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Gordon Brothers Unifies Division Sales

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Industry      Financial Services (Security and Brokerage)

Location     Boston, MA

Firm Size    200 - 500 Employees

Products    Financial Services Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Lightning Sync for Outlook

Integration Outlook, Intapp (used for conflict checks and compliance), proprietary Oracle-based ERP

 

Gordon Brothers is a global advisory, restructuring and investment firm founded in 1903. The firm is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts with over 30 offices across five continents. Gordon Brothers' customers include lenders, operating executives, advisors and investors, where they provide expertise, operation experience and/or capital with services in valuations, dispositions, operations and investments.  The company has seven operating divisions; Valuations Group, Australia, Brands, Commercial & Industrial (C&I), Europe/International, Real Estate, and Retail.

Company Profile: Gordon Brothers
Gordon Brothers' Challenge

Gordon Brothers’ lack of operational efficiencies on the front-end of their business was having adverse financial and growth impacts due to:

  • Lack of a centralized customer repository across divisions;

  • Different siloed and simplistic CRM solutions used by the divisions, with no ability for users to understand or share common contacts;

  • Inconsistent sales processes across Divisions;

  • Limited ability to nurture the referral base to identify new customers;

  • Limited reporting for sales management and executive leadership.

Users were concerned with potentially losing contact ownership with a common global CRM, and Gordon Brothers had a previously failed enterprise implementation of Salesforce. Customer and pipeline data was spread across the firm, located in a stand-alone Salesforce instance, HubSpot CRM, Insightly, Microsoft Outlook and Excel, and an internally-developed Appraisal CRM and pipeline database in Oracle, Gordon Brothers needed a single integrated global system. They also needed an implementation partner that could understand their business and their processes.

Saasinct's Solution

Saasinct audited and analyzed the existing solution and then designed a global org using Financial Services Cloud (FSC), Marketing Cloud, contact synchronization with Outlook, and integrations with multiple systems.

  • Common sales processes were developed across divisions and built-out on FSC.

  • A custom solution was designed to sync Salesforce with Outlook in a way that allowed each user to maintain their own contact lists, removing the need for a “contact owner”.

  • Marketing Cloud Connect was used to integrate with FSC and built out using personalized customer journeys and email campaign training and support, as well as custom lead capture from the web site.

  • Integrations with multiple systems were implemented including: Intapp (conflict checks & compliance) and a custom Oracle ERP appraisals application.

  • An emphasis on user adoption was embraced from the start, including identifying Champions, rolling out an extensive training program, and deploying My Trailhead.

  • Saasinct helped Gordon Brothers recruit, interview, and hire a full-time Salesforce Administrator to support the platform.

The Business Impact

User adoption was identified early in the project as the greatest risk to success.  This was addressed programmatically with the following:

  • Champions were chosen from each division and provided with access to UAT during development. These stakeholders' feedback was formally collected, prioritized, and implemented as appropriate, making the divisions ”feel heard”.

  • Training was extensive: two one-hour sessions per week; one formal training session and another office hours session with the emphasis on open discussion. The typical program for each division has been 4+ weeks of these twice weekly sessions.

  • To support user adoption and engagement, regular internal communications are sent to their divisions, building momentum and positive chatter. Gordon Brothers added a page to their intranet with testimonials from users as they rolled out. Weekly Salesforce tips and tricks are posted on the portal, including screenshots of the activity dashboard so that people can see who's logging in, how many contacts are being created, etc. They're also continuing one-on-one training for users that aren’t engaging with the platform effectively.

  • Gordon Brothers had considered a variety of user training, support, and continuing education tools, but ultimately chose My Trailhead as the best fit for their needs. One of the big things they wanted was in-app walk-throughs to help users navigate and understand the solution. Eventually they will use My Trailhead for continuing education and posting their own content for training and skills development.

  • The Outlook sync implemented was unique and critical to the success of user adoption at Gordon Brothers.  A custom solution was designed and implemented to allow each user to create their own contact list (using Campaigns) which syncs to their Outlook and removes the need for a Contact owner. Lightning Sync was leveraged for this integration and Saasinct is working with the Salesforce product development team to ensure this capability is on the Einstein Activity Capture roadmap. User adoption is strong and continues to grow. Gordon Brothers divisions that rolled out are sharing their platform successes with other users, posting positive feedback, and encouraging others to start using the platform as quickly as possible.

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