More than half of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) say technology drives the growth of their customer base. From automating manual processes and improving productivity to enabling employee collaboration across regions, digital transformation is enabling companies to pivot to growth.
A government-funded grant is now supporting SMEs in Singapore to spark their digital transformation.
The Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) enables SMEs to accelerate digital transformation, increase productivity, and close deals remotely with customisable and scalable Salesforce solutions.
The PSG is supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). It provides grant support of up to 80% on pre-approved vendor solutions, including Salesforce CRM Sales Cloud.
Participating SMEs can now deploy Salesforce within weeks. Our Jump Start program helps businesses to configure end-to-end processes and increase team efficiency with guidance and setup assistance from Salesforce experts. With Premier Success Services, SMEs can also get additional help, adoption guidance, coaching, and live support.
We sat down with Justin Choo, CEO of cloud marketing platform provider Knorex, and Phu Le, Group General Manager, to find out about their PSG-enabled digital transformation journey.
What are the business challenges that led to your digital transformation journey?
PL: We have been spearheading digital adoption across the company. That involves continuously exploring, evaluating, and adopting innovative tools to streamline our internal workflow and help scale the business.
There were several challenges we faced as we began to grow the business on a global scale. We needed more measurable reporting, tracking, analytics, and a system that can let our teams collaborate easier across the different countries.
We were also looking for better ways to structure our business model for different customers across regions. Lastly, we needed more features to support our sales activity.
Why did you choose Salesforce?
PL: There are a few key advantages of Salesforce that have been very important to us. We are a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, so we love to do application programming interface (API) integrations and data migration. Salesforce has features that support this.
Data security and privacy compliance are also very important to us. Salesforce has a special compliance centre that has been very useful as this is something that we emphasise on as part of our ISO certification requirement.
Finally, Salesforce has a very strong community that enables us to easily find solutions to any challenges we face. This helps to speed up resolution.
How important was the PSG in enabling your digital transformation?
PL: The PSG program gave us the impetus to explore new, viable options, and accelerate our digital transformation and adoption.
PSG provided a curated list of vendor options, which gave us the confidence to explore products with vendors and directly tap ready-to-use solutions. It also helped to alleviate much of the trial and error, while reducing the cost.
How did you find the PSG application process?
PL: All the ready-to-use solutions are vetted, and you can apply for a particular solution for the current challenge you face in your business.
The application process was simple and straightforward. The PSG customer service team readily answered all our questions along the way. It was an absolutely delightful experience.
Do you have any advice for Singapore SMEs that are considering applying for the PSG?
JC: Be clear about what you’re looking for. There are various ready-to-use digital transformation packages available. You have to understand your problem so that you can choose the package that is the best match for your needs. It is also important that you think of eventual expansion in two to three years’ time, since this will be a solution that you will likely have to work with for that period.
How did the Jump Start program help with your Salesforce deployment?
PL: The Jump Start program was very helpful. It guided us on how to best navigate the Salesforce deployment and get our team onboarded.
Jump Start also helped us set up different user profiles with different access controls, and we managed to get various reporting features set up from the start of the deployment.
I believe many SMEs would benefit from Jump Start, whether they have prior experience with using customer relationship management (CRM) software or not.
How are you using Salesforce in your business?
PL: We are using Sales Cloud for our sales teams across the globe — from North America to Asia-Pacific. It helps to track vital top-line metrics, and our teams can instantly look at the current state of the business to track progress.
JC: Prior to Salesforce, we found that we were increasingly constrained by the limitations of our previous CRM. But with Salesforce, we have a lot of flexibility especially when it comes to customising reporting. It helps us track up-to-date metrics and enables our team to collaborate wherever they are. It is a very useful tool.
How did you utilise Salesforce Premier Success Services?
PL: So far the service has been a great help, especially as we were becoming familiar with the system. The 24/7 live chat has been very helpful for us. It enables us to resolve any query we have right away.
When you transition from a legacy CRM to a new platform, migrating the data and mapping the workflows in the new system is usually the most painful part of the process. Fortunately, that can be done very smoothly with the suite of migration tools Salesforce offers.
How did you support employee onboarding to Sales Cloud?
JC: It helps that most of our staff already have previous experience with Salesforce, so the onboarding was smooth sailing. Nonetheless, we created an internal playbook for our staff to familiarise themselves with the new system. It highlights things they need to know about the transition and some key new workflow and features.
We also had some internal training sessions with the sales team, and communicated to them some of the tutorials and support services Salesforce offers via the Trailhead learning platform.
What results have you seen since your Salesforce deployment?
JC: We have the ability to do much more detailed reporting. That enables us to do a much deeper dive into our numbers, which allows us to get closer to our customers. We can get those insights much more easily, which saves us at least four to six hours per week on reporting.
Get your digital transformation journey started with Salesforce. Learn more about how to pivot to growth using the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) or contact us to get started now.
At Salesforce Live: Asia, we invited fast growing small businesses like V-Key, hoolah, and Carousell to share about how they navigated the challenges of the past year. Register for Salesforce Live: Asia to hear from these Trailblazers on 10 June.
