Uson is a leak testing company that designs and manufactures leak testing systems. The company’s systems and devices are used in the automotive, EV battery, industrial, medical, and packaging industries. Uson also offers calibration services, leak tester selection and training, leak tester repair and service, and custom leak testing solutions. Uson was a long-time Salesforce customer.

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The Problems

The Quoting problem: The Uson sales process utilizedSalesforce CPQ, but the implementation had been overly complicated with no one sure how to support pricebook changes, exchange rates, and changes to process flows.

The Manufacturers Rep problem: Uson relies on a large group of manufacuturers reps to support its products. Manufacturer reps were pulling info out of a spreadsheet that was often inaccurate.

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‍The Groundwork

Before tackling the Problems, both Everpeak and Uson knew that the foundation of their Salesforce Sales Cloud instance did not fully support nor match their sales process.

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We diagramed the sales process visually, and that made it relatively easy to identify where there were gaps. These gaps included:

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• Missing fields
• Improper pipeline stages
• Stale pipeline data

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Changing fields and stages was not particularly difficult, but the pipeline data required validation fields to ensure these areas of the pipeline were always updated by reps. It then required the Everpeak staff augmentation team to analyze past contracts and reports and manually update historical opportunities.

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Process should drive the technology - not the other way around. Optimizations like thee are commonly needed and have huge return on investment. With this foundation in place, we moved towards the Solutions.

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Solution 1: Cash Price Quote (CPQ)

A Cash Price Quote (CPQ) solution requires thoughtfulness, discipline and making difficult choices. Without an expert guiding, it’s rare that this happens. Uson was no exception.

Their price books change quarterly, and when implemented, their CPQ setup had no process contemplated for gathering feedback on pricing, adjusting, and updating. It also did not account for currency exchange rate fluctuations. Once we collected the internal feedback and made a recommendation on process, Everpeak was able to offer high-level architectural and process changes for the Uson team to react to. The process was:

• Analyze - understand the current CPQ setup
• Modify - recommend proposed changes; some which were related to data and technical development - some that was related to process
• Iterate - work together modify the recommendations based off stakeholder feedback and new ideas
• Deploy - change the CPQ software, data and associated processes to support the Uson team

With this process in place, it was relatively easy to ensure that Salesforce CPQ was configured in a way that reduced complexity, documented the process, and ultimately worked for the client.

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Solution 2: Manufacturers Reps Portal

We then tackled the secondary problem around manufacturer’s reps. For several years, Uson knew that the shared spreadsheet they were using was inadequate for thier needs. Uson needed a robust partner portal that would allow them to upload information and for reps to access that information in real-time. Ideally, the reps could also have logins such that reps saw information and collateral personalized to their company, pricing and products.

Salesforce Experience Cloud met all of their needs, and it had the advantage of easily integrating with their data and current Sales Cloud and CPQ setup. It allowed for user authentication of the manufacturers reps, and it gave Uson the ability to easily update and change information in the portal. The new Uson partner portal seamlessly communicated with Salesforce and allow for easy updates.

Manufacturers reps are the lifeblood of Uson, and Experience Cloud gave them a portal to get real-time accurate information including collateral tailored for their specific organization.

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In Conclusion

Uson has been growing, and in early 2024, the company was acquired by Indicor. This project consisted of three areas crucial to many B2B companies:

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• Sales process & CRM
• Cash to quote systems
• Partner portals

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By refining and scaling these critical functions, Uson was able to see short-term success as well as set a foundation for long-term growth.

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