Semiconductors power the modern world. Without them, we wouldn’t have cellphones, laptops, medical diagnostic equipment, cars, or airplanes. By supplying the world’s largest continuous source of semiconductors, Rochester Electronics is leading the charge in keeping the tools and conveniences we rely on buzzing.
As an authorized distributor and licensed manufacturer representing the world’s major semiconductor companies since 1981, Rochester has over 15 billion devices in its stock ready to ship and more than 12 billion die (individual pieces of silicon, which they package and test to provide the finished semiconductor products) available for ongoing production. The global nature of its business and the increasing complexity of being at the forefront of driving customer success require Rochester’s teams to work in lockstep.
The company’s leaders recognized the value teams would have if their tech stack was better integrated with their go-to tools and data, so they turned to Salesforce solutions. Employees say that using Slack with Salesforce has transformed Rochester Electronics’s sales operations and improved both its engagement with customers and its overall business processes.
“We’re buying tools from Salesforce that allow us to engage with our customers,” said Colin Strother, the Executive Vice President of Rochester Electronics. “Salesforce combined with Slack is a true pleasure to engage with, and it’s not just me who recognizes that.”
Energizing sales operations with Slack Sales Elevate
Daily tasks took longer to do before Rochester Electronics adopted Slack. The company’s Revenue Operations Manager, Alaina Bemister, said the sales team was hindered by administrative tasks, communication gaps, and manually pulling insights from Sales Cloud into other, siloed tools. Sales representatives needed a smoother way to collaborate on deals and act on opportunities. Leaders needed better visibility into real-time deal movement.
With Slack Sales Elevate, sales reps, managers, and leaders can easily stay updated on deal movements, team wins, and pipeline changes in real time — right from Slack. Sales Elevate reduces context switching because it integrates Sales Cloud with Slack to bring teams powerful, real-time Salesforce CRM insights directly into Slack, where workers spend most of their time.
Sales Elevate’s automatic alerts and personalized reminders help increase employee engagement and speed up customer response times. Sales reps have access to key metrics immediately, empowering them to build quotes and make informed decisions faster with cross-functional teams. And because Sales Elevate improves visibility from any device, leaders are better positioned to anticipate and act on opportunities.
“We wanted to show reps how sales territories are performing to create more partnership within the team and to help them meet their revenue goals together,” Bemister said. “Sales Elevate helps create that visibility.”
“Sales Elevate’s proactive deal notifications ensure that our team stays on top of important deal updates, helping us close deals faster and more efficiently.”
Simplifying selling on the go
Slack Sales Elevate offers the same experience on any mobile device, allowing teammates to manage CRM data in transit while staying connected to account teams. Sellers in the field can quickly add or update Salesforce opportunities after a meeting, log meeting notes and action items, and respond to messages in Slack channels dedicated to specific accounts.
Strother is always traveling. On a recent work trip to Brazil, he didn’t arrive at his hotel until after midnight and had to hit the road by 7 a.m. for his first meetings. Whether he was on a plane or on the road, Sales Elevate’s mobile capabilities helped him track pipeline opportunities closing and revenue year-to-date and quarter-to-date as the company ended its fiscal period so he could share the most up-to-date information with his colleagues and partners.
“I can view metrics from bookings to billings to on-time deliveries on my phone, and that helps me run a global business,” Strother said. “Having Slack Sales Elevate in my pocket has been a game changer.”
“With Sales Elevate, our sales reps can stay connected and updated on deal activity while on the move, which has significantly improved our responsiveness to customer needs.”
Speeding up order fulfillment with Slack Connect
Linda Monroe, the Vice President of Operations and Business Applications at Rochester Electronics, oversees back-office processes and systems support. Slack Connect, which extends channel-based messaging to everyone people work with outside their organization, allows her to communicate quickly with external Salesforce implementation partners to ensure timely and accurate issue resolution.
Rochester Electronics uses Slack Connect to work with support and implementation partners in and external channel that is used to share order summaries and relevant links, and answer inquiries in minutes. Monroe loves how the Salesforce for Slack integration allows her and her colleagues to link straight to order summaries in this channel. Teammates can reply in threads, triage issues, and troubleshoot together.
“Slack Connect makes it easy to quickly resolve issues,” Monroe said. “There’s a lot of knowledge transferring happening when everyone works together on a case.”
“Some tasks feel like stopping at a traffic light every few minutes of a journey. The journey shouldn’t take that long, but you get stuck at every red light. Slack helps us remove those obstacles that stop the flow of work.”
Electrifying the future of semiconductor sales with secure AI
Rochester Electronics is just starting to scratch the surface with Slack. Its leaders say they are looking forward to learning how to provide fast and personalized recommendations and insights to customers with Slack AI — a set of generative AI tools that use conversation data in Slack to create an intuitive and secure experience tailored to each organization.
Slack AI helps teams save time with thread summaries, channel recaps, and AI-powered search. These native features minimize time spent searching for information, allowing employees to focus on top priorities and accomplish much more in Slack.
Furthermore, with the combined power of Slack and Salesforce Customer 360, Rochester Electronics teams can collaborate effectively and streamline workflows built around CRM data to better support users.
“Slack combined with Salesforce provides an experience that is truly a pleasure to work with,” Strother said. “And providing an excellent experience for teammates is almost as important as the products themselves.”
