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Issue
Syensqo requires a CRM system as part of its sales lifecycle and uses salesforce.com to meet its current CRM needs.
Syensqo's current CRM 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 Quotation, Contract, and Pricing management. 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, particularly 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 embraced a unified mindset focusing on innovation, exploration, and growth. This presents a critical opportunity to implement a new, integrated CRM platform that supports these strategic objectives.
Key points of the recommendation:
- 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.
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-Premise and Cloud applications, and various manual and automated system interfaces.
See below two links for existing integration landscape:
Core CRM interface provider.pdf
Core CRM interfaces consumer.pdf
The existence of two instances, along with heavy customizations and bespoke developments, presents the following challenges to all GBUs across Syensqo.
Customization: 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.
Collaboration: 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: 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: 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 rollout for Composites: scheduled for 2025
- Pricing module updates: expected by October 2024, to display List Price/Recommended Price instead of two separate prices.
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
Objective: This solution represents a strategic initiative to develop a new, unified, collaborative cloud-based CRM platform for all Global Business Units (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.
- This solution represents a strategic initiative to develop a new, unified, collaborative cloud-based CRM platform for all Global Business Units (GBUs). It aligns with manufacturing best practices to standardize operations across all units, ensuring common business processes while maintaining data visibility independence. The platform can also support specific GBU needs, but only when a strong business case is identified.
Option B: Refine and streamline existing processes and integrations, retaining current two CRM instances.
This solution involves re-engineering processes within the existing CRM solutions (Core and iCARe) to align with manufacturing best practices and standardize operations across all Global Business Units (GBUs), while maintaining two separate Salesforce instances. The specific needs of each GBU will be supported only when a strong business case justifies deviation from the standardized processes.
The advantages of this approach are: reuse the existing architecture, standard processes implemented, and interfaces deployed. Training will have to be executed for the optimized and redesigned processes only.
The key challenge will be gaining buy-in from stakeholders who are attached to existing customizations. Additionally, the existing integration architecture and interfaces will need to be redesigned and optimized to align with the future One ERP backend architecture and processes. Other challenges are detailed in the evaluation table.
Option C: Merge the two existing instances of CRM into one.
This solution involves rolling out the remaining GBUs into one of the existing Salesforce instances (Core or iCare) with minimal changes to existing processes. The GBUs being migrated will adapt to the processes of the selected Salesforce instance. For example, if Core CRM is retained, Specialty Polymers and Composites will need to reengineer their processes to align with Core CRM's existing framework, or vice versa. Once the rollout is complete, the other Salesforce instance, along with its associated add-ons and interfaces, will be decommissioned. Specific GBU needs will be accommodated only when a strong business case justifies deviation from the existing processes.
The advantage of this approach is: Only the GBU's in one of the instances will be impacted and the training will be executed only for the merged instance GBU's.
The key challenges would be on the daily activities and long freeze periods, due to the use of the same platform instead of a new instance in parallel, also if iCARe is merged with Core, the impacted GBU's are SpP and Composites with no significant cost benefit.
Option D: Maintain existing CRM solution in the current state, retaining current two CRM instances.
Under this option, existing separate CRM instances will continue to exist, including custom implementations, bespoke functions, and integrations with all other applications.
The key advantages are, this option allows for the preservation of existing investments in CRM technology and customizations, avoiding the need for significant changes or rework. It enables the continued use of current systems and processes while also allowing for future enhancements and optimizations within each instance.
The key challenge is that GBUs operating independently poses a significant challenge, as it hinders the realization of benefits in cost reduction, faster time-to-market, and increased innovation. This approach clashes with the primary goals of a cloud solution implementation, which are simplification and standardization and also the existing instances need to be integrated with to be One ERP backend instance.
