The energy industry has been dominated by handful of big companies for a long time now who’ve long been dominant in their markets. Small, new players need more than great ideas to compete in the space. They need to offer better, faster, and more personalized service as their key differentiator.
For New York-based Atlantic Energy, that meant finding a way to turn every day record-keeping into real and actionable business intelligence that could effectively drive bottom line results. Partnering with the right technology provider was the company’s key to success, resulting in a whopping 326% ROI in just four months.
Complete visibility into operations gives this small business a big advantage
Atlantic Energy is a small-to-medium sized business (SMB) focused on providing renewably-sourced energy to residential and enterprise customers in the northeastern United States. A key component of their business is the LED Lighting program, which provides customers with complimentary LEDs to replace older, less efficient bulbs. Atlantic Energy manages the logistics of the program, including staff, transportation, and warehouses.
Up until recently the company had maintained all of their records manually using pen and paper. The team knew this was slowing them down — everything from warehouse operations to customer engagement — and that better information flow would give dispatchers complete visibility into field operations to inform better real-time decisions. Not to mention, going digital would also reduce paper consumption and the company’s environmental footprint.
Atlantic Energy was already using Sales Cloud, and so familiar with the Salesforce platform and customer community. When they reviewed Field Service Lightning, the Atlantic Energy team felt confident they’d get the new functionality they needed while also gaining end-to-end visibility across sales, customer support, and field service. Adding on to their existing Salesforce install also stood to reduce Atlantic’s IT support, since they wouldn’t have to integrate a new vendor’s technology.
Quick deployment leads to big results
Working with an outsourced team of developers, Atlantic Energy took roughly three months to complete the deployment. Rollout was quick and easy, thanks to in-house familiarity with the Salesforce platform and the user interface. The benefits became clear right away:
• Achieved 326% ROI in just four months, fueled by actionable insights surfaced through Salesforce automation.
• Increased operational visibility and efficiency in the field. The average time to complete a field service order decreased by nearly half.
• Improved efficiency. Atlantic grew its business by 50 percent in the first year after deployment, without a commensurate increase in warehouse and field service staff.
• Reduced costs.The platform’s automation capabilities helped Atlantic optimize scheduling and reduce fuel, paper, and printing costs.
Going digital to stay agile
Moving from analog to digital helped optimize field service routes, maintain inventories without dedicated onsite warehouse managers, and everything else in between. Additionally, newfound visibility into warehouse, truck loading, and field service operations enabled truck-run optimization, saved on hiring additional warehouse supervisors, and provided up-to-date data for both tactical and long-term decision-making to support the business. Giving field service agents real-time access to customer records also allowed them to deliver individualized service based on each client’s history of energy consumption and site-specific needs.
SMBs have to stay agile, always ready to embrace new business practices and technologies to keep a competitive edge against larger companies. Nowhere is this truer than in the energy industry, a marketplace long dominated by entrenched giants. Investing in technology that maximizes efficiencies and enables more personalized service has helped Atlantic Energy stay competitive — and stay true to its mission of delivering sustainable energy to customers.
The ROI percentage is based on a case study conducted by Nucleus Research and sponsored by Salesforce. Additional information and the full report is available here.
Republished by permission. Original here.
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