Facing the limitations of manual Excel processes and the challenge of creating impactful customer reports, proALPHA sought a transformation. Their adoption of Shark marked the beginning of a new era in business case development, streamlining their sales process and enabling a value-based selling approach that not only saved time but also significantly enhanced their customer engagement and sales outcomes.
For more than three decades, proALPHA has been the digital sparring partner for small and medium-sized businesses at 65 locations around the globe. For more than 9,700 customers – from the manufacturing industry, wholesale, and other sectors – the powerful ERP core and add-on solutions from proALPHA and its partners form the digital backbone of their entire value chain, ensuring intelligent interconnection and efficient control of all business-critical systems and core processes. In increasingly competitive markets, the optimal integration of up and downstream processes is a crucial factor, and the software solutions of the proALPHA Group and its 290 partners support customers in precisely the areas that are of central relevance to their business. From data analysis and artificial intelligence to supplier relationship management, quality, energy, production, or human capital management, the about 2,200 people who work for proALPHA have a very clear mission and commitment: to develop a digital solution platform that gives SMBs the competitive edge they need to master the constant process of transformation and change.
Before using Shark, proALPHA used manual processes (mainly Excel) to create business cases. However, in their experience it led to calculations being error-prone, there was a lack of versioning, transparency and scalability, plus valuable sales time was being wasted on manual maintenance.
In addition to issues with Excel, proALPHA found that creating professional, customer-ready reports was an issue. The manual effort and skills to create a visually appealing business case from Excel to PowerPoint was a challenge to an already time-consuming process, plus it added an increased risk of additional manual errors. As a result, it was difficult to convey the value of their solutions to their customers with an engaging and meaningful business case presentation.
proALPHA have always had a strong focus on value selling, however their current processes were not sustainable or meeting their current requirements. It was crucial to make the added value that proALPHA systems create for their customers transparent and to provide proof of this, so they looked for a new solution.
Shark Finesse provided us with software and implementation expertise for the business cases, which was crucial to us. We integrated the business case as an elementary part of the sales cycle and now draw valuable market data from it to better understand the customer.
<div class="blockquote-author">Peter Weißmann, Vice President Sales New Names North at proALPHA.</div>
In 2021 proALPHA started their journey with Shark Finesse by using our ‘off the shelf’ version of Shark which meant they could get started straight away. They attended initial Shark training to learn value-based selling theory and practical use of the Shark platform. Following this initial period, proALPHA established their own unique business case processes which included setting up their own "task force", the proALPHA Value Team, which designed and implemented the business case process and were always available to assist on customer business cases. This knowledge is still passed on to new employees today.
proALPHA took the time required to ensure that the Shark platform was seamlessly integrated into their sales process, this additional effort and time is considered a key strength to them today and has been positively received by customers. proALPHA now have an established and proven methodology, however they are continuously building on their approach to ensure they are getting the most out of the Shark platform for both themselves and their customers.
Along with the Value Team who centrally manage all business cases, the main user focus is now on the pre-sales team as well as new and existing customer sales. However, all teams that are associated with sales have access to the business case.
Before embedding Shark into their sales processes, a lack of resources and time often led to delays and difficulties when updating the business case, which meant they were only able to use business cases for selective customers / opportunities. With the Shark platform, every customer now receives their individual business case, which massively contributes to proALPHA’s overall sales conversation. With Shark Finesse, they have found a comprehensive solution that has optimised the proALPHA processes and improved their entire sales approach.
There are quite a few. But the ability to work together on the business case, regardless of whether the colleague is based in Munich or Hamburg, to access all the knowledge together is really impressive; and of course, the reporting system.
Well, the Business Case Builder generates turnover and revenue. That's basically recommendation enough. But in short, we didn't have to reinvent the wheel, we were able to build on perfect processes in value selling with a structured process for orientation as a guide. In the end, we benefit from enormous time savings when generating added value for the sales base. The investment made by using Shark Finesse in the area of sales has already paid off in terms of success. In addition, since using Shark Finesse, we have an extensive, established knowledge base around value selling.
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