Business

Lenovo Connects Briefing Program Information to Salesforce

Steve McKinney

Lenovo Briefing Manager

Case study snapshot

In the Spring of 2015, Lenovo’s Executive Briefing Center began working with VisitOps, a native Salesforce application that helps companies manage all aspects of customer visits. Lenovo sought a solution that would provide value to their program while opening access to non-Salesforce users with whom they conducted business.

About the Lenovo Executive Briefing Center

Assists sellers and partners with information to make informed buying decisions.
Sales reps and business partners request detailed briefings for their customers.
Lenovo designs the experience, provides the resources, and coordinates with SMEs.

About VisitOps

A full-featured visit management app built for Salesforce.
Features include a color-coded calendar system and room management tools.
Specialties include process design, workflows, team dynamics, and visual controls.

2015

Lenovo began working with FormAssembly

25%

of briefing requests are from non-Salesforce users

30+

languages available in FormAssembly for international respondents

Challenge

Lack of visibility into program value

The first step is to make sure that as briefings are conducted, you can track them throughout their lifecycle and include them when developing sales strategies and solutions to address customer needs. In the past, briefing data has typically been missing from customer journey mapping because there was no direct connection to opportunities. Now, that’s a thing of the past,” Lubinskas said.

Lenovo’s Executive Briefing Center consulted VisitOps to assist with customer visits and briefings. Using the VisitOps app can help team members with scheduling, managing rooms, building agendas, sending surveys, and running reports. Sellers that have Salesforce IDs can use the VisitOps app to request briefings.

The ability to link briefing information to critical sales data in Salesforce is a huge benefit for a company like Lenovo that seeks to understand how briefing programs fit into the larger sales process, according to Diane Lubinskas, President of VisitOps. Before FormAssembly, this value aspect was critically missing from their processes.

VisitOps gave the Executive Briefing Center a level of visibility into the value of their program that they hadn’t had previously, but they wanted to include the value they bring to their partners as well. They needed a way to connect with their business partners that didn’t have Salesforce IDs and couldn’t enter requests in VisitOps.

Solution

Connected web forms that bridge information

To me, the role that FormAssembly plays is a communications link between us and non-Salesforce users that want to bring customers to the Briefing Center. It opens up opportunities to drive more business for Lenovo. The use of FormAssembly has created a communication link we did not have otherwise,” McKinney said.

Lubinskas and McKinney considered other apps during the project but ultimately opted for FormAssembly for its ability to open up a new avenue for working with non-Salesforce users. Once this communication channel was open, it gave Lenovo a comprehensive view of business opportunities and provided a complete picture of the program’s overall value.

Improved business communication with non-Salesforce users.

Lubinskas worked with Lenovo to find a form solution that could bridge the gap between sales information stored in Salesforce and the actions of business partners that weren’t Salesforce members. Her goal was to find a tool that enabled “flexibility, custom,ization and the deep connection with Salesforce.”

Successful implementation with FormAssembly’s knowledgeable support team.

Lubinskas appreciated the knowledge and engagement of the sales team, the responsiveness of FormAssembly’s support professionals, and the power of the form-building tool itself.

Use cases

Use case

Non-Salesforce users have access through a well-designed web portal.

The Lenovo Executive Briefing Center now uses a web portal, created by VisitOps, that allows non-Salesforce users to request briefings through FormAssembly forms. The web portal is used in the U.S. at two Raleigh locations, Lenovo’s Stuttgart, Germany office, and in two China locations.

In addition to the seamless Salesforce connectors, Lubinskas also said Lenovo benefits from the many different features of the FormAssembly Form Builder. These include:

Multiple languages: FormAssembly’s language capabilities support dual languages for Lenovo’s international locations.
Repeatable sections, multiple pages, picklists: The Form Builder’s many different features make forms easier to fill out and better able to handle multiple pieces of information.
Salesforce connectors: The Salesforce Prefill and Submit Connectors allow for seamless information transfer to the VisitOps app.
Redirects and formulas: The Form Builder’s powerful features allow the creation of simple, user-friendly workflows without prior coding knowledge.

With the new web portal featuring FormAssembly forms, Lenovo’s Executive Briefing Center can improve communication with non-Salesforce users, who make up about a quarter of briefing requests, and join their data with the rest of their sales information.

What’s next?

Through the combined use of VisitOps, FormAssembly, and Salesforce, Lenovo has moved closer to its goal of creating a deep link between briefings and sales and measuring the impact its program has on business. Connecting this previously disparate information has given them new analytics, which will drive the evolution of the program in the future.

“Lenovo’s vision is to lead the way in how a connection between briefing and Salesforce information can be used to create new customer insights and drive business. The joining of this data opens up a plethora of new analytics and metrics that help them create focused, high-impact briefing experiences for their customers,” Lubinskas said. “And FormAssembly became a huge enabler in helping them achieve that vision.”

Eager to learn more about how other large companies tackle data issues with FormAssembly?

Discover how Amazon India collects critical information with smart web forms.

learn more