Issue

Syensqo requires a CRM system as part of its sales lifecycle and uses ( salesforce.com ) to meet its current CRM needs. The

Syensqo's current Syensqo CRM architecture comprises multiple instances of the (salesforce.com) application (Core CRM and ICare), including equivalent multi-instance integrations with relevant backend systems (PRS, ICare-PF1, Core-WP1) and point solutions (Pardot, Dynasys, Gensuite, Qualtrics, Qliksense, etc.). Furthermore, the current CRM architecture is built on a heavily customized instance of the (salesforce.com) environment, featuring numerous bespoke interfaces and disparate technologiesCRM architecture, designed to support distinct business models inherited from previous M&A legacy, has resulted in the development of two separate and overly customized Salesforce instances (Core CRM and iCARe). Although this dual-instance setup was initially necessary to accommodate different business processes, it has now become a source of significant operational inefficiencies and complexity. These inefficiencies are increasingly misaligned with Syensqo's strategic objectives of simplification, agility, and innovation.

This architecture presents several challenges, including the following:

• Inconsistent Processes and User Experience: The presence of different types of GBUs (Solvay and Syensqo) has led to the CRM being tailored to distinct business models, resulting in customized processes within the Core CRM and iCARe instances. This fragmentation has caused inconsistencies in process maturity and user adoption, hindering efforts to deliver a unified and seamless customer experience across Global Business Units (GBUs).
• Customization Overload: Both CRM instances are heavily customized, particularly in areas such as
• Redundant processes exist in both ICare and Core CRM instances, with varying levels of maturity and adoption.
• The highly customized and non-standard solutions are resulting in business-as-usual (BAU) challenges in Quotation, Contract, and Pricing management.  
• Intricate integrations with two backend systems and custom interfaces are adding complexity.
• Non-CRM functions (Convergence) must be relocated to their corresponding standard solutions. 
• Multiple instance management is impacting infrastructure, deployment, BAU support, and user management.
• Complex upgrade and release cycles require significant effort and specialized tools, adding to the overall complexity.
• These custom solutions are resource-intensive to maintain and evolve, especially when considering the need for frequent updates and alignment with industry best practices.
• Complex and Redundant Integrations: The architecture relies on intricate, multi-instance integrations with backend systems (PRS, PF1, WP1) and point solutions (e.g., Dynasys, Gensuite, Qualtrics, Mappy), which are further complicated by the use of WebMethods technology. This results in duplicated efforts and increased risk of errors, particularly when integrating webshops and portals specific to each GBU.
• Collaboration Barriers: The existence of two separate CRM instances creates barriers to collaboration among GBUs, when managing key customers that span multiple units (transversal processes). This separation restricts the ability to operate with a unified, holistic view of customer interactions, resulting in inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
• Resource-Intensive Maintenance: The extensive customizations across both instances require significant resources, including specialized tools and expertise, to manage regressions and ensure system stability during each release cycle. This ongoing maintenance is not only costly but also hinders the organization's agility in responding to new business needs and opportunities.
• Misalignment with Strategic Objectives: The current CRM setup hinders Syensqo’s ability to align with its strategic goals of adopting a Simple and Standard approach. The dual-instance architecture adds unnecessary complexity and prevents the organization from achieving the desired levels of operational efficiency, scalability, and customer-centricity.
  

Recommendation

Following the split between Solvay and Syensqo, all Global Business Units (GBUs) have unified around a common vision of innovation, exploration, and growth. This presents a critical opportunity to implement a new, integrated CRM platform that supports these strategic objectives.

Recommendation highlights for Option A: Greenfield CRM implementation with Single Instance for all GBU's

• Unified CRM Platform: We recommend a greenfield implementation of a single, unified CRM solution to replace the current fragmented system. This approach will consolidate multiple CRM instances, streamline key processes, and standardize operations across all GBUs, resulting in improved efficiency and scalability.
• Standardization and Simplification: Adopting a standardized, out-of-the-box approach will simplify and optimize critical functions, including pricing, quotation management, complaint handling, quality inspections, and sample management. This will not only enhance efficiency, but improve data consistency, and ensure data integrity.
• Enhanced Collaboration: A single CRM instance will enable seamless day-to-day collaboration across GBUs, particularly for key accounts shared by Specialty Polymers, Composite Materials, and other GBUs. This aligns directly with the future state vision of integrating the One ERP system.
• Foundation for Innovation: The unified CRM platform will serve as a robust foundation for future initiatives, including key Generative AI projects, by ensuring that CRM data is consistent, reliable, and readily accessible across the organization
• Reduction of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): By consolidating into a single CRM instance, we can significantly reduce the complexity and costs associated with maintaining multiple systems and integrations. This streamlined approach will lead to lower operational costs, reduced duplication of efforts, and more efficient resource allocation.
• New Integration Layer: To support this unified approach, we propose introducing a new integration layer (to be detailed in the design phase). This will simplify the overall architecture, reduce integration-related costs, and accelerate time-to-market for new requirements, enabling Syensqo to become a more agile and innovative organization.

