Unlike other consultancy firms, the approach taken by De Villiers Walton is to work closely with their clients as one project team.

Since January 2011, Heineken UK has transacted more than £0.5 billion worth of deals per year with the enterprise class commercial deal-modelling solution developed by De Villiers Walton.

In this case study you will learn how De Villiers Walton’s innovative approach to implementing SAP CRM transformed the selling capabilities of Heineken.

Heineken UK operates as a wholesaler and distributor of alcoholic drinks and has a significant portfolio of market-leading brands including Heineken, Fosters, Strongbow, Kronenbourg 1664, John Smiths and Bulmers. To support its increasingly flexible business operating model, in 2006, Heineken instigated a business process change programme to review its existing sales processes and identify an IT solution that would better support the organisation.

Evolving business needs
“The biggest aim of the project was to reduce the amount of forms and admin that was necessary for the sales force to input just to complete one task,” says Heineken UK business change lead, Vicki Lowson.

“Before the move to a unified SAP CRM system there were around 14 legacy systems that the sales teams had to use to do their day job. The biggest aim of the project was to get rid of all those and get the information about the customer into one place. We also wanted the sales teams to have a single login.”

In January 2009, as part of its ongoing business process change project, Heineken UK contracted the expert SAP CRM team at De Villiers Walton to work alongside its team, take a fresh look at its CRM system and provide the firm with a more practical and efficient solution. “Our existing CRM project had failed to deliver and had some fundamental usability issues,” explains Heineken UK business solutions manager, Douglas Smith.

“We needed to put a new solution in place that would support our field sales teams as the existing mobile sales system had an overly-complex architecture which couldn’t deliver what the sales force required and didn’t fit with the way our business works. We brought De Villiers Walton in to build a revitalised CRM system, improve its business performance capabilities, and deliver a tailored user-interface that would address the usability needs of the sales force.

“A core aim of the project was mobility – we wanted to bring the sales force online and provide a more intuitive user experience. We knew that De Villiers Walton had strong CRM experience and could deliver intuitive and usable front-end capabilities.”

To overcome the usability issues and remove some of the complexities that are commonly associated with SAP CRM, De Villiers Walton delivered a custom developed solution to meet Heineken’s business requirements and at the same time bridge the gap between the users and their solutions.

“We implemented a custom SAP-based sales force automation and commercial deal modelling solution that was designed to meet the exact requirements of the Heineken UK business,” says De Villiers Walton managing director, Darron Walton.

“The solution took into account all of the company’s key sales processes, including commercial deal modelling, order taking, opportunity management, customer visits, accounts management and marketing activities. The deployment was given an intuitive and user-friendly interface and fully integrates with SAP CRM and ERP, utilising standard SAP objects and data.

“SAP is a great technology but there are certain gaps in its usability and functionality. To address this, we go back to basics, starting with an understanding of how the users will access the system and what their exact requirements, processes and business needs are.”

To optimise usability, De Villiers Walton brought in its specialised user interface designers to work alongside its consultants and developers. “The fact that the De Villiers Walton software was designed by a dedicated design team meant that the screens were laid out very logically and based on the description that we provided of how the user would actually use the screens,” says Heineken UK business change lead, Vicki Lowson.

“Our sales team is on the road all the time and expects a usable solution,” says Heineken UK commercial director, Chris Jowsey. “Since De Villiers Walton got involved, the project has been running very successfully.”

“Unlike other consultancy firms, the approach taken by De Villiers Walton is to work closely with their clients as one project team,” says Lowson. “Everyone is focused on the same end-goal and everyone knows what that end goal looks like. De Villiers Walton helped us to shape our thinking into a set of business requirements that they could quickly deliver for us.

“Using Business Warehouse to report on different activities and capture attributes about the customer means that we can use the information to concentrate our marketing activity in the right direction rather than relying on the sales person to make that decision, which doesn’t necessarily give the right return on investment.”

Gaining user acceptance
Heineken UK has rolled-out the improved SAP CRM system across the whole of its UK workforce and now has around 450 users operating within the system. Feedback from both the frontline and the back office has become increasingly positive as users realise the potential benefits of the system, according to Heineken’s Chris Jowsey.

