Industrial automation products distributionIndustrial Automation Products Distributor
An industrial automation products distributor moved off a CRM-less, ERP-only operation onto a connected Salesforce platform, putting 9,000 customers and a fully manual lead flow into one system for the first time.
The client is a national industrial automation products distributor and one of the leading value-added distributors in its market, carrying thousands of automation, electrical, and motion control products from top manufacturers. Running its entire commercial operation out of its Prophet 21 ERP with no CRM, no marketing engine, and roughly 9,000 customers it had never marketed to, the company engaged SiiMPLY7 to stand up Salesforce from scratch, link it to Prophet 21, and give leadership its first real view of territory and pipeline.
The challenge
Sales reps developed accounts through relationships, and leads traveled person to person rather than through any system, so supplier-provided referrals were routinely dropped. Leadership had no mapped view of territories, no marketing capability against a large dormant customer base, and no single source for quote and order activity, which all lived in the ERP. The mandate was to implement proven Salesforce processes with minimal customization and connect them cleanly to Prophet 21.
The solution
SiiMPLY7 delivered Sales Cloud as the new system of record with lead, account, opportunity, quote, and territory management, then layered Salesforce Maps for geographic territory visibility and rep assignment. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement activated the dormant customer database with nurture programs, landing pages, and web-to-lead capture, while Service Cloud handled case management. A Prophet 21 integration synchronized customer and order data both ways, and a phased data migration moved four years of records into the new platform.
Implementation highlights
What we built.
- Sales Cloud core build covering lead, account, opportunity, quote, and territory management
- Salesforce Maps configuration mapping geographic territories and automating rep assignment
- Bidirectional Prophet 21 integration syncing customer and order data with the ERP
- Marketing Cloud Account Engagement nurture programs, forms, and templates against the customer base
- Service Cloud case management with routing and escalation for support
- Phased migration of roughly four years of ERP records with single sign-on configuration
Results
9,000 ERP customers consolidated into one CRM of record
Manual, person-to-person referrals replaced by tracked, system-managed leads
Leadership gained mapped territory and quota views across the outside sales team
Engagement summary
The phased rollout brought Sales Cloud live alongside the Prophet 21 integration and data migration, followed by Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, Service Cloud, and Salesforce Maps, moving a distributor from an ERP-only, CRM-less operation onto a connected platform.
What's next
Planned next phases include deepening the quote-to-order flow between Salesforce and the ERP, expanding marketing campaigns against the full customer base, and extending reporting to support revenue and gross-profit growth targets.
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