Smarter field services, stronger customer connections, and greater team collaboration unlock new growth opportunities

Every year Inspecta ensures the safety and quality of thousands of assets and facilities across Northern Europe. From cranes and escalators to processing plants and new commercial buildings, Inspecta helps safeguard and develop its customers’ operations, sites and products. It inspects. It certifies. It trains. And it consults.

To achieve these ambitions, Inspecta needed to put greater emphasis on its customers. “We want to make things as easy as possible for our customers before, during, and after they engage with us,” explained Okkonen. “We needed a single platform to help improve efficiency and visibility across the business.”

The company evaluated around 10 different on-premise and cloud-based solutions before selecting Salesforce. As Ville Välikangas, Business Intelligence Manager at Inspecta, explained: “With Salesforce, you don’t just buy a CRM system; you buy a development platform and all the infrastructure behind it. We could see so many opportunities.”

Greater visibility and velocity

Transforming the company’s sales operation was the first priority. Every lead, every customer, and every contract is now logged in Sales Cloud, improving pipeline and performance visibility across all Inspecta locations in the Nordics. “Our field inspectors also act as sales reps with existing customers,” revealed Välikangas. “With Sales Cloud, they can record new opportunities in real time while at a customer’s site, which ensures our office-based sales teams have access to the same information.”

By integrating Sales Cloud with its website, Inspecta can also capture new customer prospects more easily. “Sustainable growth requires effective people and processes,” said Okkonen. “With Sales Cloud, we can react faster to new leads and customer needs.”

Inspecta has achieved similar visibility and velocity across its field services thanks to the Salesforce platform. The company’s engineers and inspectors meet with hundreds of customers every day. “We need to ensure information is constantly flowing,” explained Välikangas. “In the past, every business unit had their own system, which added complexity and time to our field services.”

Inspecta’s field personnel can retrieve their schedules, check customer assets, and close work orders from one central place and one mobile device. “If an inspector is certifying an elevator for a customer, they can now see if a fire alarm test is due the following month and combine the activities,” said Välikangas. “With Salesforce, our field services are more proactive and productive.”

If one of the team needs advice while working in the field, they can connect with their colleagues via the company’s new employee intranet. Inspecta launched the intranet, which is built on Chatter and Force.com, part of App Cloud, to its first users in May 2016. “Our business is becoming increasingly digital and global,” explained Okkonen. “We need to make it as easy as possible for our people to collaborate with each other and share knowledge.”

Making new connections

Inspecta wants to enable the same level of collaboration with its customers, and is investigating the potential of both apps and communities to help achieve its vision. “We want customers to be able to connect with us in new ways,” said Okkonen. “We don't want to just capture facts, we want to capture feedback and feelings too. Salesforce will help us deliver a superior customer experience by helping us understand our customers better.”

Achieving greater customer intimacy won’t just be reliant on feedback from people; it will be reliant on feedback from machines. The Internet of Things will revolutionise how the company inspects, tests, and manages customer assets. “We see a future where customer assets are continually sending us information. Instead of making an on-site visit, we might send a drone or use augmented reality to inspect an asset,” revealed Okkonen.

Embracing new opportunities and technologies will be key for Inspecta as it works towards its 2020 goals. Customer feedback, team collaboration, digitised services, and personnel development are among its targeted growth enablers.

“With Salesforce, we can accelerate cultural change across the business,” said Okkonen. “All our processes will be connected to the customer, which helps our people work more effectively and find information more easily.”