116 years after its founding, Renson is in the midst of a digital transformation. The company resolutely chooses the future and moves away from a mainframe with proprietary solutions in favor of SaaS. A Salesforce implementation should make the company future-proof.
The West Flemish company Renson is undergoing a significant digital transformation. The entire digital system for customer relations is being overhauled, with Salesforce taking its place. According to Maxime Bernaert, Chief Digital Officer at the family business, this was a well-considered decision. ‘Renson has branches in Belgium but also in the US, Italy, and the UK, and sales departments in Australia and Shanghai. With such a footprint, you need systems that support your ambitions.’
Such a system is no longer the AS400 mainframe, although it has served well. The mainframe ran a proprietary CRM and ERP system. In 2021, Renson already migrated away from that self-built ERP system towards a SAP implementation. In this next transformation phase, it’s the turn of the CRM environment.
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‘We didn’t want to move away from our previous CRM because it was custom-made,’ Bernaert emphasizes. ‘However, we had five important arguments for looking for a new solution, each elaborated into a concrete business case.’ In the search for the right CRM, Bernaert had a Passat in mind: solid, without too many unnecessary luxuries. Eventually, the choice fell on what he describes as the Rolls Royce of CRM systems, and for well-thought-out reasons.
1. Handling Leads
Renson is confronted with different types of leads: both private individuals and professional parties are customers of the solutions the company offers in the fields of ventilation, sun protection, outdoor living, facade cladding, and heat pumps. However, the company sells exclusively indirectly, through partners. ‘There was a loss in the chain with the old system,’ Bernaert knows.
There was loss in the chain with the old system
Maxime Bernaert, Chief Digital Officer Renson
‘Leads were not automatically assigned or directly followed up. Consumers expect a quote within 24 hours, but it usually took longer than that before an opportunity was assigned to a partner and concretely followed up. The old CRM system contained all the information, but actions were not automatically linked to it.’
With the choice for Salesforce’s CRM, that turnaround time changes enormously. ‘What used to take several days now happens in real-time. Leads immediately end up in the right place and are followed up.’
2. Increasing Efficiency
With the new CRM, Renson wants to increase internal efficiency. Bernaert: ‘Our salespeople on the road had to combine administration and sales. Typically, they prepared for the week on Monday, made appointments Tuesday through Thursday, and Friday was for paperwork. The implementation of a user-friendly tool reduces the time for preparation and post-processing.’
‘If all our Renson salespeople together save a few hours here and there thanks to Salesforce, this should allow them to talk more with customers and prospects, and lose less time on administration. ‘This way, they get more out of their existing customer contacts and can invest extra time in new ones,’ Bernaert knows.
3. Burning Platform
Bernaert doesn’t want to say anything bad about the existing CRM system, but does indicate that a switch was inevitable. ‘The system was custom-made, but the people who know it inside and out are approaching retirement. In fact, we were faced with a typical legacy story, where our CRM was a burning platform.’
With an eye on the future, Renson had to make a decision. The current approach with existing people and the old system was hurtling towards the final stop at high speed.
4. Partner Portal
Bernaert and Renson had some very specific requirements during their search for a new CRM system. The most important: the existence of a partner portal. ‘That was a more strategic choice,’ Bernaert explains.
‘Our partners need to be able to collaborate with us as smoothly as possible. For this, we want a platform where we can manage quotes, leads, and contracts, offer e-learning, monitor performance, and distribute marketing budgets.’
The need for such a platform was the deciding factor in choosing Salesforce. User-friendliness, simple development, and guaranteed support were a must: Renson absolutely didn’t want a new development project for a custom portal, only to potentially have to migrate again in the future. Bernaert: “Other parties also had good CRM solutions, but only Salesforce could offer a drag-and-drop partner portal.”
5. Plugging Leaks
The fifth pillar for the CRM project is more general. “Plug the leaks,” says Bernaert. “We want to eliminate losses on quotes, maintain an overview of where potential efficiency leaks are, and be able to report KPIs.”
With Salesforce, Renson opts for a central solution, where data also converge and are correlated. Silos disappear from the architecture, allowing data to be unlocked and giving the company an overview of what’s happening, where, and how.
