Salesforce CRM for a B2B distributor
One governed Salesforce org for lead-to-cash and case-to-resolution, replacing spreadsheets, shared inboxes and email approvals at a B2B distributor and field-services provider.
The brief
A mid-market B2B distributor and field-services provider, working across four regional territories, ran its commercial operations on spreadsheets, a legacy on-premise contact database, shared inboxes and email. The same customer existed in several spreadsheets with conflicting details, opportunities lived in personal files, and leadership could not trust the forecast.
Quotes were built by hand from a static PDF price list, discount and contract approvals travelled by email with no audit trail, and support requests arrived in shared inboxes with no case ownership or SLA tracking. Weekly reports were compiled manually and were out of date by the time anyone read them.
- Bring lead-to-cash and case-to-resolution onto one Salesforce org.
- Give leadership a pipeline and forecast it can trust.
- Replace spreadsheet quoting and email approvals with a governed process.
- Give every support request an owner, a priority and an SLA.
- Stop duplicate and incomplete data at the point of entry.
- Keep the solution maintainable by the client's own administrator.
Our approach
We delivered the programme declarative-first: standard objects, page layouts, record-triggered and screen Flows, validation and duplicate rules, approval processes and a layered permission model, with custom code kept for genuine gaps. That kept the org upgrade-safe and owned by the internal team.
Security was designed before data moved, the standard object model was used instead of inventing custom objects, and reports and dashboards were built alongside each object so every KPI could be measured in the platform from day one.
What we implemented
Lead management and routing
Web-to-Lead and imports into one queue, a lead-scoring field, assignment rules by region, industry and source, SLA alerts for untouched leads and a guided conversion Flow with duplicate checks.
Accounts, contacts and clean data
Duplicate and matching rules on accounts and contacts, a one-time cleanse and merge of legacy records, record types for customers, prospects and partners, and account hierarchies for key accounts.
Pipeline and forecasting
Standardised opportunity stages with exit criteria, a guided sales Path, price-book-driven line items and validation rules that stop a deal closing without products and a signed quote.
Quoting, orders and contracts
Product catalogue and regional price books, native quotes with a branded PDF built by a screen Flow, automatic orders from won opportunities and contract renewal reminders at 60 and 30 days.
Service Cloud case management
Email-to-Case and Web-to-Case, assignment by product, region and severity, Entitlements and Milestones for SLAs, escalation and auto-response rules, and cases linked to the customer's assets and history.
Approvals, security and dashboards
Three approval processes (discounts, non-standard contracts, large deals) with a full audit trail, least-privilege access through permission set groups per job role, and role-based dashboards for leadership, sales, service and data health.
How we built it
The programme ran in three releases over about seven months. Phase 1 delivered accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities and core reports; Phase 2 added products, price books, quotes, orders, contracts and approvals; Phase 3 moved service onto Service Cloud with cases, entitlements, SLAs and dashboards.
Legacy spreadsheets and the on-premise contact database were cleansed, de-duplicated and loaded in sequence with error logging and reconciliation counts at each step. Every phase included admin and user training, a sandbox UAT cycle and a hypercare window, with champions in each team to drive adoption.
How it works
Capture
Leads arrive through web forms and imports into one routed queue.
Convert
A guided Flow creates clean accounts, contacts and opportunities.
Quote
Quotes are priced from price books and approved in-platform.
Order
Won deals create orders and contracts with renewal reminders.
Serve
Requests become cases with owners, SLAs and escalation.
Automation was kept to one well-documented record-triggered Flow per object, orchestrated in a defined order, alongside screen Flows for guided work and scheduled Flows for renewals and nightly data-hygiene checks. That avoids the overlapping legacy rules and triggers that make orgs hard to maintain.
Because the build uses standard objects, native Salesforce reporting covers the operational metrics without a separate BI layer. Adoption and data health are themselves on a dashboard, so leadership can manage them like any other KPI.
The impact
Sales and service moved from spreadsheets, shared inboxes and email onto one governed Salesforce org.
Quotes are generated from price books with a branded PDF instead of a spreadsheet and static price list.
Discount, contract and large-deal approvals run in Salesforce with a full audit trail.
Every support request is a case with an owner, a priority and SLA milestones.
Validation and duplicate rules stop bad data at entry, backed by nightly data-hygiene checks.
Leadership, sales and service teams each have role-based dashboards inside Salesforce.
Salesforce stack
Running Salesforce, or planning to?
A new implementation, a Service Cloud rollout or an org that needs cleaning up: tell us where you are. We will come back within one business day with a point of view.