Customer Success Story
Salesforce delivers 1% revenue forecast variance with Certinia Professional Services Automation Software
Salesforce’s mission is to empower businesses to redefine customer engagement. Slowed by project disconnects, the enterprise turned to Certinia’s Salesforce-native Professional Services Cloud and Services Estimator solutions. These provided the company a unified platform with end-to-end, real-time visibility, propelling Salesforce’s mission to new heights.
Background
Outgrowing decentralized operations systems
Salesforce, the leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) technology, helps over 150,000 businesses worldwide stay ahead of customer expectations through data tools, analytics, and other best-in-class CRM solutions.
When Salesforce approached Certinia, they needed tools that would solve operational complexities stemming from their decentralized system. Their Services Operations team spent too much time organizing data across disparate systems to help book deals, staff projects, and manage resources for project teams (which comprised 80% of their customers).
By using Certinia’s business automation software, Professional Services (PS) Cloud, and the Services Estimator, the enterprise aimed to address operational chokeholds—such as delays in staffing and booking—to free project teams to focus on their primary goal: delivering high-quality services 
to clients.
"Most customers don't want to worry about back-end systems, but they want them to be reliable, scalable, and they want their supporting partner to understand them."
Mark Conklin, Senior Director of Operations, Salesforce
Challenge
Overcoming project disconnects to deliver exceptional services
Prior to Certinia, operational complexities from using two disparate systems prevented Salesforce from achieving a more customer-centric operation. Their challenges included:
- Limited project visibility and control
Using a decentralized system created data silos, keeping teams from getting a comprehensive view into projects and project profitability. - Data challenges due to manual data entry
Logging information from one system to another manually increased the risk of teams encountering data inconsistencies across the business. - Time-intensive data retrieval
Teams spent hours manually retrieving and compiling information across disconnected systems, hampering speed and efficiency. - Limited real-time collaboration
Operating on a decentralized system prevented automatic data synchronization across the business. This led to redundant processes and delayed responses during project creation, turnover, and management. - Overburdened services operations
Operations was overwhelmed from acting as the sole point of contact for all project queries, leading to workflow bottlenecks.
After running other professional services automation (PSA) solutions side-by-side with Certinia, Salesforce chose to streamline operations with Salesforce-native PSA by moving its entire services organization to Certinia PS Cloud.
Solution: Deploying a unified business automation software for professional services with end-to-end, real-time visibility
Certinia and Salesforce teams met to determine best-fit solutions for Salesforce’s goals and issues. These discourses resulted in Salesforce gaining a single platform that offered real-time visibility into the full lifecycle of every project—from initial sale to the end execution. From assignments and resource requests to full-cycle budgeting and managing billable hours, PS Cloud catered to every division’s needs, so no project customization was necessary. Moreover, Certinia’s Services Estimator helped boost Salesforce’s sales team’s efficiency.
Full project visibility and increased efficiency
Here are the other benefits Salesforce enjoyed from implementing Certinia’s professional services automation software:
Project creation and management automation
By using a single platform, Services Operations automated previously manual tasks, including entering hours, managing budgets, and allocating resources. The team saw mouse clicks for deal bookings drop by 72% and daily project creation soar to double the previous numbers.
They also experienced a bonus benefit: the operations team was free to focus more on building custom solutions, such as project management portals, and launches for external clients.
Data centralization
Moving operations to a unified business automation software provided Salesforce departments one source of truth. With a centralized database, the company experienced data consistency and addressed their presenting problems: limited visibility, data errors, time-consuming data extraction, fragmented divisions, and delays from having Services Operations act as the sole point of contact for all project queries.
Resource management with the Resource Planner
Certinia's Resource Planner, a tool for finding, viewing, and managing resources, saved users several hours per week originally dedicated to data entry. By giving project managers visibility into hours entered versus hours assigned, the resource planner helped them track billable hours, manage resource forecasting, and adjust swiftly when budgets fell off track.