This recommendation not only addresses the immediate challenges of the current CRM setup but also aligns with Syensqo’s long-term strategic goals of simplification, standardization, and growth. Implementing a unified CRM platform is essential to ensure that the company remains competitive and continues to drive innovation in the marketplace

Recommendation

A greenfield implementation of the current CRM solution is recommended to address existing challenges, standardizing and streamlining customer master data management, automating processes, and unifying pricing and quotation management.

This implementation will also integrate complaint and quality inspection processes, develop a standardized approach to sample management, and drive business growth and improved customer relationships through real-time synchronization and elimination of custom logic and manual data entry.

Background & Context

Syensqo's current customer relationship management (CRM) processes are supported by a complex architecture that involves multiple applications, including two Salesforce instances, integration to both On-Premises Premise and Cloud applications, and various manual and automated system interfaces. The various functions implemented, along with their current challenges, are detailed below.

Image AddedImage Added

See below two links for existing integration landscape: 

Core CRM interface provider.pdf

Core CRM interfaces consumer.pdf

Account & Contact Management: The management of customer master data is characterized by diverse creation and onboarding processes for corporate groups and customers, which are dispersed across multiple teams, including the transformation centre, data operations teams, and service teams. These processes employ numerous hardcoded validations and custom interfaces that rely on manual intervention at every stage, lacking real-time synchronization, resulting in inefficiencies and potential data inconsistencies.

Product Management: The MDG system integration faces several challenges, including manual product creation risks, duplicate products, and data inconsistencies. The custom "External ID" field, required for interface key, is prone to errors if not populated correctly. Additionally, users from Special Chem and Novecare must notify administrators to update this field, and a report is needed to track missing IDs. These challenges necessitate careful management to ensure data accuracy and integrity.

Lead Management: A custom lead management system guides users through stages with mandatory fields and duplicate request detection. Leads are processed by Dataiku, assigning owners based on matched accounts, region, or rules. However, documentation requests bypass this logic, and delegations rely on daily batch jobs and assignment rules. The system faces challenges, including delayed GBU notifications, sales rep dependence, and potential errors in lead assignment and status updates.

Opportunity Management: The opportunity management system features several custom components, including a button to add products to an opportunity, a clone button to duplicate existing opportunities, a revenue forecast component to project revenue for the next 5 years based on expected volume, a postpone feature to delay delivery and close dates by 6 months, and a realised sales component to manually track invoiced amounts for shipped goods related to won opportunities.

Visit Report Management: A custom visit report feature generates a PDF summary of visit details, while a bespoke reporting functionality provides insights on customer data, sales, and orders. Custom buttons send reports internally or to customers using predefined templates, with automatic email distribution to team members and customers based on criteria like region and product family. The feature also allows managing visit report teams, linking contacts, and viewing related records like opportunities, quotes, and complaints.

Pricing: The pricing process is a complex, multi-platform system with varying GBU adoption. It integrates SAP ECC historical data and Dynasys forecasts into BW, generating Integrated Contribution Margin (ICM) insights, Customer Product Combination (CPC) price recommendations, and Contribution Margin improvements via Dataiku. This process utilizes custom objects for reviewing and committing, as well as custom interfaces for replicating prices to backend SAP.

Quotation Management: OneQuote is a custom application that manages the quotation process, including creation, product configuration, pricing, approvals, and customer communications. However, it has not been adopted by all Global Business Units (GBUs). Quotation validity dates and price validity dates differ; the latter has a longer horizon to minimize the impact of policy changes on customer orders. OneQuote data is not replicated to ECC, its price conditions are replicated, and open orders are adjusted manually during policy revisions.
The Composites GBU uses the ECC Quotation process, which differs from OneQuote due to material group level differences. The outputs of OneQuote and ECC Quote vary significantly in detail and format across GBUs. For forecasting purposes, quotes from both systems are integrated with Dynasys, and quote reporting is done in Celonis (for Composites) and Cliksense (for TS and Novecare).

