BearingPoint plans to scale its Salesforce consulting practice
As the demand for consulting services to boost customer relationship management continues to rise, BearingPoint is scaling its Salesforce practice. Having already doubled its team to over 200 specialists during the last three years, the firm now aims to deliver the same level of growth by 2025.
Salesforce is a cloud-based software company, providing customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development. As the digitisation of the global economy continues, this is a line of work which is becoming crucial to firms – particularly as they look to ride out the current economic uncertainty. CRM solutions can help keep track of contacts within a business, to allow both sales and marketing teams to personalise communication to maintain customer loyalty, or win new clients.
Getting the most from a CRM often requires external expertise, though – and that is driving demand for consulting firms specialising in services relating to top CRM providers. As it looks to take advantage of this, BearingPoint has been rapidly ramping up its Salesforce footprint.
An independent management and technology consultancy, BearingPoint deepened its Salesforce expertise in the UK in April 2023, with the purchase of Smplicity. The London-based consultancy with around 20 consultants boosted BearingPoint’s Salesforce platform to more than 200 dedicated staff.
BearingPoint had already achieved Platinum Consulting Partner status with Salesforce, with over 140 Salesforce-related services projects under its belt in support of more than 50 clients. These include one of Europe’s largest logistics organisations. In the weeks since the Smplicity deal, however, the firm added clients including BDO, Adecco and Citi, and has subsequently become emboldened to grow its Salesforce presence even further.
Markus Franke, the head of the firm’s practice, recently said in an interview with Pierre Audoin Consultants, that BearingPoint had doubled its volume of Salesforce-related project bookings during the last three years. Between now and 2025 – a shorter period of time – it intends to double its project bookings again. To do this, Franke confirmed that the company is looking to build on its core European hubs of the DACH region, France and Benelux, while ramping up its presence in its growth markets, such as the Netherlands, UK, Ireland and the Nordic region.
360 service
The firm will also continue to expand its Salesforce offering beyond implementation. While BearingPoint helps clients with applying Salesforce cloud solutions, based on client-need and the latest research, the firm also designs its own Salesforce projects in line with anticipated market and technology trends, helping future-proof the investments of its customers. This has produced a number of sample accelerators to bring excellence to client Salesforce processes, including 360-degree insights from internal and external sources to help automate core processes; real-time customer service and campaign controls; and a Service2Sales offering to use enhanced customer service as starting point for cross and upselling initiatives.
BearingPoint has previously published several case-studies highlighting how this service is supporting clients. One example saw BMW France gain a 360-degree view of ever-changing customer preferences, enhancing sales efficiency by leveraging Salesforce CRM solutions through BearingPoint. BearingPoint’s work helped BMW France to gain full visibility of all customer interactions regardless of their type, with information such as test drives, configurations, and GDPR consent centralised in one place linked directly to that customer. This solution is now being used by almost 120 dealerships and more than 2,500 BMW employees, with benefits for BMW France, dealerships, and the end customer.
Another case saw a leading luxury cosmetic brand take the next step to establish a strong foundation in client insights and personalised interactions via its CRM application. BearingPoint supported the company in turning the CRM vision into reality, by implementing a global CRM database to lay the basis for advanced omnichannel capabilities. The changes helped the client engage in even more individualised one-to-one communication on digital channels and connect the digital with the physical contact in the stores.
Pointing to this kind of work, Franke suggested to Pierre Audioin Consultants that while Salesforce has built a major platform of business in most industry sectors in Europe – including a growing presence in the public sector – there is still plenty of headroom for growth. As Salesforce continues to extend its reach deeper into its clients’ core business activities, partners such as BearingPoint have an important role to play in helping them get a 360-degree picture of operations, synchronise changes, and realise the true potential of the technology.