Plus, the planner generated monthly utilization calculations in real-time—a 100% decrease in time compared to Salesforce's previous record of two weeks.
Competitive and accurate estimates with the Services Estimator
The Services Estimator empowered Salesforce to prepare compelling estimates that seamlessly transformed into resource requests and projects.
With the estimator, the enterprise projected a reduction in scoping steps by 84% and reduction in review and approval steps by 72%. They saw a marked decrease in manual work, acceleration in deal closure and revenue recognition, and improvements in revenue forecasting accuracy by using PSA software and the estimator combined.
Project creation and management automation
By using a single platform, Services Operations automated previously manual tasks, including entering hours, managing budgets, and allocating resources. The team saw mouse clicks for deal bookings drop by 72% and daily project creation soar to double the previous numbers.
They also experienced a bonus benefit: the operations team was free to focus more on building custom solutions, such as project management portals, and launches for external clients.
Data centralization
Moving operations to a unified business automation software provided Salesforce departments one source of truth. With a centralized database, the company experienced data consistency and addressed their presenting problems: limited visibility, data errors, time-consuming data extraction, fragmented divisions, and delays from having Services Operations act as the sole point of contact for all project queries.
Resource management with the Resource Planner
Certinia's Resource Planner, a tool for finding, viewing, and managing resources, saved users several hours per week originally dedicated to data entry. By giving project managers visibility into hours entered versus hours assigned, the resource planner helped them track billable hours, manage resource forecasting, and adjust swiftly when budgets fell off track.
Plus, the planner generated monthly utilization calculations in real-time—a 100% decrease in time compared to Salesforce's previous record of two weeks.
Competitive and accurate estimates with the Services Estimator
The Services Estimator empowered Salesforce to prepare compelling estimates that seamlessly transformed into resource requests and projects.
With the estimator, the enterprise projected a reduction in scoping steps by 84% and reduction in review and approval steps by 72%. They saw a marked decrease in manual work, acceleration in deal closure and revenue recognition, and improvements in revenue forecasting accuracy by using PSA software and the estimator combined.
Results
Achieving operational precision for better services delivery and higher customer satisfaction
When data falls through the cracks, so does revenue.
With Certinia’s business automation solution for professional services, Salesforce consolidated their data on one unified platform and ensured operations had access to full, real-time visibility into every project.
Operations gained data consistency and accuracy, enhanced visibility and control, and improved collaboration and communication, leading to 10x faster project management and 100% increased project creation.
Ultimately, Certinia Professional Services Cloud helped the enterprise achieve operational precision, leading to mind-blowing numbers and an impressive 1% revenue forecast variance.
Key Benefits
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Real-time project statuses and monthly utilization calculation
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Faster project management
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Increase in project creation
"We have built an incredible Certinia instance! Historically, the numbers are mind-blowing. In the last three years alone, we've integrated 10 companies, added 7000 users, managed revenue forecasts to 1% variance +/-, increased our billable hours by 20m a year, and are pushing $2.5B through the app. Since we launched Services Estimator, and with our other customizations, we now consider ourselves as having one of the premiere Certinia organizations globally."
- Mark Conklin
- Senior Director of Operations
Salesforce
What our clients say
“Simple tools cannot solve complex problems. But the sophistication of Certinia allows for solving complex problems. The reward at the end of that can be very powerful.”
- Tyler Flora
- Senior Director, Professional Services
Avalara
“Since deploying the Certinia platform, we've seen consistent increases in billable utilization and realized project margins enabling us to exceed our margin expansion targets while improving the quality of the services delivered to our clients.”
- Kurt Kuelz
- Vice President - Global Customer Outcomes
Siemens Digital Industries Software
“Certinia PS Cloud drives the highest levels of data quality across our professional services and higher levels of performance from our resources.”
- David Laffineuse
- Worldwide Director of Service Delivery
Thales
"Most customers don't want to worry about back-end systems, but they want them to be reliable, scalable, and they want their supporting partner to understand them."
- Mark Conklin
- Senior Director of Operations
Salesforce
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