Case Study

Savvion Helps 3Com Optimize Channel Revenue Processes

Streamlined System Speeds Approval of Special Price Quotes, Enhances Information Sharing, and Tightly Manages Use of Special Discounts by 3Com Distributors and Resellers

As a leading global networking provider, 3Com requires agility to sell its products effectively in markets worldwide. Key to closing sales is providing the best price possible for each deal—a complicated task when you’re a player in every time zone and time is of the essence. To meet this competitive requirement, 3Com used Savvion’s business process automation and management system to build a Web-based solution that streamlines and manages the approval of the special price quotes (SPQs) it offers to distributors and resellers.

“Special price quotes can make the difference between winning and losing deals, having a direct impact on 3Com’s bottom line,” explains Ari Bose, CIO at 3Com. “Using Savvion BusinessManager, we were able to quickly put a process in place that rapidly generates competitive SPQs to close more deals and increase our margins.”

Turning Days Into Hours
Before implementing its Savvion business process management solution, 3Com used Lotus Notes to handle its special price quotes. This process wasn’t ideal, as Lotus Notes required time to replicate and synchronize requests among databases. The system also wasn’t integrated with 3Com’s existing Siebel sales system or its SAP enterprise resource planning system. As a result, SPQ approvals could take up to four days—far too long to be responsive to last-minute price negotiations that can make the difference between winning or losing multi-million dollar deals.

Using the new solution developed with the Savvion system, SPQ processing can now take as little as two hours. Sales representatives enter requests in the Siebel system, which initiates a Savvion BusinessManager process. The process collects key sales data from Siebel and also collects contract terms for the given distributor or reseller from SAP. The automated SPQ process then routes the request for approval to various managers based on flexible, predefined business rules, with managers receiving notification of required action by e-mail on their desktop or mobile devices. Because the Savvion product integrates in real time with any Oracle database and provides online analytic tools, 3Com’s approving managers can leverage the SPQ system to calculate the business impact of the special pricing directly from Savvion forms and quickly determine the best quote possible.

Once an SPQ is approved, the SPQ process initiates the creation of a contract in SAP and immediately notifies the sales representative of the approval. The system also provides the sales representative with a link to 3Com’s e-Connect B2B online ordering system that can be shared with the distributor or reseller. This link improves information sharing and speeds ordering cycles by enabling 3Com partners to review contract details online, confirm product availability, review the amount of product ordered to date, and place the order using the approved special pricing.

Bottom-line Benefits
The Savvion BusinessManager system is providing 3Com with significant opportunities for increased revenue through improved SPQ visibility. 3Com now runs 70 percent of its orders through the system. Sales representatives are immediately notified of SPQ approvals, improving internal communications and enabling representatives to share SPQs with resellers and distributors more quickly. Channel customers also receive direct links to 3Com’s e-Connect site for more efficient ordering and are automatically notified of any existing SPQs whenever they log in to the B2B portal, fostering increased sales.

“Our SPQ system significantly cuts down the time between the initiation of an SPQ request and when a distributor or reseller can execute an order,” notes 3Com Information Management Director Kathleen O’Neill. “In fact, the only factor that delays approvals is the availability of the appropriate manager to process the request.”

The streamlined SPQ system is also resulting in significant time and cost savings. Staff productivity has risen, and the easy-to-manage system enabled 3Com to eliminate the need for a full-time Lotus Notes developer, providing an immediate savings of $140,000. The system also provides significant savings by preventing channel customers from over-ordering against an approved SPQ. The system automatically tracks orders placed in real time and blocks orders beyond the approved amount. This automated enforcement eliminates the need for 3Com to manage and enforce SPQ limits manually, reducing workloads and helping to maintain healthy customer relationships.

Other business benefits delivered by the SPQ system include the following:

Online business intelligence empowers managers to calculate margins based on different price points, enhancing SPQ decisions.
Real-time monitoring features enable 3Com employees to check the status of SPQs at any time.
Standardized SPQ procedures improve the quality of information entered into the Siebel sales system.
System integration provides access to real-time inventory data, enabling 3Com employees to see if a product included in an SPQ is available in the given region.
Data integration between the SPQ, SAP, and Siebel systems enables 3Com to run analytics across the three systems for more advanced reporting on operational effectiveness.
Online information sharing improves partner relations and speeds ordering.

In addition, two other BusinessManager-developed processes automatically enforce corporate policies that affect the SPQ process. One process ensures 3Com’s adherence to importing and exporting regulations by confirming that a customer qualification questionnaire has been completed for the given distributor or reseller. Another BusinessManager process reviews the product promotions currently being offered to the 3Com partner to prevent the approval of an SPQ at the same time.

Rapid Development of Innovative Solutions
Due to Savvion BusinessManager’s ease of use and powerful integration capabilities, 3Com was able to develop, integrate, test, and implement its new SPQ system in just three months. The development team included just one experienced SAP programmer and one Siebel expert.

“Savvion BusinessManager’s J2EE architecture made it very easy to integrate the new SPQ application with our existing SAP and Siebel systems because all of the components are XML-based,” O’Neill explains. “If we had used a different solution, the cost of deployment would have been much higher.”

In fact, when 3Com developed its first Savvion BusinessManager system—an automated content management system for publishing information efficiently across 3Com’s multitude of country-specific Web sites—it took O’Neill’s team just two days to learn how to create new automated processes. Now 3Com is planning to develop additional process solutions using Savvion BusinessManager.

“We are pleased with the results that 3Com, a company famous for delivering innovative solutions, has gained using our enterprise process platform,” adds John Koenigs, Savvion President and CEO. “We look forward to seeing the creative ways that 3Com will further leverage the power of Savvion BusinessManager to bring innovation to processes across their enterprise.”