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 current CRM instances | |
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| Alignment with "Simplification principle" |
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| Alignment with "Standardisation principle" |
|  While streamlining brings in standardization in individual instances, existence of two individual instances still poses collaboration challenges to teams handing Strategic Key Customers (Transversal). | Merged instance GBUs have to adapt to the retained instance's business processes, which are in most cases non-standard. | Retaining customizations and multiple instances means that standardization is not achieved, leading to inconsistent processes and data. |
| Maintenance Cost |  A single CRM instance reduces no of interfaces with backend and other cloud solutions, simplifies maintenance, reducing costs and minimizing the risk of integration and interface issues. | Maintenance costs will be higher than they would be with a single, unified CRM instance, due to the added complexity and duplicated efforts required to maintain multiple instances and integrations. | Merged CRM instance reduces number of interfaces and simplifies maintenance, reducing costs and minimizing the risk of integration and interface issues. | Maintaining multiple CRM instances and customizations creates a complex environment that leads to duplicated efforts, resulting in costs increasing by 20-30% |
| Upgrade & Release management | Release and upgrade management is significantly simplified with a single CRM instance, offering a single upgrade path, faster testing and deployment, reduced risk of version conflicts, and simpler rollback procedures, resulting in lower costs and resource requirements. | Multiple instances still presents challenges for release and upgrade management, including longer regression testing cycles and a higher risk of version conflicts, which may require more resources and budget to navigate. | Release and upgrade management will be simplified with a single CRM instance, however with the bespoke developments still existing in the merged instance, will still need significant efforts and skilled resources for performing regression tests for every release cycle. | Multiple instances, coupled with bespoke developments, present challenges with every release, requiring significant efforts and skilled resources for performing regression tests. Additionally, the currently used disparate specialized tools will continue to be used for release management. |
| User Adoption and Experience | Significant change management effort as part of moving to a new simple and standardized CRM implementation. |
| Training efforts for the merged instance will be higher as they have to adapt to the business process of an existing instance and more often these processes are customized for the GBU's specific requirements. | Multiple CRM instances provide tailored experiences for each business unit, higher user satisfaction and require little to no change management effort. |
| Integration and Data Management | A single CRM instance simplifies integration and data management, providing a unified database, consistent data formatting, and reduced data duplication, resulting in improved data quality and integrity. | Although processes are being streamlined, it's essential to reassess existing interfaces to determine if they can be eliminated or optimized. If not, the benefits of integration and data management with multiple instances will be limited. | The existing custom integration of one instance will be retained but will need to be adjusted for the merged GBUs. Aligning the GBUs with custom integrations and data will be challenging. | With over 100 existing interfaces, mostly built using WebMethods Integration technology, maintenance is an ongoing challenge, and regression testing takes longer during each release. |
| Collaboration | One single instance will enable day-to-day collaboration across GBUs on key accounts (transversal). SpP and Composite Materials share customers with GBUs currently on Core CRM. | Having two instances would lead to data fragmentation, hindering day-to-day collaboration across GBUs on key transversal accounts, and causing inefficiencies in managing shared customers between SpP, Composite Materials, and GBUs currently using Core CRM. | One single instance will enable day-to-day collaboration across GBUs on key accounts (transversal). SpP and Composite Materials share customers with GBUs currently on Core CRM. | Having two instances would lead to data fragmentation, hindering day-to-day collaboration across GBUs on key transversal accounts, and causing inefficiencies in managing shared customers between SpP, Composite Materials, and GBUs currently using Core CRM. |
| Data Migration | The existing custom data structures need to be streamlined, and standard data structures must be adopted. To achieve this, business involvement and effort are necessary to align with best practices and simplify data structures in preparation for One ERP integration. | There will be a limited impact, since the existing data structures will be retained and optimized, with only the custom structures being phased out. | Data migration required for the merged GBU's, the data structure of the retained GBU's will need to be adopted by the merged GBU's | No impact |
| Availability & Sponsorship | High GBUs availability and commitment required before and during greenfield project, to define new & common processes. Sponsorship to impose a common process to all GBUs will be key. | High GBUs availability required before and during streamline project, to define new & common processes. Also, gaining buy-in from stakeholders who may be attached to existing customizations and interfaces will be challenging. | High GBUs availability required before and during merge project, to define new & common processes. GBU's to adapt to the retained instance business processes. | No impact |
| Legal & Compliance | New greenfield instance to comply with CMMC L1 and all the GBU's would have to follow the specific legal & compliance guidelines. | Having 2 instances allow specific legal & compliance requirements (iCARe is currently more secure & protected with CMMC L1) | Retained instance to comply with CMMC L1 and all the GBU's would have to follow the specific legal & compliance guidelines. | Having 2 instances allow specific legal & compliance requirements (iCARe is currently more secure & protected with CMMC L1) |