Success Story: Slipstream, Inc.
Lighting the Way to Efficiency
About the Client
Slipstream is a nonprofit organization on a mission to create, test, deliver, and scale energy efficiency solutions to move us all toward a clean energy economy. Public policies and rebate programs for clean energy incentives are frequently changing, and Slipstream’s Retail Lighting team helps retailers, manufacturers, and utility companies navigate and align with these shifts. Slipstream’s work in this sector keeps retailers on the cutting edge of clean energy solutions and makes sure that efficient switches stay affordable to customers. Monitoring current pricing for hundreds of lighting products across dozens of retailers each year is a monumental effort, and moving to a reliable, action-oriented CRM was key for scaling the team’s impact.
About the Challenge
In order to proactively track contracts, product issues, and upcoming retailer visits, Slipstream’s Retail Lighting team had to overcome the challenges of its current outdated and unsupported CRM and move into a system created with accessibility and transparency at the core.
“Canvas Cloud’s level of expertise and willingness to ask questions made us all think a little harder about the future of our processes, not just our immediate needs.”
Complex architecture, inconsistent naming conventions, and user-unfriendly interfaces created major barriers to staff and field reps’ ability to view and update real time data in their legacy database system. Regular server downtime made system access unreliable outside of the main office, forcing staff to complete hours of manual data entry every month. Key insights from data were obscured and unactionable, regularly requiring a developer to build necessary reports. For team members in the field at retail locations, lack of system access and an unreliable Outlook integration made taking notes by hand the only available option. When field reps needed to photograph product issues onsite, they had to upload the photo to SharePoint, meaning that program managers had to monitor and maintain a wholly separate database in addition to the legacy CRM.
Slipstream was already using Salesforce Sales Cloud across its Education, Business Development, and Marketing departments to monitor and scale their programs, and saw the potential saved time and increased efficiency from switching to a cloud-based system with an easy-to-navigate user interface.
Who and What Saved the Day
Enter Canvas Cloud - a Salesforce consulting partner specializing in both technology and business process who is known for going the extra mile to achieve success for their clients. The Retail Lighting team knew they needed a partner with a proven track record and deep understanding of business analysis to co-create a system that would be an asset, not a hurdle. During discovery conversations, the team appreciated that Canvas Cloud expressed genuine curiosity about their whole business model, asking questions throughout the project and providing tailored recommendations to build a system that met the team’s specific needs.
“Canvas Cloud understood our pain points and made sure to get our buy-in at each step for our new system. It was a collaborative process.”
After identifying that usability would be paramount for the new system, Canvas Cloud spent significant time getting to know the Retail Lighting team’s processes, both those internally and in the field. Canvas Cloud created a clear process map that allowed them to pare down the original database architecture, renaming objects and fields for clarity.
Canvas Cloud started by building two apps within Salesforce so that both program managers and field reps have easy access to records and key automations. Each page layout is designed to provide staff with accessibility to the data they need everyday. To make records even more actionable, Canvas Cloud leveraged the AppExchange solution Grids by RavenApps to give field reps the ability to log product issues and price verifications in bulk while visiting retailers.
Once the foundation was laid, Canvas Cloud created several flow automations to replace the most labor-intensive processes for the team. Staff can now use a screen flow wizard to make updates to pricing information in bulk, replacing the need to individually update SKUs for each contract’s products. That’s a lot of time saved! The automations aren’t just for program managers - field reps have their own screen flow to report verification issues on the fly, even providing an upload option to attach photos directly in Salesforce. Instead of using three separate systems for reporting issues, field reps can now use a single, mobile-friendly system from start to finish.
Ultimate Outcome
Only months later, the Retail Lighting team has already seen massive improvements in both staff understanding and use of the system. Staff now feel empowered by the technology they use everyday. For field reps, reliable access to Salesforce on-the-go has enabled them to be more proactive in identifying and reporting product issues during site visits. By surfacing those product verification issues in real-time with reports, list views, and customized homepages, Slipstream has been able to address over 75% more issues than with the previous system. The Retail Lighting team attributes this change not only to the improved user experience and system access in Salesforce, but also to the quality of partnership provided by Canvas Cloud.
“Working with Canvas Cloud is working with a true collaborator. They’re looking out for Slipstream’s future success - not just the success of this project.”