“There was some initial resistance from frontline staff which was understandable when you consider that they have been working with the same technology for around 10-15 years,” he says. “Once we overcame that the feedback was really positive.

“Deal modelling, for example, was a core aim of the project and we have had some fantastic feedback in terms of the improved quality of information that the sales team can now see during the process. Their ability to construct the model that best suits the needs of the customer has also been enhanced.”

Mobility was an integral part of the project and, if the sales teams had refused to adopt the new way of working, it could have jeopardised its success according to Heineken UK business solutions manager, Douglas Smith. “It was a significant challenge to take a sales force that was used to being mobile and off-line and give them a tool that they would accept and want to use that could only be accessed online.

“There was a big cultural change to address, which is why we put a relentless focus on usability - if the new online system was difficult to use it would have failed. From a technology perspective, the hardest part was making deal management work in SAP CRM and combining the different elements in a way that would deliver a proactive view of the commercial propositions we were presenting to customers. Doing this successfully was a real commercial win for the business.”

Broader business benefits
“Prior to the current system being implemented there was a lack of integration in our systems,” says Heineken UK business project manager, Simon Cleary. “Since the De Villiers Walton solution was implemented we have seen a big improvement.

“For example, we can now look at the price we charge a customer and the volume we sell to them and cross-reference that against the relevant customer segment and make decisions on investment based on those criteria. In the past, we didn’t have all this information in one place and it involved a big manual task to bring it together.

“Our initial business case for the project was largely based on time-saving, but the project has also given us additional capabilities that we didn’t plan for. As we got towards the roll-out, the opportunity for process change and visibility of information became a key facet. We moved our focus away from salesforce time-saving and worked towards solidifying our processes.

“We now have a very clear new account process. Everybody knows what they are doing and there is a real uniformity which in itself has driven the time-saving that we sought both in the sales team and elsewhere in the organisation.”

As well as improving business processes, the implementation also helped Heineken UK to re-prioritise some of its accountabilities, according to Douglas Smith: “We are used to changes in brand, pricing and commercial messaging, but our teams are not accustomed to changes in business processes and technology change,” he says. “The fact that the new ways of working were accepted so readily is testament to the skill and hard work of De Villiers Walton and our internal teams.”

Having a bespoke user-interface and CRM system that was designed to increase user motivation and adherence to protocols has also yielded significant benefits in terms of recruitment. “New recruits who do not have the legacy of the old systems find the De Villiers Walton software very easy to use and, as a result there has been a significant reduction in the time it takes to train a new employee,” says Chris Jowsey.

“This is really important in our business as it can be very damaging to our customer-base and profitability if there is nobody working in a particular patch for a while. Getting somebody in and getting them trained-up and effective quickly makes a big difference to our effectiveness and profitability.” 

The improvements made to deal modelling have also yielded significant results. “The deal management module provides the insight, information and governance needed to provide the right commercial proposition for our customers so that there is greater transparency over the whole commercial agreement process and the deals that we are doing in the independent free trade,” adds Smith.

“We have found that there are now fewer errors in deal modelling which has enhanced our profitability because we are getting it right first time,” says Jowsey.“There is also greater visibility in terms of the profitability of a deal and, as a result, our sales teams are effectively making better deals. We are also seeing real advantages in terms of cycle times. In the past, it used to take us around 20 days to open a new account and get it fully trading. Now that has been halved to just ten days.”

A more productive future
An overhaul of the size and scope of this project inevitably highlighted issues within the organisation that may not previously have been noticed. “From a business intelligence perspective, the new system has helped to identify problems within our sales and managerial teams,” says Cleary. “Having identified the weaknesses and opportunities means we can now take action to fill any capability gaps.”

While Heineken UK says that it is very satisfied with the SAP CRM project, it has also identified further scope for future application. “There are huge opportunities moving forward in terms of how we exploit the functionality that we now have more effectively and how we tie the sales and marketing processes more closely together to make them more effective,” says Jowsey.

“Ultimately, we believe that the sales and marketing processes will allow us to drive a greater return on our marketing investment. We are delighted to have got to where we have got to but believe that, in the future, the potential longer-term benefits are really significant.”