A customised team

GEODIS’s ambition at the beginning of the project is clear: change the paradigm of its CRM and initiate an in-depth digital transformation. For EI-Technologies as for GEODIS, the project is colossal: “First and foremost, we had to define processes and an organisation that would allow us to reach a common solution, then to implement and improve it in a transparent manner, to meet the deadlines and to make sure the sales forces of the group would remain operational”, Fouad Sassine explains. EI-Technologies mobilised around ten experts, full time, to win the RFP. “We have invested in a flexible and highly available team. This team was then entrusted with the implementation of the solution at GEODIS.”For a deployment of this magnitude, Fouad Sassine emphasises the importance of building a relationship of trust with the client: “The client was able to feel our commitment to the project has from the initial phases. A quality relationship was quickly forged with GEODIS. The company granted us sufficient leeway to take initiative in defining the overall project architecture and in developing the solution. In particular, we have integrated the requirements of the business lines based on their objectives and defined the strategy for deploying the solution in the countries in collaboration with them and the IT team”, Fouad Sassine added.

Towards a common language

What were GEODIS’ expectations regarding EI-Technologies and Salesforce? Increased productivity? Increased profitability? Increased competitiveness?

All these challenges did shape the solution’s outlines.

EI-Technologies thus contributed to GEODIS’s first cross-functional “corporate” project, by aligning the information systems with the processes specific to each business. In the end, the Salesforce platform deployed at GEODIS offers much more than mere best practices: it establishes a common language and a unified vision: “We studied the steps of solution delivery and its deployment in all GEODIS entities beforehand. The objective was to industrialize the deployment process per country and to support the users of the business lines in the solution familiarisation training and adoption.”The main challenge was to meet the needs of countries with different levels of maturity. To harmonise and rationalise exchanges, EI-Technologies thus developed a common platform, designed and built in collaboration with the countries’ divisions and businesses: “The real difficulty of the project lies in the multitude of stakeholders, i.e. country divisions, business lines, IT teams, trainers. We worked in collaboration with each of them to establish a common base. Subsequently, we relied on business ambassadors to share the good word within the countries and to support the users in the field. Training the trainers has proven to be an excellent way to encourage the adoption of the solution by all”, Fouad Sassine says. He also reminded that the deployment of the first versions in November 2019 and then February 2020 had been a success. They will have to keep up the good work until 2021.

For more information on the Salesforce solution deployed by EI-Technologies at GEODIS, kindly refer to the expert analysis here.