SQLI supports MAS Seeds' international business ambitions

An SAP C4C CRM solution for the 50 countries covered by Mas Seeds, a subsidiary of Maïsadour

MAS Seeds is a European leader in the selection and production of hybrid seeds for corn and oleaginous plants. Long established in Europe, the company is now growing its business in 50 countries and achieves 85% of its sales outside of France. In order to include business activities in the new markets it covers, SQLI is helping MAS Seeds scope and deploy a new CRM.
 

Changing business challenges

 

Based in south-western France, MAS Seeds has expanded the scope of its business activities outside of Europe, which also includes Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. Now active in Africa, South America and China, MAS Seeds was operating with a CRM system that had become obsolete, in both functional and technological terms.

Given its major international ambitions, MAS Seeds’ business challenges have changed. These fall into two main areas:

  • Increased support for sales teams, by providing them with a customer-centric vision and improved data visibility (orders, quotations, etc.), in order to make it easier to manage their activities. In addition, MAS Seeds wanted to provide a CRM solution that can handle multi-device and offline usage, as the sales teams are now equipped with tablets (iOS and Android) for their business trips.
  • Centralized management of business activities: have global visibility of the potential of all markets, as well as cross-cutting activities, enhance monitoring of sales teams’ actions and apply the action plan within the tool, while taking into account the cycle of seed farming operations.
 

The first step: scoping

 

SQLI’s Bordeaux-based team first carried out scoping in order to redefine the sales teams’ processes, based on MAS Seeds’ strategy in its various markets. By observing the day-to-day work of sales staff in the project’s pilot countries – France and Russia – it was possible to reproduce the sales and prospecting processes. The scoping phase also made it possible to align the IT and business teams with their respective needs, before arriving at the choice of a CRM solution shared by all sales and marketing teams. Following this first step, the SAP C4C solution was selected for the following reasons:
  • It offers a single technology environment on desktops and tablets
  • It covers the majority of needs
  • It integrates with the SAP ERP ecosystem used by the group Maïsadour, which meets the aim of transferring opportunities from the CRM to the group’s BW4/HANA reporting environment.
 

Multi-expertise synergy for deployment and training

 

In order to implement and deploy the solution, MAS Seeds turned to SQLI, which set up a coordinated organization based on local management by a team of Bordeaux-based experts, and integration carried out by SAP solution specialists from its Belgian agency.

Grégory Gonzalez, Solutions Director at Maïsadour, stated that: “The geographical proximity of SQLI’s agency in Bordeaux was a significant advantage for the scoping workshops. Its teams’ strength lies in their project management skills and SAP expertise. They demonstrated their ability to structure this wide-ranging project, both in functional and geographical terms.

The first version of the CRM solution was deployed in the pilot markets in January 2021 and has now been live in all of the subsidiaries since the end of July 2021. In parallel, SQLI worked with MAS Seeds’ team to prepare and provide training for the key users, who in turn are gradually training the 250 or so users in the other countries.

Grégory Gonzalez concludes:Maïsadour’s project team and SQLI’s teams aligned very effectively. Thanks to the setting up of strict governance, we were able to remain in full control of the project while making adjustments rapidly. We are already seeing a good level of usage and acceptance of the tool’s UX among initial users.”