“It’s not just about connecting tools. It’s about connecting people.” These days it seems like everyone’s talking about the Internet of Things. Innovative companies are connecting everything from cars to thermostats to jet engines to offer more functionality and improved service. Stanley Black & Decker, the world’s largest tool manufacturer, is building a new generation of connected tools that will help the company connect with customers so everyone can work smarter and better. And it’s using Salesforce Platform to help. “Technology is changing everything – including expectations for products and service and speed,” says JoAnna Sohovich, Global President of the company’s IAR (Industrial and Automotive Repair) Division. “With the help of Salesforce Platform we’re building smart tools that are really genius ones.”

The company, which was created by the merger of two of the world’s most trusted brands — Stanley Tools and Black & Decker — offers a full range of tools and storage spanning consumer, construction, automotive repair, and industrial needs. Salesforce helps it stay connected with its many distributor, reseller, industrial, and individual customers. “Being a customer company is imperative to us,” explains Robert Holmes, Marketing Director, Mac Tools. “We want to make every customer a brand loyalist for life.” With Salesforce, all of Stanley Black & Decker’s brands can quickly access the information they need to understand customers and stay coordinated when working with them. Employees in different divisions can easily collaborate to solve issues or share leads. After implementing Salesforce, the company was able to capture growth by not losing orders, capturing chances to upsell, and by identifying collaborative and cross-selling opportunities across brands.

Service is a key priority for Stanley Black & Decker, and Salesforce helps it deliver a consistent and high quality experience. “Service Cloud Lightning helps us understand our customers’ business models and how they want to serve their own customers. And it helps us give them quick responses for the specific problems they need to solve,” says Sohovich. “Using Service Cloud Lightning is like having a help button embedded in all of our products." With it the company saves more than 6,000 hours each year that were previously spent on manual tasks, and agents spend more time helping customers. “The common thread throughout our business is speed. The people who represent us in the market place – franchisees or distributors – need answers quickly because demand is perishable,” continues Sohovich. “We customized the Salesforce1 Mobile App so that our Mac Tools franchisees can send text messages from their trucks to automatically log requests into Service Cloud Lightning and get the information they need on the road.”

Salesforce Platform is key to Stanley Black & Decker’s connected tools vision — with complete and open APIs, it can easily build next generation apps. Using embedded chips, wrenches would be able to tell operators when they need to be calibrated. Drills could send messages when their batteries run low. Toolboxes could send notifications when tools are missing or when preventative maintenance is due. They could also send messages back to Stanley Black & Decker so the company can better understand how different types of tools are used. “Behind every tool, there’s a customer. While it starts with industrial, this technology could eventually be robust and cost-effective enough to be embedded into tools that you buy at a big box outlet — so we’ll be able to connect with everyone that uses our tools,” says Sohovich. “And we can take information about how a tool is used, and improve our products and services.”