STRÖER: Successful automation in CRM and sales
Increasing demands on internal organization
As one of the leading German advertising marketers in Germany, Ströer has a large cross-sector customer base of small, medium-sized and large advertising companies. As the customer base grows each year, the demands on the internal organization increase in order to meet customer needs in the best possible way in the future.
This includes the use of a modern central CRM solution based on Salesforce to manage processes relating to existing and potential customers as efficiently as possible. A clearing team checks every newly created and changed data record and thus keeps the customer data clean. After all, clean data is the basis for effective sales processes through to invoicing for collection.
Ströer was already working with the financial solutions of Creditreform Köln von Padberg GmbH & Co. KG (Creditreform Köln for short). Further data-driven optimization should now take place in the upstream sales area.
Initial adjustment with maximum referencing rate of all active customers and relevant potentials.
Enrichment of the database with desired firmographic features for marketing and sales plus the Crefonummer for accounts receivable management.
Upload option for high-quality address lists if required, including definition of the quality and information standard.
Individual checking of existing addresses, i.e. identifying, checking and updating in your own Salesforce CRM at the touch of a button.
System-supported new address creation without loss of quality and in a short time.
Research of individual contacts for identification and verification on the beDirect reference database.
Even during the initiation phase, we realized that the beDirect and Creditreform team really wanted to work together! We also found prompt and professional solutions together for all the challenges that arose in our sometimes complex framework conditions, which are typical of the Group. We look forward to continuing and expanding our collaboration with other helpful tools!
Aim of the project: Central ID for customer identification
In order to optimize the performance of the clearing team and reduce manual effort, an integration project was set up together with beDirect. As part of the project, the existing Salesforce CRM was successfully connected to the data world of beDirect and Creditreform. The aim of the project was to introduce a central ID for unique customer identification throughout the entire buyer journey with the help of the Crefonumber. From new customer acquisition to receivables management, the customer is clearly identifiable and duplicate-free for all specialist departments and users.
This means that users can now transfer most of the required data directly from the beDirect database to Salesforce CRM. This connection eliminates the need for manual checking and data records are automatically released in Salesforce for further processing in a very timely manner.
In addition to the automation of clearing processes, the use of potential addresses via beDirect was also made available to Ströer. This means that Ströer selects new potential lists from over 5 million addresses according to various characteristics such as size, sector or location, depending on sales requirements. This provides the sales department with new address potential on a regular basis. Thanks to the prior comparison with the inventory data and the integration of the beDirect and Creditreform ID into the Ströer sales system, no problematic duplicates are created.
Ströer has adopted the principles of the GDPR from the outset. In the integration project, GDPR principles such as data minimization, data accuracy and data security were naturally considered and taken into account in the project.
Ströer and Creditreform Cologne have been working together successfully for years in the areas of finance and accounts receivable management. When it came to optimizing and automating address management for marketing and sales, the obvious conclusion was to approach the already successful data and information partner.
In the discussions that followed, it quickly became clear that beDirect, the joint venture between Creditreform and Bertelsmann, would be able to work with
– approx. 18 million B2B reference data,
– a Salesforce app for CRM-integrated address management,
– smart data audits and master data management solutions and
– an online address store for B2B addresses from Germany and Austria
brings the necessary know-how, qualitative data and intelligent, technical solutions to successfully realize the CRM project together with Ströer.
In the course of the project, a further optimization approach emerged. Previously, the clearing team adjusted potential lists from unqualified and unknown sources when they were entered into the system. This workflow has been optimized so that potential lists now come from a trustworthy data source, which makes subsequent quality checks unnecessary.
