Hydra-Stop Optimizes Salesforce Conversions with Saggezza

Burr Ridge, Ill.-based Hydra-Stop provides insertion valves and other water control solutions for thousands of municipalities and contractors around the world. The valves can be inserted to stop water main leaks so repairs can be made without shutting down entire systems. The company sells to contractors, engineers, and municipalities like Miami, Charlotte, and New Orleans.

But as the 35-year-old company continued to grow, its legacy CRM platform was no longer performing as needed, according to Steve Roehrig, Hydra-Stop’s vice president of sales and marketing. “We were having a bad day with our existing CRM, and Salesforce happened to call us. They called right at the right time. We liked the platform, and we knew that it was for us.”

The big concern, however, was implementation, Roehrig adds. “We had been through three other implementations along the way through the years. We had two different CRMs and had to migrate over. And so the thought of the implementation was daunting to us.”

Last summer, the point of contact at Salesforce introduced Hydra-Stop to Saggezza, which was immediately recognized as the technology consultant and Salesforce implementation partner that would enable the company to deploy the new CRM platform.

“Normally these implementations take up quite a bit of time to go through,” Roehrig says. “We were very impressed with them and the questions they asked; they really wanted to understand what our needs were and what we were trying to accomplish with our CRM.”

In a second, deeper-dive call, Saggezza discussed plans to build out the implementation Hydra-Stop was seeking, Roehrig recalls. “We needed to be 100 percent comfortable with the partner we were working with, so that we knew that we could successfully accomplish this implementation within our deadline.”

Hydra-Stop decided to move forward in the late summer, with a completion date of Oct. 12.

Saggezza built out several custom objects—which it calls opportunity pathways—within Salesforce, as well as a pathway for leads and another for customers who buy equipment on an ongoing basis, Roehrig says.

Saggezza also built out a training page for installers to be certified, specifying for which products they received certification, and helped Hydra-Stop migrate data from the legacy CRM platform to Salesforce.

“Everything had to work seamlessly; we had a hard launch date,” Roehrig says. “There were multiple custom objects, multiple custom configurations, and integrations. It was just an amazing job. And along the way, their entire team was there to support us.”

The company has seen significant time savings in several areas since Saggezza completed the implementation. Integrating leads into the CRM system and forwarding them to the sales team used to take 3.5 hours per day; now it takes only two hours, a 42 percent decrease.

“We picked up 9.75 weeks of productivity right there.” Roehrig boasts.

The inside sales team, which presents about 80 proposals annually, was able to cut the proposal development time in half. Roehrig and his two inside sales representatives are saving an estimated 20 to 30 hours annually in aggregating sales information, developing custom reports, and building custom dashboards.

Ongoing support, via Hypercare, Saggezza’s signature post-implementation care offering, has also been invaluable, according to Roehrig.

Hydra-Stop plans to increase its work with Saggezza to develop more custom dashboards and reports to better determine true marketing ROI based on lead conversion and opportunity close rates. The latter is important from a customer retention standpoint because it is a detail that competitors can’t provide. Sales process optimization and marketing integration are other opportunities where Hydra-Stop will be seeking Saggezza’s expertise, Roehrig adds. 

The Payoff

Since engaging with Saggezza on a Salesforce implementation, Hydra-Stop has made the following improvements:

• reduced the time needed to integrate leads into the CRM system by 42 percent;
• cut proposal development time in half; and
• saved 20 to 30 hours annually in aggregating sales information, developing custom reports, and building custom dashboards.