‘Collaboration with Eisenfelt has ensured that we got our forecast more organised’

Lucent Technologies, now part of Alcatel-Lucent, is a global supplier of solutions that enable service providers, enterprises and governments to deliver communications for voice, data and video to to their customers. Alcatel-Lucent is located in 130 countries. “Eisenfelt has coached us in several commercial issues including improvement of management information and the implementation of CRM,” says Arie van Leusden, Executive Vice President of Lucent Technologies until 2001.

More insight into the business

“Lucent is a publicly listed company and therefore strongly financially oriented. In the MT we found that our management information needed to be improved. In particular, our forecast of revenue was insufficiently ordered. The working companies used different definitions when preparing sales forecasts. This was a source of confusion and resulted in unnecessary discussions.”
“Eisenfelt had already supported Lucent on several commercial issues. We then asked them to coach us in the organisational implementation of CRM and help with improving our management information.”

“We wanted to achieve a number of things. First, we wanted our management information to be more accurate. This would improve decision quality which was necessary to assume as MT. This issue was closely connected with the use of consistent definitions. Secondly, we wanted to have management information over more areas. Not only an accurate prediction of turnover, but also a distribution of sales across our product divisions. Thirdly, we wanted to be able to analyse the differences between earlier and later forecasts of the sales organisation and between actual and predicted sales. This provided us more insight into how the business developed in both a positive and negative sense.”

Customer relationship management

“Lucent Technologies used the Siebel Sales application. But the original implementation was based primarily on technique. Which button does what? What beautiful things can you do with it? What we really needed, remained underexposed. It was not only about functionality, but in particular about implementing and applying uniform principles in its use. For a proper implementation of CRM the translation to account management is of crucial importance, touching aspects such as culture and behaviour. Implementing a tool is not a challenge. But, how do you ensure that it will actually work? ‘A fool with a tool is still a fool’.”

“Eisenfelt had already supported Lucent in several commercial issues, including bringing the entire sales force in the Nordics onto a higher level. What was truly appealing to us was the fact that all employees of Eisenfelt have an international commercial background. We found this important in selecting a partner who could help us in this matter.”

Strategic choices, well established

“Working with Eisenfelt has ensured that our forecast is in a better shape.  Under the leadership of Eisenfelt we have elaborated definitions and business rules in a uniform manner over the organisation. We got more insight into the details behind the numbers so we could better support the sales organisation and manage it.”

“An Eisenfelt consultant has been an active member of our MT for a period of six months. In particular to explain the analysis of our revenue development and progress of strategic international opportunities to us. Based on this we made important choices that ensured that we have actually won these projects.”