Contract Management: Contract management encompasses various contract types, including sales, distribution agreements and inter-business unit contracts. Contract data storage varies across business units, with key details including tracked validity periods for notification purposes, maintained product information for planning and sales forecasting in Qliksense, and excluded prices and discounts. 
The approval process is managed externally in ContracTech(Legal), with no output templates generated from CRM for customer sharing. Contract management is not integrated with backend systems or processes, CRM contracts serve only as a centralized repository for tracking and notifications, with contract volumes reported to Qliksense for forecasting and stored in CRM for reference and expiration reminders.

Complaint Management: Complaints, whether linked to sales orders or not, follow a guided process that includes registration, investigation, commercial response, customer communication, and closure. This process integrates with Gensuite for root cause analysis and resolution, as well as Qualtrics for customer feedback. However, quality inspections, returns handling, and credit memos are not linked back to the complaint. Custom functions facilitate acknowledgments and communications between internal and external teams, but improvements are needed to connect all related processes.

Sample Request Management: Sample management and tracking is a complex process that requires enhancement. Currently, some GBUs have an interface that integrates Salesforce, SAP, and CMC (a third-party sample provider) for automated sample transmission and information sharing. However, this interface needs to be replicated across all GBUs using CMC services for compliance purposes. The sample order process involves manual screening, which results in inefficiencies. Moreover, commercial samples management is entirely manual, relying on emails for inventory management, material records, and transactions, leading to significant communication challenges and time waste. A standardized approach is essential for capturing orders, communicating with production and R&I, and managing outbound logistics to end customers (both billable and non-billable).

pdf

The existence of two instances, along with heavy customizations and bespoke developments, presents the following challenges to all GBUs across Syensqo.

Customization Complexity: The two CRM instances have undergone extensive customization to meet the demands of various Global Business Units (GBUs). However, this customization has led to complexity in managing existing functions and delayed the go-to-market of new functions, thereby defying the benefits of cloud application. E.g., OneQuote is a completely bespoke functionality developed to handle quotation management, but it has not been fully adopted by all GBUs. On the other hand, contract management is not being used for its intended purpose of tracking contracted sales executed, but rather only for reminder notifications. 

Interoperability Barriers: GBUs have to devote considerable time and resources to managing master and transactional processes, particularly for key customers who require cross-functional (transversal) support. As Strategic Key Customers of iCARe share customers with Core CRM, this complicates day-to-day communications across teams. Also, Commercial samples management is entirely manual, relying on emails for inventory management, material records, and transactions, leading to significant communication challenges and time wasted.

Integration Constraints: The WebMethods architecture is becoming a bottleneck, hindering performance and scalability due to the large number of interfaces (over 100) across both instances. Notably, 30% of the incident backlog is attributed to interface-related issues. Furthermore, maintaining two instances results in duplicated effort, as each new interface requires double the development and implementation work. 

Governance & Strategic Sponsorship: There is no top management sponsorship to implement a standard and simple solution on the current SaaS platform, and GBU requests are implemented with customizations, resulting in increasing maintenance costs year after year.

Further details on the current functional documentations related to customizations are available in the appendix.

Assumptions

• The choice of technology for the new CRM platform will be addressed in a later phase.
• SAP S/4HANA will serve as the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application for managing and executing customer records, sales contracts, sales orders, logistics, warehousing, transportation, billing, and rebates.
• Orders generated globally from ecommerce solutions (Salesforce + SAP) represent only 4% of total orders for 2023.
• A separate KDD will be created, focusing on pricing strategy, optimization, approval processes, and execution.

Constraints

• Gaining buy-in from stakeholders who may be attached to existing customizations and interfaces.
• A clear and strong Governance is key to achieve agreement (especially innovative GBUs like Novecare) to use standard solutions offered by the cloud provider.
• Securing proper sponsorship and executive support to drive transformational change, ensure resource allocation, and champion the initiative across the organization.
• The current Salesforce platform is used for other processes, such as Marketing Automation, Partner Management, Self-Service Portals, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) Voice of the Customer

Impacts

• Process streamlining will impact certain GBUs, requiring change management efforts to ensure a smooth transition

• .
• Ongoing projects

- OneQuote

Implementation for Composites:

Planned for H1 2025

- Pricing

Module Improvement: Expected in October 2024,

this change will unify List Price

and Recommended Price

into a single field, reducing complexity.

Business Rules

No business rules identified in this phase to implement the recommended solution. Further assessments will be done in detailed design phase.

Options considered

Option A: Greenfield CRM implementation with

Single Instance for all GBU's

Implement a Objective: This solution represents a strategic initiative to develop a new, unified, collaborative cloud-based CRM platform to streamline and standardize customer-facing processes across for all Global Business Units (GBUs), replacing disparate systems and manual processes. The new platform will provide a single source of truth for customer data, automate workflows, and enable real-time synchronization across Account & Contact Management, Product Management, Lead Management, Opportunity Management, Visit Report Management, Transactional Pricing, Quote Management, OneQuote Management, Contract Management, Complaint Management, and Sample Request Management. This will improve data accuracy and integrity, reduce manual intervention, and enhance customer experience."

