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The houses we live in. The pavements we walk on. The bridges that connect our cities. They’re largely held together by cement. And supplying that material to India’s top builders is Penna Cement.
Founded in 1991, Penna Cement ranks among the country’s largest privately held cement manufacturers with an installed cement capacity of 10 million tonnes per annum. Its customers range from small house owners to organised real estate developers, and from state governments to global construction majors.
In 2015-16, the company embarked on an ambitious 5-year strategy which included strengthening its sales and distribution capabilities, as well as its customer relationship management and service. Salesforce was implemented to help achieve these objectives.
“Since adopting Salesforce, we’ve increased sales revenue, improved operational efficiency, and deepened customer relationships - all of which have helped us steadily grow our market presence,” says Krishna Srivastava, Director, Sales & Marketing, Penna Cement.
Sealing the cracks
Prior to Salesforce, the company’s customer data was poorly organised and scattered across systems, hampering visibility. Sales teams didn’t have a central place to collaborate on new opportunities or transactions. Most of their communication was spread across text messages, phone calls, or emails, and hence, easily lost. Sales processes were largely manual; which meant that during sales visits to customer locations, officers didn’t have real-time access to data to make customer conversations impactful.
In addition, customer service wasn’t optimal. Customer requests often went missing in the maze of emails and phone calls.
All these challenges prompted Penna Cement to look for a new CRM solution.
“Our research revealed that Salesforce was the best CRM in the market,” recalls Vamsee Mohan Kanneganti, General Manager – IT, Penna Cement, India. “What’s unique about it is that everything we need is available on a single platform—including mobility, strong collaboration tools, a superior UI/ UX, robust training programmes, and a rich third-party application ecosystem. Configuring the platform is easy. So is integrating it with other systems. It’s essentially a complete package.”
Today, Salesforce Customer 360 is used extensively in Penna Cement’s sales, marketing, service, and business intelligence operations.
Accelerating sales through mobility and digitisation
With Salesforce Sales Cloud, Penna Cement has completely digitised its sales processes - including lead management, order management, sales loss capturing, inventory tracking, and even verification of PAN data. The solution provides a single source of customer truth, making it easier for sales teams to track customer requirements, predict opportunities, and convert more leads.
Through the Salesforce mobile app, teams can take action from anywhere, anytime. They can capture new orders, track purchase history, and more - all on-the-go, thus accelerating sales.
Meanwhile, Chatter breaks down communication barriers, enabling teams to seamlessly collaborate and exchange information.
“Salesforce has empowered our teams with all the information they need at their fingertips to close more deals, faster,” says Kanneganti. “Our sales volumes have shot up 15%, while the number of customers added year-over-year has increased 11%.”
When a field sales officer visits a customer site, the app captures their real-time geolocation data, including the time of check-in and check-out. These insights help plan and schedule customer visits more efficiently.
Any travel expenses incurred by officers are automatically processed and validated through the app. As a result, reimbursements have become quicker.
“Thanks to the mobility, digitisation, and automation enabled by Salesforce, we’ve seen a 21% improvement in operational efficiency and a 12% reduction in costs,” says Kanneganti.
Cementing dealer loyalty
Penna Cement has a large network of dealers, masons, and other influencers who are instrumental in promoting the company’s brand and driving up sales. To incentivise and reward these partners, the company has created a Dealer Mason Loyalty Scheme program that is managed entirely on Salesforce.
Through a custom-developed application on the platform, the company can register masons, generate loyalty points, manage gifts or payouts, and monitor the performance of the whole program. Masons, in turn, can track and redeem their accumulated points through SMS notifications or a customer app integrated with Salesforce.
“Our loyalty program has helped us build rich and long-lasting relationships with our dealers,” says Kanneganti. “We’ve actually grown our dealer and influencer network 15%. Meanwhile, trade sales have increased 13%.”
Penna Cement also uses Campaigns on Sales Cloud to optimise marketing budgets, nurture leads, and automate campaigns through SMSs and emails; even capturing market information on competitor schemes, branding, price, volumes, events, and more to help teams craft well-informed marketing and sales strategies.
Fortifying customer relationships with swift service
Salesforce Service Cloud consolidates all service-related requests, queries, and quality complaints on a single platform for complete visibility. Integration with cloud telephony solution provider, Knowlarity helps lower the call handle time, while also bosting customer satisfaction.
“When a customer contacts us, all their details immediately show up on the screen, enabling our agents to deliver smarter and faster service,” says Kanneganti. “In fact, our service TAT has improved 50%.”
Mining real-time insights
Rich reports and dashboards on Salesforce deliver real-time intelligence on sales and marketing performance. Officer managers can track team sales at both a district and regional level, as well as the number of visits to dealers. They can also view actual sales vs targets, net sales revenue for the month, outstanding or overdue amounts, and days since a dealer or customer was last visited.
“With in-depth, granular and instant insights on sales, we’re able to make faster decisions, identify new opportunities, and propel growth,” says Srivastava.
“What’s great about Salesforce is that it is continually improving,” says Kanneganti. “Every quarter, there are new enhancements to the tool which help us also take our sales, marketing, and service to the next level.”
