Verso Case Study
Verso Corporation Reduced Costs and Improved Quote Creation Processes with enosix.
Find out how Verso’s IT department replaced a costly quoting system with Salesforce and enosix’s integration solution, and continuously adds value to the business.
Value at Scale
The paper manufacturing industry is facing substantial transformation and challenges: consolidation, collapse of suppliers, and increasing pressure to prove the value of printing on paper in the midst of disruption from digital media.
For the IT department at Verso Corporation, a leading North American producer of printing papers, specialty papers, and pulp, this means implementing innovative solutions to reduce costs, automate processes, and do more with less.
Verso’s IT department set out to replace a costly quoting system. Instead of simply evaluating and selecting another quoting tool, the team searched for a solution that would provide both a cost reduction and add more value as it scaled across the business.
Partnership Results:
- Reduced quote publication time by 98%
- Increased buy in from sales and customer service due to visibility into why a spot quote is escalated and requires approval
- Increased the level of audit confidence through a better understanding in quote escalation and approval process
- Reduced our annual software license support cost by 40%
“We selected Salesforce first for its ability to connect to external data sources,” However, in order to leverage Salesforce, Verso also needed an integration solution. “We needed an easy way to integrate at the transaction level with our master data [in SAP®].”
Teresa Eads–Senior Business Analyst at Verso
Replacing a Costly Quoting System
Initially, the team explored using an ETL tool and evaluated two tools that they were already using in-house: Boomi and Informatica. But, due to the time delays in posting real-time to SAP, it was not cost feasible.
Then they looked at exposing the data via SAP tools, such as ABAP® and BAPI “but, using these tools was one-and-done,” Teresa said. “We would be able to expose the contract transaction, but that doesn’t help us with any other transaction. It doesn’t help us with the account transaction, it doesn’t help us with the invoice transaction … every single one of the touchpoints that we needed within SAP, we would have to expose the data.”
Not only would it take a long time to realize the value, but it also was expensive. “When we looked at contracting the work, the cost was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to do one transaction exposure.”
The enosix Solution
Salesforce introduced Teresa and her team to enosix, a certified Salesforce partner. Verso selected enosix for their integration needs to enable direct access to SAP in Salesforce.
Improved Quote Creation Processes & a Competitive Advantage
“Previously, not all of the information that went into a quote was the most current. Now the data is more reliable due to the real time integration. It has cut our quote creation time by 50%, and better accuracy.”
Gary Kreitzer–Pricing Analyst
With the old system, the escalation and approval process was based on a system-generated deal score. The sales and customer service teams couldn’t easily understand how the deal score was generated and would challenge the logic behind why a quote required escalation for approval. With Salesforce and enosix, the escalation and approval process is clearly visible and easily understood, and tied to our spot quote guidelines. “Now, if it meets certain criteria,” said Teresa, “it’s auto-approved and it gets published immediately to SAP. It takes some of the burden off of the pricing team.” Bob Coulter, Price Administration Manager, said, “This creates a better partnership between pricing and customer service and sales.”
In addition, the real-time integration with SAP enables their team to reduce risks around misquoting the same job through multiple channels and disappointing customers.
Verso’s auditing team also has improved confidence in the new solution due to a systemically controlled escalation and approval process.
Previously, with all of the back-and-forth between the pricing team and sales, it took up to two hours to create a quote for a customer. Today, Verso creates quotes in a matter of minutes.
“If you keep a customer on the phone too long waiting for an answer, they aren’t going to select you. The fact that we can provide them an answer really quickly could be the difference in winning the customer and sale faster.”
