They say that home is where the heart is. But getting into your dream home in the first place can be a wild ride.  

Building or even purchasing a home is considered so intense that it is frequently cited amongst life’s most stressful events. And little wonder when you consider that it’s not just complex, but also emotional. Purchasing a home is often the biggest purchase you’ll make in your lifetime.  

But how customers purchase anything these days is not like it used to be. Consumers are much better informed and demand higher expectations through the buying cycle than ever before. For a home builder, relying on outdated tools and techniques seriously limits growth.  

When we first met Rawson Group, they had big ideas about how they wanted customers to interact with their brands and services. But they had problematic, siloed legacy systems which made their work clunky and disjointed. They had a fragmented view of the customer, depending on who was accessing what records. Data was not connected, making it time consuming and difficult to draw insights or even produce reports. Fundamentally, their systems and processes were no longer aligned with their vision. And it was limiting their ability to scale. 

In a snapshot:

Salesforce multi-cloud implementation for 175 users 

Salesforce Products 

  • Salesforce Platform 
  • Marketing Cloud 
  • Sales Cloud 
  • Salesforce CPQ 
  • Service Cloud 
  • Experience Cloud 

Integrations

  • Site Core,
  • REA
  • Domain
  • SAO
  • On Site Companion
  • Sharepoint

ISV Solutions  

  • Natterbox, Conga Composer, Conga Grid, SharInPix and Docusign 

Timeframe

  • 9 Months

The Brief

Rawson Group were lacking the core infrastructure to be the connected, customer-centric business they wanted to be. They were looking for a platform that would allow them to scale over the long-term and connect all parts of their business for an outstanding dream home experience.  

Rawson Group wanted:

Our Approach 

After assessing their options, Rawson Group chose Salesforce as the platform to underpin their growth over the long term. Our implementation for Rawson Group focused on establishing the foundations for a Salesforce platform that would enable them to scale over the long-term, while ensuring they would get quick-wins to justify their investment. 

This included:  

  • establishing the Salesforce Platform, with a focus on improved reporting, stock management, customer 360 for one single view of the customer and a portal to improve communication with customers; 
  • mapping the sales processes for customer care (inbound lead management) and opportunity management in Sales Cloud (including quoting via Salesforce CPQ). Customer care included linking the telephony system to Salesforce using ISV Natterbox; 
  • replacing Hubspot with Marketing Cloud to manage the entire customer journey; and 
  • implementing core integrations to other systems, including Site Core, REA, Domain, SAO, On Site Companion, and Sharepoint.  

The project included the appointment of a Carnac consultant as Rawson Program Manager, reporting directly to the CEO of Rawson Group. The Rawson Program Manager was there to provide strategic direction and manage the entire delivery team from Carnac as well as the Rawson resources dedicated to the project.  

The Solution

After assessing their options, Rawson Group chose Salesforce as the platform to underpin their growth over the long term. Our implementation for Rawson Group focused on establishing the foundations for a Salesforce platform that would enable them to scale over the long-term, while ensuring they would get quick-wins to justify their investment. 

This included: 

  • establishing the Salesforce Platform, with a focus on improved reporting, stock management, customer 360 for one single view of the customer and a portal to improve communication with customers; 
  • mapping the sales processes for customer care (inbound lead management) and opportunity management in Sales Cloud (including quoting via Salesforce CPQ). Customer care included linking the telephony system to Salesforce using ISV Natterbox; 
  • replacing Hubspot with Marketing Cloud to manage the entire customer journey; and 
  • implementing core integrations to other systems, including Site Core, REA, Domain, SAO, On Site Companion, and Sharepoint.  

The project included the appointment of a Carnac consultant as Rawson Program Manager, reporting directly to the CEO of Rawson Group. The Rawson Program Manager was there to provide strategic direction and manage the entire delivery team from Carnac as well as the Rawson resources dedicated to the project.  

“It became a no-brainer for us to go down the Salesforce journey and it’s been brilliant. We’ve just had the biggest year in 5 years, and I think Salesforce has played a huge role in that outcome.” 

– Doug Phillips, Executive GM for Sales, Marketing and Product Development, Rawson Group 

The Results

All aspects of Rawson’s Salesforce implementation were completed on time and within budget. This was a remarkable result, especially since Sydney (Rawson Group’s head office location) went into lockdown due to COVID-19 for the last three months of the project.   

Since implementing Salesforce, Rawson Group has seen: 

  • An immediate reduction in time spent trying to source and analyse sales data. What previously took more than a day of work each week, is now available at the click of a button. Instead of wasting time on wrangling data, they can divert that energy to sales activity and acting on the data. The time-to-value was immediate. 
  • Doubling their previous year’s sales figure in the first year and achieving the biggest sales result in 5 years. Their biggest sales month occurred in the same month they went live with Salesforce.  
  • An enhanced ability to nurture 20,000+ leads and have greater accuracy with identifying sales-readiness, without increasing headcount 
  • Faster time-to-deposit acceptance, due to enhanced visibility of sales quoting activity.  
  • The stock management feature removes risks of selling a house and land package that is no longer available by removing it from advertising as soon as a deposit is received; and removing it from mid-stream sales processes. The number of “incorrectly received” deposit refunds has drastically reduced, and the customer experience has improved.  
  •  A reinvigorated workforce, that sees their employer invest in the tools that make their job easier.  

 

Rawson Group is a leading home building group operating through three brands: Rawson Homes, Rawson Communities and Thrive Homes. Starting their journey as a small business in 1978 in the Central West of NSW, Rawson Group has now grown to be one of NSW’s most reputable home builders, helping their customers make the dream homes a reality.