A Tailored Solution
As mentioned, Renson’s choice fell on Salesforce, partly thanks to the partner portal. However, a broader vision was at play. “We had a clear basic principle,” Bernaert explains. “In the first phase, we looked for a system that best met all of Renson’s needs. We wanted to identify the best possible solution for us and went through a very intense Request for Proposal (RFP) procedure with a specification of over a hundred pages.”
After choosing the most suitable system, we are now going for a full best practices implementation of that system.
Maxime Bernaert, Chief Digital Officer Renson
Bernaert and his team dedicated nine months to the selection procedure. Salesforce’s Sales and Marketing Cloud, with all its connected clouds and solutions, emerged as the winner. “After the selection, we completely reversed our approach,” says Bernaert. “After choosing the most suitable system, we are now going for a full best practices implementation of that system.” Renson doesn’t want to evolve back to an overly customized system, and will therefore adjust internal processes to align with Salesforce.
Phased Rollout
Renson is currently in the midst of rolling out Salesforce. “We’re starting with the implementation of the marketing and sales cloud and the partner portal, beginning with our simplest business unit that deals with Outdoor solutions. Once we’re done with that, 85 percent of the CRM will already be set up.”
“The Indoor department is our largest business, but it operates on a project basis,” Bernaert continues. “That inevitably requires some customization of the CRM to suit that way of working. That’s logical: no CRM solution can meet the requirements with specific stakeholders, the long lead times, and the associated sub-projects as standard.” For this, Renson will start from the relatively standard implementation for the Outdoor department, and taking into account best practices as much as possible, complete the rest of the system with a minimum of customization where necessary.
“Once that’s all done, we’ll look at service and field service. Salesforce also offers attractive possibilities there with its Service Cloud, but for that, everything else needs to be in order first.”
Smooth Implementation
Bernaert finds that the implementation and migration are going smoothly. For the project, Renson is partnering with Delaware, which provides five Salesforce experts. They work together with five people from Renson. “It’s noteworthy that Salesforce is also engaged,” Bernaert remarks. “The people from Salesforce are at the table on a quarterly basis. They don’t behave like just a commercial party, but really look at the content with us.”
The rollout of Salesforce has been underway since the beginning of this year. The focus is on realizing the first business case within the Outdoor department. “The biggest risk of a CRM implementation is that the business case ultimately isn’t realized,” Bernaert knows. “So we’re starting with that right away.”
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By the end of this year, the Outdoor department, along with the USA department, should be working on the Salesforce CRM. Indoor will follow in mid-2026, and then the major part will be done.
No Migration Woes
Although Renson wants to migrate from a legacy system to a modern SaaS solution, the old system isn’t working against them. Bernaert: “We can perfectly migrate data from our existing solution and import it into Salesforce. We do need to clean up our legacy a bit. That’s a separate track that’s starting now.”
The previous choice of SAP as an ERP partner also works to the advantage of the current project. “Salesforce has a lot of experience in collaboration with SAP. Many of their implementations are with this ERP partner.”
Not a Rolls Royce, or is it?
Bernaert describes Salesforce as the Rolls Royce of CRM systems. “And that has played a negative role for a long time,” he adds. “Renson is a down-to-earth West Flemish company. We don’t want a Rolls Royce, we want the Passat. Eventually, we looked at what we wanted. We stripped down the Rolls Royce towards the Passat version, tailored to what we want, and can upgrade later.
And what about AI?
With the Salesforce rollout, Bernaert is looking to the future, and also to AI. “It is our intention to take steps in AI with Einstein, but we’re not going to do AI just because everyone is doing it,” says Bernaert. “We will first automate traditionally, based on rules and processes. In the future, we do want to evolve further, for example by having AI recognize patterns and score leads.”
Renson is also looking at AI within the service aspect, even though the Service rollout is at the back of the implementation agenda. “There, for example, we want to use AI to bring forward answers from our knowledge base.”
Renson’s plans are clear in any case. The company wants to face the future with a capable CRM that immediately provides the foundation for AI workloads. However, the core of the story revolves around simplicity and efficiency: customers and partners must be followed up quickly, and salespeople should not lose too much time on old systems.
The choice for Salesforce is the choice for a system that aligns most closely with these basic requirements. Whether the rest of the Rolls Royce functionality is worth it, Renson can evaluate later.