CASE STUDY
SUCCESS WITH WORLD
WATER WORKS
Apttus X-Author improves business processes across multiple
departments by saving valuable time and eliminating
unnecessary manual steps.
Customer Overview
World Water Works (WWW) is a leading global manufacturer of
advanced process and waste water treatment technologies
dedicated to yielding clean water, recovering energy and achieving
other resource recovery. WWW’s mission is to revitalize resources
through transforming wastewater into valuable products through
innovative technologies. Learn more at
www.worldwaterworks.com
“Time and accuracy are
critical to us as even small
errors in the design
process can snowball into
larger and irreversible
errors down the line. With
X-Author for Excel, our
business users can use
The Business Challenge
their existing complex
World Water Works relied heavily on Microsoft Excel to perform
complex mathematical modeling to design a treatment system
and select the best product configuration based upon many
variables associated with a customer’s water flow and impurity
loading. After manually entering the baseline data, Excel
calculations provide the correct WWW design given the customer’s
criteria. This completed sheet would often reside on one
employee’s computer, not available to the team involved in the
project. Furthermore, the resulting output data then had to be
manually entered into Salesforce to continue the sales process.
spreadsheets to update
This process requires double entry which leads to data inaccuracy
issues, inefficiencies, and delayed proposals. Administrators were
required to make modifications on four different template Excel
files whenever improvements were needed for future projects
(i.e., more conservative designs, changes in calculations, addition
of new products to the spreadsheet templates), compounding the
inefficiency and inaccuracy problems.
Salesforce directly,
increasing our accuracy
and eliminating all the
manual work we had to
do.”
John Tessandori, Process
Engineer, World Water Works
The company required a solution that would not only address and
resolve these issues, but be equipped for long-term scalability.
Solution
World Water Works saw an immediate impact with the roll out of
Apttus X-Author. Users now simply use their existing Excel
spreadsheets to update Salesforce directly, resulting in more
APTTUS Corporation | apttus.com | US: (650) 445-7700 | EMEA: +44 (0)1753 272 007
CASE STUDY
accurate and timely data and removing the need for double entry
or other manual work. The application also provided the ability to
leverage Excel’s code and SF price books, so that pricing is now
automatically generated for complex systems. This has added
tremendous efficiencies. Meanwhile, administrators are now
saving time by combining all four sheets and future sheets (as
the company continues to scale) into one X-Author application,
which uses various macros, without worrying about all users
having to “Enable all macros” in Excel Trust Center Settings.
Allowing users to work in what they are already familiar with –
Microsoft Excel – also increased the usage of Salesforce and
allowed for changes and updates to Salesforce to occur in real
time. The tool was also in line with WWW’s ‘clicks-not-code’
mantra and has helped administrators to seamlessly integrate
other Excel and Salesforce processes and build additional
applications to scale with their business.
“Apttus X-Author for Excel
helps us skip the extra
step of data entry,
reducing the proposal
generation time by >50%”
John Graf,
BPA Director, World Water
Works
Key features:
•
The Salesforce end user experience now includes Excel. All
departments and users can use Salesforce through Excel to
collect information, and calculate and update data.
•
Excel serves as the CRM interface, with all data, controls, and
permissions residing centrally in Salesforce.
•
Users do not need to be in the browser to use Salesforce. They
can work in a familiar and easy-to-use tool where training and
implementation costs are minimized.
Benefits
World Water Works has now minimized all the manual effort and data inaccuracy through using X-Author.
It has allowed sales representatives to properly utilize the design sheets to get accurate customer data
and proposals into Salesforce while improving proposal generation time from hours to minutes. Users
quickly realized the positive impact of X-Author and WWW has created many more X-Author applications
to increase productivity and eliminate the issues related to using Excel as a stand-alone tool.
Key benefits:
•
Reduced proposal generation time by >50%
•
Improved data accuracy and eliminated manual processes
•
Easy administration allowing edits and changes without complex coding
•
Administrative changes easily adjusted in 20 minutes in all instances for all users
•
Users secure the most up-to-date information on all accounts, regardless of version
•
Increased Salesforce usage, driving earlier decision-making and reporting
•
Customers are serviced more efficiently
APTTUS Corporation | apttus.com | US: (650) 445-7700 | EMEA: +44 (0)1753 272 007