Case Study: Kalpa Power uses Salesforce to optimise internal processes
- August 17, 2021
Here is a case study on how Salesforce supported Kalpa Power in ensuring that a project site in Gujarat faced minimum downtime, if hit by the ravaging Tauktae cyclone.
As Cyclone Tauktae raged into Gujarat, Rounak Muthiyan, Founder-Director, Kalpa Power Pvt. Ltd and his multi-location team had a pressing task at hand. They needed to ensure that a customer site in the state suffered from minimum downtime if hit. Access to data enabled them to ensure this within a mere five minutes.
Using 360° views of project status and inventory, they arranged for spares to be quickly brought in from Maharashtra as likely replacements for damaged parts. At the same time, OEMs were updated to maintain stocks for equipment that was within warranty.
“Electric power is a business that runs on reliability, which is also the motto at Kalpa.” says Muthiyan. At Kalpa Power, Salesforce technology enables the transparency and speed of decision-making, ensuring highest customer satisfaction at all times.
Kalpa Power was established in 2017 to provide reliable, environmentally friendly power to customers, mainly in commercial, industrial, and government sectors. With solar as its main technology, Kalpa Power has successfully expanded its pan-India footprint to parts of Africa, the Middle East and Bangladesh.
It is now looking at even more growth. India is targeting 450 GW of installed renewable energy by 2030. “Solar has emerged as the most economical source of power, and will fulfil the bulk of new requirements. This is an exciting time for us at Kalpa,” says Muthiyan.
“And the hard work we have put in over the last four years in building out the organisation will ensure that we deliver reliably at scale.”
The backbone of this readiness is the robust digital infrastructure set up by Rima Wandhekar, Director IT/ERP at Kalpa Power. Built on Salesforce, the system spans most of the organisation, and offers end-to-end process visibility to all stakeholders.
Investing in scalable automation
In the initial days, Kalpa Power used Excel sheets to track projects and payments. But as it scaled, it was clear that the team urgently needed a more advanced solution. One that would streamline and optimise all internal processes, and have rich reporting capabilities,
Crucially, 95 percent of Kalpa Power’s work happens at the customer location. So, the new solution would need to be mobile-enabled to drive speedy and flawless project delivery on site.
Wandhekar, having worked with Salesforce previously, was aware of the advantages it offered in terms of flexibility and being cloud-based. Economy of pricing vis-à-vis expensive ERP platforms, and Salesforce’s best-in-class reputation also convinced the team to go with Salesforce.
“The kind of customisation that I’ve seen with Salesforce, I wasn’t very sure would be possible with other tools. It is not just a sales tool – we could customise it to our specific needs, and ensure scalability of operations as we grew,” says Wandhekar.
Wandhekar, with her Salesforce expertise, decided to implement Salesforce and customise the solution for Kalpa Power herself.
Boosting efficiencies through digitisation
With Sales Cloud, Kalpa Power now efficiently manages entire lifecycles of 100 plus customer sites. Sales deal pipelines are on Salesforce. All internal processes such as billing and accounting, office administration, inventory and materials management, asset management, and warranty management are on Salesforce. The solution also helps the team manage solar installations and case resolution and service around these. Just-in-time algorithms have vastly improved project execution and service delivery at site.
“Salesforce is more than a CRM for us, it’s an ERP tool. We have been able to use its vast functionalities to optimise end-to-end processes,” says Muthiyan.
Support departments like HR are also now migrating their processes to Sales Cloud.
For each of these internal processes, Wandhekar and her team go to the employees who work within it and ask them about the key pain points to be addressed. Solving backwards from here, they roll out tailored modules. On-the-ground teams feel heard and snap up the new automation quickly.
“Rather than a top-down approach to software development, Salesforce gives us the flexibility to use existing processes as a starting point to move towards an ideal,” says Wandhekar. “This has seen phenomenal acceptance amongst our employees.”
Adoption rates are at about 75%. With the breaking down of silos, teams are able to work together seamlessly and efficiently. “Salesforce is a common tool that bridges all teams. From the field operator to the head of finance, everyone is working on the same platform and off the same information,” says Muthiyan. “This boost to transparency has positively impacted the overall health of the organisation.”
Ground-up automation delivers results
Eighty-five percent of Kalpa Power’s internal processes are now automated on Salesforce. And the company sees a clear business impact from its digital transformation.
Four years ago, the company was carrying an inventory of up to 20% of its topline. After digitisation, this dropped by a factor of six, and at 3% of topline, has boosted revenue growth by 3x.
Project efficiency has improved from 3x to 5x, reducing time spent on site. Intelligence built into the system prompts the field team to pick up the complete bundle of child parts needed with a parent part for a task. Consequently, on-site execution time has reduced from 100 to 70 days, boosting customer delight.
The journey to a bright future
Kalpa Power’s focus, so far, has been on boosting internal efficiencies. Confident of its robust processes and systems, the company now wants to step up efforts to reach a greater number of customers.
Muthiyan wants to build deeper account management processes within the team, by equipping salespeople with all the information they need at their fingertips. Another objective – marketing automation that ensures top-of-mind recall across customer decision-making timeframes that could last years.
Collaborating with the Salesforce Premier Success team, Wandhekar and her team are constantly looking at improving modules and boosting the health of the solution. With four years of data under their belt, reports and dashboards to further drive optimisation are on the anvil.
“With Salesforce as our backbone, we know that if we want to do something new, there will always be a way to do it,” sums up Muthiyan.
