Broadcom manages soaring customer growth with Oracle Cloud

After spending $30 billion acquiring other companies, Broadcom was not only much bigger, but it also had a new business model that was overwhelming its customer relationship management process. It previously relied on a few big customers for revenue. Now, the company had many thousands of customers of all sizes. Broadcom needed new applications to handle customer relationship management (CRM) and configure, price, quote (CPQ), as it could no longer rely on manual customer tracking processes. And it needed that software fast.

Broadcom was originally a semiconductor provider. A series of acquisitions combined the company’s business with Brocade Communications’ storage and networking; Symantec’s enterprise security business; and CA Technologies’ enterprise software and services. The combined company provides semiconductors, storage, wired and wireless networking, data center components, data center servers and storage, factory automation, power generation, network operations and security software, and more.

Prior to the acquisition, CA had used Salesforce, but Broadcom was looking for software that would do a better job integrating with its back-end systems.

The company was staring down a seven-month deadline to deploy a new CRM system, or it would have to extend licensing of the legacy Salesforce system.

Broadcom initially considered a company-wide deployment of Salesforce in addition to extending its SteelBrick CPQ license. It also considered migrating to Microsoft. But Broadcom’s back-end systems were Oracle E-Business Suite, and the company recognized that Oracle had stronger integration with the back end systems, so Broadcom selected Oracle Sales, Oracle CPQ, and Oracle DataFox Data Management.

Broadcom delivered Oracle Sales and Oracle Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) on time to eight countries, with more than 700 users, without interrupting the sales process. It integrated more than 20 applications and migrated 30,000 contracts and 200,000 customers. Once live on Oracle Sales and CPQ, Broadcom automatically generated more than 200,000 sales renewals.

The Oracle software delivers a unified view of the customer, spanning back office and front office. Using cloud-based applications simplifies the IT architecture, reduces complexity and ultimately lowers cost. Oracle Sales and Oracle CPQ support sales in South America and India, which are new areas for Broadcom, with local currency conversions.

Before implementing Oracle Sales, Broadcom relied on manual calculations for sales compensation, which led to inaccuracies, additional overhead expenses, and high sales staff turnover. The Oracle Sales transition reduced that churn, which had hit as high as 40%. The company now has increased flexibility to adjust quotas, territory, and incentive plans while providing sales representatives with insights into their pipelines and goals. Salespeople were freed to do what they do best: Selling.

Broadcom deployed Oracle in six months, before its Salesforce contract expired—proof that even a complex, global business can easily move from Salesforce to Oracle Sales and Oracle CPQ in a short time.

Also, the company continues to innovate with Oracle DataFox Data Management. After acquiring Symantec, Broadcom was given just 90 days post acquisition to be operational, needing to create sales territories for 350 new reps virtually overnight. With Oracle DataFox, Broadcom replaced Dun & Bradstreet and is going to be able to standardize data post acquisition to drive account prioritization and predicative analytics to power a unified sales strategy.

In the early stages, Oracle DataFox has successfully enriched 91% of accounts, quickly increased industry fill rates across Symantec core and non-core customers by 75%, and enriched all helpful firmographic and signal data, adding additional value across sales and reporting teams.