Transcript
“ FinancialForce.com completely
Success Story
CyberSafe is a small business specializing in the delivery and support of security solutions on a global basis since 2001. Tim Alsop, Technical Director of CyberSafe Limited, was one of the early adopters of the Salesforce CRM™ system and subsequently FinancialForce Accounting, the first enterprise SaaS accounting application built on Force.com to integrate with Salesforce CRM.
transformed our accounting process.”
Tim Alsop, Technical Director, CyberSafe
Customer Profile
Company: CyberSafe URL: www.cybersafe.com Company Size: Small Business Industry: Information Technology Results:
• Opportunities and invoices follow a single process • Customer quotes, invoices and payments viewable in a single screen • Improved sales and collections • Ability to deliver customer invoices in local currencies, while reporting in Euros • Automated the entire orderto-cash process • Works seamlessly with salesforce CRM and other Force.com solutions
An Introduction to SaaS
Initially, CyberSafe started in the ‘traditional’ small business way, using PC-based tools like ACT! for contact management and spreadsheets shared between staff, via email, to manage financials. It wasn’t until late 2002, when an acquaintance recommended salesforce.com’s application, that Tim started to take notice of SaaS. CyberSafe became one of the early users of Salesforce CRM, and over the years, the company has taken full advantage of salesforce.com product enhancements and CRM functionality. They used it to collect leads via the company website, and manage details of accounts and contacts, as well as for customer service and support, and giving clients access to the self-service portal. “I was watching salesforce.com developments closely and started paying particular attention to Force.com,” said Tim. “At the time, we were struggling to create quotes for customers from within the system, and so I started looking at commercial products on the AppExchange, which we could use to fill the gap. In general, they were too expensive for us to justify – hosted on other servers instead of using salesforce.com datacenters, or simply didn’t meet our needs. They also wouldn’t integrate with what was already in place.” CyberSafe underwent a thorough evaluation of FinancialForce Accounting before deciding it was the application for them. Given Tim’s limited accounting knowledge, it took him a little time to understand the full scope of the functionality. “We spent a lot of time creating new customer accounts, opportunities and invoices to test functionality,” says Tim. “I was very pleased with what I experienced.”
“With a complete
view of accounts and outstanding payments, we stay on top of collections
”
Tim Alsop
Technical Director, CyberSafe
www.FinancialForce.com
Success Story
Connecting Sales and Finance
“We have had a number of experiences in the past, where invoices were sent to customers containing incorrect information,” Tim explains. “Managing invoices was a full time task. With FinancialForce Accounting we’re able to automate a lot of that, and we have access to a complete view of all customer accounts for the first time.” As the company grows and the number of sales continues to increase, FinancialForce Accounting will help CyberSafe eliminate this inefficiency from the business. “We can now create quotes for our prospective customers, create opportunity product items from these quotes within Salesforce CRM. We also wanted to be able to create invoices directly from the opportunity product items within the same system, so that the process was as efficient as possible, reducing any errors or unnecessary administration effort,” says Tim. “I knew I wanted an application that made the most of the features offered with Force.com.” Having a SaaS strategy in place will deliver significant process efficiencies to CyberSafe and means that all business information can be collected and managed in one place, reducing the risk of errors.
CyberSafe has invested heavily in SaaS applications to reduce hardware costs and ensure scalability as the company grows.
“Managing invoices
was a full-time task. With FinancialForce Accounting, we’ll be able to automate a lot of that, and we’ll have access to a complete view of all customer accounts for the first time
”
Tim Alsop
Technical Director, CyberSafe
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