18 June 2007

Capscan OnDemand For Salesforce.com Adds Value To E4B’s Prospect And Customer Database For More Effective Sales And Marketing Strategies

Capscan, a leading supplier of international address management solutions and data integrity services, today announced that the business electricity supplier to UK SMEs, Electricity 4 Business, is using Capscan OnDemand for Salesforce.com to validate address data the moment it is entered into the database. The implementation ensures E4B builds a quality prospect and customer database, through verification and enhancement of business information.

Prospect data is captured and entered into Salesforce.com by E4B from multiple channels including field teams, telemarketing agents and the corporate website, joining 380,000 records in the database. Salesforce.com integrates directly with E4B’s Internet-based POS (Point of Sale) system used by field agents, the Energy Retail Suite billing system and the website (with Salesforce.com sending leads straight to the telemarketing team).

E4B previously used QAS software to validate addresses prior to installing Salesforce.com but found it did not integrate with the new system, as Sales and Marketing Director at E4B, Graham Paul explains, “We selected Capscan OnDemand for Salesforce.com, as it was the only solution on the market that met our stringent specifications. Most importantly, it was designed specifically for use within Salesforce.com, so we knew that installation would be simple and quick.”

E4B also required the ability to enhance data with detailed commercial information as it is validated, to add value to the database and assist targeting, especially for field teams. As Capscan OnDemand for Salesforce.com is priced based upon what the company actually validates, it is more cost-efficient than investing in a full enterprise application designed for more frequent use, as well as requiring licenses for each of the 120 users of Salesforce.com.

Capscan OnDemand enhances E4B’s records with commercial data as they are validated to add considerable value to the quality and usability of the data held in E4B’s database. The commercial data contained in Capscan OnDemand includes Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, telephone and fax numbers. SIC codes are used to identify and categorise types of industry and business in the UK and Europe, remaining an essential reference tool in the analysis, targeting and formulation of marketing strategy, particularly for business-to-business organisations such as E4B.

“We use the commercial data sets from Capscan OnDemand to enhance the prospect records in order to perform customer profiling,” says Paul. “This indicates which segments we are better off targeting than others, or which is more likely to have bad debt or higher average sales values, so we know where to focus our direct marketing activity.”

Managing Director of Capscan, Terry Hiles adds, “Capscan OnDemand ensures that E4B builds a quality database which will reduce postal errors such as wrongly addressed bills, add value to the commercial data and strongly backs up an effective marketing strategy.”

Capscan OnDemand for Salesforce.com enables E4B’s sales teams to enter either a postcode or partial business address and return the full correct address in real-time. In this way a complete address can be captured with the minimum number of keystrokes. By comparing records to the 27 million addresses in Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF), Capscan OnDemand ensures that E4B’s customer and prospect database within Salesforce.com is only populated with accurate and up-to-date business address information.