-year-old insurance and financial services organization. The team that owns business application innovation there has proven that even heavily regulated industries can reap the benefits of cloud technology. Using Salesforce, they were able to decrease the time it took to generate a proposal from days to just minutes. In a highly competitive industry, this will not only improve win rates, but also reduce the cost of doing business. 

These stories of IT transformation are emblematic of a new B2B business imperative: create simple IT that supports field sales efficiency.

See how these industry leaders are investing in IT that supports greater efficiency and growth. Read the full story, or connect with our experts to get started.