This option aims to:

- Replace disparate systems and manual processes with a unified CRM platform
- Provide a single source of truth for customer data
- Automate workflows and enable real-time synchronization
- Improve data accuracy and integrity
- Reduce manual intervention
- Enhance customer experience

By addressing the challenges mentioned, the greenfield CRM implementation aims to bring about significant improvements in customer-facing processes across all GBUs.

. It aims to align processes, foster collaboration, and achieve efficiencies across all units while maintaining data visibility and flexibility to support specific needs justified by a strong business case.

Key Advantages:

• Promotes cross-GBU collaboration and alignment by standardizing processes on a unified platform.
• Enables a comprehensive 360-degree view of customer interactions, enhancing decision-making and customer experience.
• Implements a CRM with enhanced and automated cross-GBU lead-to-contract processes, integrated complaint and sample management linked to ERP.
• Reduces long-term IT maintenance costs and GBU support by leveraging the cloud solution's out-of-the-box features, freeing up resources for innovation and growth.
• Simplifies integration with other IT systems and implementation of global projects, reducing complexity.
• Facilitates seamless integration of new acquisitions (M&A) with minimal disruption, enabling quicker alignment and operational integration.

Key Challenges:

• Strategic change management and executive sponsorship are required to drive adoption and alignment.
• High stakeholder involvement is needed to design and agree on new, unified processes across diverse Global Business Units (GBUs).
• Complex data migration and system integration are expected due to the consolidation of multiple legacy systems into a single instance.
• Managing security and privacy requirements across diverse global units may pose potential complexity.

Option B:Refine and streamline existing processes and integrations, retaining current two CRM instances.

Objective: This solution involves re-engineering the processes within the existing CRM solutions (Core & iCare) to align with best practices and standardize operations across all GBUs while maintaining two separate Salesforce instances. The goal is to optimize current systems without full consolidation, retaining the flexibility of separate instances while standardizing where possible.

Key Advantages:

• Maintains continuity by using existing systems, reducing disruption and the learning curve for users.
• Allows for phased improvements, providing flexibility in timing and minimizing immediate operational impact.
• Retains the autonomy of separate instances, allowing tailored configurations that meet specific GBU requirements.

Key Challenges:

• Gaining buy-in from stakeholders who are attached to existing customizations and legacy processes.
• Potential disruptions in daily activities during process re-engineering and alignment efforts.
• Ongoing complexity in managing and aligning two systems, which may limit full collaboration and process standardization.
• Accumulation of technical debt in maintaining two separate instances, which could hinder future upgrades and integrations.

Option C: Merge the two existing instances of CRM into one.

Objective: This solution involves consolidating the remaining GBUs into one of the existing Salesforce instances (Core or iCare) with minimal changes to existing processes. The goal is to reduce operational complexity and streamline CRM management by decommissioning one of the CRM instances.

Key Advantages:

• Streamlines operations by consolidating systems, leading to more straightforward governance and lower long-term maintenance costs.
• Reduces duplication of effort and systems, improving efficiency and consistency across GBUs.
• Limits the scope of disruption to only the GBUs involved in the merge, making the transition more manageable.

Key Challenges:

• Complexity in aligning new GBUs to the existing system, potentially requiring significant process adjustments.
• Technical challenges in merging data and systems due to existing customizations and legacy technical debt.
• Perceived fairness and emotional resistance from impacted GBUs, which may see the merger as unequal or disruptive.
• Potential difficulty in maintaining a consistent customer experience during the transition period.

Option D

: Maintain existing CRM solution in the current state, retaining

current two CRM

instances. 

Continue to maintain and support Objective: This solution involves maintaining the current state of the existing separate CRM instances, including the custom implementations, integrations, and interfaces currently in place.

This option allows us to preserve the existing investments in CRM technology and customizations, avoiding the need for significant changes or rework. It enables us to continue using the current systems and processes, while also allowing for future enhancements and optimizations within each instance.

Implications:

CRM solutions (Core & iCare) without making significant changes, focusing only on adapting systems as necessary to align with the ERP program. The goal is to avoid major disruptions while ensuring compliance with ERP changes.

Key Advantages:

• Avoids the high costs and disruptions associated with major system changes or consolidation efforts.
• Maintains continuity by keeping existing processes and systems in place, minimizing the learning curve and operational disruptions.
• Allows for focused resource allocation on necessary ERP adaptations rather than widespread changes.

