From Silos to Synergy: TPG’s Journey to Salesforce Mastery with Brysa
Our client, The Probst Group (TPG), headquartered in Wisconsin, USA, specialises in wastewater treatment solutions and serves clients primarily in the food and beverage industry. As a mid-market enterprise with approximately 60 employees, TPG’s workforce is predominantly composed of engineers dedicated to managing project work. TPG was struggling with challenges like entering data in multiple locations, constantly going back and forth with the accounts team to raise and bill POs, and planning each project as if it were new. They soon realised the need to change their operations and this is when they got in touch with Brysa. How Brysa helped TPG realise the full potential of their tech stack? First, we audited their existing tech stack, workflows, and organisation structure. Using this research, we came up with two buckets – “As is” and “To be”. “As is” bucket: TPG’s present challenges Repetitive and manual work which took time away from big-ticket items for engineers. Absence of an organised project library to plan for future work. Underutilised tech stack. The Probst Group used Salesforce but in a very limited capacity. For instance, they used it just to store leads, contacts and opportunities. It was never a true Single Source of Truth that it is capable of. The tech used by TPG was: Salesforce – for storing leads and contacts, and for tracking opportunity status Quickbooks – for accounting and financial planning BillQuick – for project planning Excel/Google Sheets – to run data analytics “To be” bucket: Where we wanted to take TPG to Introduce better project management and accounting platforms into TPG’s tech stack. Avoid duplication of effort by ensuring that these new tools are native to Salesforce. Design templates for all projects which can then be used for all future project and resource planning. Automate expense management to iron out internal communication between teams. To help TPG achieve the “To be” status, we interlinked Salesforce with associate tools like Mission Control and Accounting Seed to get the maximum out of the software. We ensured that the data transferred to these new softwares was complete and with zero errors. Mission Control: A project management platform that helped TPG allocate resources based on their skills and availability. Accounting Seed: To improve the financial health of TPG and to automate the billing processes. Engineers updated where the project was and the accounting team raised POs based on the reaching landmarks. The adoption of Mission Control and Accounting Seed allowed for better ‘cradle to grave’ management of the project pipeline. Additionally, Salesforce became the Single Source of Truth (SSOT) where all teams could enter and retrieve information accurately. The end result was information became instantly accessible across all major functions: Sales & Marketing: to store leads/contacts on Engineers: to chart project progress Management: to plan budget and resources by going through similar, previous projects Legal: to refer to the repository to draft proposal contracts Accounting and Finance: to automatically raise POs as engineering achieved milestones We therefore, set up SSOT and expertly linked Project Management with Accounting, enhancing project planning accuracy and maximising Salesforce ROI. Image 1: The Probst Group’s Project Templates Image 2: TPG’s Project dashboard to get an overview of any project Image 3: Automated Gantt Chart to track project progress Image 4: Auto Assignment Wizard for better resource allocation About Brysa We are the UK’s leading Salesforce consultant, known for our expertise in delivering tailored Salesforce solutions that drive business transformation. With a deep understanding of Salesforce’s capabilities, we specialise in optimising Salesforce to enhance operational efficiency and maximise return on investment. We offer a comprehensive range of services, including strategic consulting, implementation, and ongoing support, ensuring that you leverage Salesforce to its full potential. To know more, contact us now.
Click-based opportunity to accounting: eliminating gaps between sales performance and financial accountability
Our client runs a sales-focused organisation where the sales team are incentivised (through commissions) based on the closed sales achieved on a monthly basis. It’s a fast moving environment with aggressive targets and a results-oriented culture turning over around £1m pounds every month. The finance team of the organisation were three in number and faced downstream challenges of ensuring the sale numbers recorded by the sales team are indeed the right numbers hitting the books. The FinOps team used Sage50 and unsuccessfully tried Sage200 to streamline the finance processes. Among other challenges they faced, the most important one concerning the sales team was the time it took to complete the month-end accounting. This lengthy latency – which the finance team couldn’t help though they were working very hard – left all parties frustrated. The senior management had to wait to get a pulse of the business performance, the sales team weren’t sure about their commissions and the finance team were stressed. The finance director and the controller consulted us on the situation and after assessing the “AS IS” state of the org suggested the finance team to consider bringing the accounting system inside Salesforce establishing a single-source-of-truth. The change was scary since the team had to move away from the comfort of the known and into the realms of unknown. However, the leadership knew that all change is uncomfortable and implementation of a finance system within Salesforce will lead to long-term growth and will relieve short-term pain points for the organisation. We considered FinancialForce, Accounting Seed and Sage Intacct (which had integrations to Salesforce) as potential solutions. FinancialForce was ruled out on price and Sage Intacct on the grounds of the need of API integration to Salesforce (which is another potential point of failure) and the client selected Accounting Seed. Image 1: Accounting Seed system natively within the Salesforce org The implementation process involved reorganising the client General Ledger Accounts and slightly restructuring their Accounting Processes. It also involved extensive work on data migration which we helped the client with by managing the templatised ETL process. There were a few gaps in the reporting functionalities that the client had gotten habituated to. However, since Salesforce offers flexible build capabilities we build custom reporting functionalities within the system for the FinOps team to get their reports through clicks. Many rounds of build demos and adoption training were provided to the client with Brysa’s team of certified chartered accountants who were experts in Accounting Seed. The system changes that the sales team faced were negligible. They continued on following their sales opportunity processes withing Salesforce as normal. Once the implementation was completed, the FinOps team ran the finance and accounting processes in the outgoing Sage and incoming Accounting Seed systems in parallel for a few weeks. This was challenging since it involved the team stretching beyond their BAU – however, the excitement and the promise of a more streamlined system meant the team morale was high and they learned the new system quickly. The sales team were also advised on the impending finance changes. Though their processes changed little they were looking forward to quicker validations of their numbers from the finance team. Image 2: Ability to create Invoice from an Opportunity by one click The adoption of the system in the production org to run the day-to-day finance lead to immediate efficiencies. The FinOps team no longer had to get extracts of sales information. They could see everything in the same system. They also needn’t recreate account records in the finance system which saved them time. The team estimated that more than 30% of their time doing repetitive, avoidable tasks were saved because of the new system implementation. Image 3: Real-time P&L statement made possible by single-source-of-truth A simple illustration of this efficiency involves the process of raising an invoice. Where the team used to do multiple keystrokes in the past, they can now simple click a button in the opportunity record (invisible to the sales team) to raise a fully templatised, customised invoice and email it to their client finance contact from within the system. Not only that, the finance team could also now post the entries into the correct ledgers with clicks that made it possible to get accurate, real-time P&L and customer statements. This led to a collaborative approach between the sales and finance teams ensuring the sales team’s data input increased in accuracy and in return the finance team were able to provide validated numbers back to the team quicker. “Going into any IT project can be daunting, but Brysa ensured we felt in control every step of the way. We not only enjoyed working with the team, but came away from the experience having learnt a lot.”