Key Challenges:

• Continued management of two separate CRM systems, leading to ongoing operational complexity and potential inefficiencies.
• Increased technical debt over time as systems age and customizations accumulate, potentially complicating future upgrades and integrations.
• Limited ability to standardize and optimize processes across GBUs, which may lead to inefficiencies and hinder collaboration.
• No alignment with ERP Rebuild program objectives to standardize & simplify the IT ecosystem, potentially leading to strategic misalignment and missed opportunities for synergies.

Evaluation

	Option A - Greenfield CRM implementation

with single instance for all GBU's	Option B - Refine and streamline existing processes and integrations, retaining current CRM instances	Option C - Merge the two existing instances into one.	Option D - Maintain Salesforce in its current state,

retaining

Core

current CRM

and ICare

instances
Alignment with "Simplification principle"

Systems

Simplifies systems, processes,

Processes and Integrations will be simplified and thereby

and integrations, reducing complexity

, improve efficiency, and enhance the user experience, ultimately driving business success. By maintaining the current state, Syensqo is not embracing the simplification principle, which could lead

and enhancing collaboration.

Streamlining helps, but maintaining two instances prevents full simplification.

Merging without full re-engineering limits simplification benefits.

Retaining the current state leads to missed opportunities for efficiency gains

, improved user experience, and better decision-making

.
Alignment with "Standardisation principle"

Standardization helps Syensqo by providing a unified platform for CRM and customer service

Standardizes processes and integration across GBUs, ensuring consistency

across the organization, and enabling a single source of truth for customer data. This leads to efficient reporting and analytics, improved compliance with regulatory requirements, and reduced maintenance efforts. Standardization also enables scalability and flexibility, making it easier to adapt to changing business needs, and provides a consistent user experience, regardless of role or GBU. Retaining customizations and multiple instances means that standardization is not achieved, leading to inconsistent processes and data.Maintenance CostProConUpgrade & Release management

organization-wide.	Two separate instances hinder full standardization and collaboration.	Adaptation to non-standard processes in retained instance limits standardization.	Retaining customizations and multiple instances prevents standardization.
Total Cost of Ownership	Single instance reduces maintenance costs and minimizes integration risks, lowering overall TCO.	Higher TCO due to maintaining multiple instances and duplicated efforts.	Merging reduces interfaces, simplifying maintenance and lowering TCO.	Maintaining multiple instances increases complexity and overall TCO.
User Adoption and Experience & Change Management	Requires significant change management, impacting short-term adoption and UX.	Users must align with new processes, impacting adoption and UX.	Higher training efforts needed as users adapt to new processes.	Tailored experiences for each business unit with minimal change management required.
Collaboration	Enables day-to-day collaboration across GBUs, improving efficiency in managing shared customers.	Data fragmentation in two instances hinders collaboration on key transversal accounts.	Single instance improves collaboration across GBUs, especially on shared customers.	Data fragmentation hinders collaboration and efficiency in managing shared customers.
Project Governance & Stakeholder Engagement	High GBU availability and commitment needed for defining new processes and ensuring sponsorship.	High availability required for streamlining, with challenges in gaining stakeholder buy-in.	High availability required for merging and adapting to retained instance processes.	Minimal impact on availability and sponsorship, as existing systems and processes are retained.
Customer Experience Impact	Unified CRM enhances customer experience through consistent processes and interactions across GBUs.	Inconsistent processes and data across instances may lead to a fragmented customer experience.	Merged instances improves customer experience by reducing inconsistencies.	Maintaining the current state may lead to a disjointed customer experience due to inconsistencies.
Legal & Compliance	New instance must comply with CMMC L1; all GBUs must follow specific guidelines.	Two instances allow for specific legal and compliance requirements.	Retained instance must comply with CMMC L1; all GBUs must follow specific guidelines.	Two instances allow for specific legal and compliance requirements (iCARe is more secure).
Integration and Data Management	Single instance simplifies integration and data management, improving quality and integrity.	Benefits limited unless existing interfaces are optimized.	Aligning custom integrations and data for merged GBUs is challenging.	Over 100 existing interfaces create ongoing maintenance challenges.
Scalability &  Future-Proofing	Single instance is highly scalable, easily accommodating future growth and technology advancements.	Two instances limit scalability and complicate future upgrades.	Merged instance is scalable, but customizations may limit future flexibility.	Maintaining the current state limits scalability and adaptability to future needs.

See also

List of 120 currently active interfaces CRM Integrations List - File to Use - Google Sheets

List of Functional Specifications for current key custom and bespoke enhancements

See also

Change log

Workflow history