Even before the boom of e-commerce, shoppers loved getting rewards for their purchases— whether it be a discount, a freebie, or a complimentary service. This affinity for incentives is something that ShopBack, established in 2014, has embraced within the digital landscape.

With a presence in various markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and Germany, ShopBack recorded over US$1.5 billion in sales year-to-date in 2020. This accomplishment, achieved within a span of just six years, reflects the company’s growth since its inception.

However, managing over 4,000 merchants across these markets is no walk in the park, noted Choon Soon Gan, Head of Business Process at ShopBack.

“The need for a solution that could provide a unified view across these diverse markets became crucial. ShopBack sought a comprehensive platform that could consolidate its merchant interactions, streamline sales processes, and automate workflows to ensure efficient operations and enhance customer experiences,” Gan said.

Overcoming complexity

In order to deliver the best experience for its customers, ShopBack had to navigate thousands of separate deals with its roster of merchants, manage multiple affiliate programs, push out promotions to consumer-facing apps in 11 countries, and maintain over 20 million accounts.

The problem was that the company’s legacy system did not provide a full picture of how the deal with the merchant was negotiated. Worse still, there is no historical view, metrics attribution, or performance measurement.

To complicate matters, ShopBack’s unique business model meant that a solution had to be tailored to its needs.

“While we engage in pitching and negotiation processes like any other sales organisation, our fundamental approach is distinct. Unlike fixed-price or subscription-based models, our success is dependent on the success of our merchant partners. We charge a small fee per transaction that we drive, which sets us apart from typical sales structures,” Gan revealed.

After studying several vendors, ShopBack decided to go with Salesforce.

“Salesforce emerged as a suitable choice to address these challenges by offering the necessary capabilities to manage fragmented processes and facilitate cross-country operations,” he recalled.

ShopBack’s Singapore team had already been using Salesforce’s Sales Cloud. However, as per Gan, the platform was not being utilised to its full potential.

“Due to the nature of our business model, we faced challenges in fully leveraging all of Salesforce’s capabilities within its core suite, such as Sales Cloud itself. However, Salesforce provides a flexible platform that allows us to extend beyond Sales Cloud,” the ShopBack executive continued.

Immediately, Salesforce’s engineering team integrated Sales Cloud with a new, custom-built CMS to ensure all contract data was automatically pushed from Sales Cloud into the CMS platform for distribution to the consumer-facing apps.

After that, the operations and engineering teams launched the new integrated system per country within a year.

Reaping the rewards

Shortly after implementing Salesforce’s solutions, ShopBack is said to have enhanced its user experience, achieved significant business value, and improved the efficiency of its sales process through end-to-end integration.

“The implementation of Salesforce, coupled with CMS integration, has resulted in a remarkable increase in productivity, ranging from 40% to 60%. This substantial improvement has not only enhanced our sales operations but has also allowed us to provide a better experience to our users. With Salesforce’s capabilities, one sales ops agent can now effectively support four sales reps, doubling our capacity to handle deals and deliver exceptional service,” Gan remarked.

Moreover, deals can also be cloned in Sales Cloud. By taking a similar existing contract and using it as a template to create a new contract, it became much quicker to set up a deal.

Deal tracking through Sales Cloud gave ShopBack much more visibility into merchant contracts, which can number in the thousands each year for any given country.

“Utilising Salesforce’s Sales Cloud data structure, we underwent a digital transformation that accelerated our time to market. By refining and automating processes, we were able to introduce an existing product in a new market within minutes, reducing over 90% of the time it would have traditionally taken. This improvement in efficiency has had a noticeable effect on our business outcomes, allowing us to adapt and respond to market opportunities,” Gan said.

Future-proof

Moving forward, ShopBack plans to further explore how Salesforce’s features can be tailored to its specific needs. A key part of this process will involve analysing the effectiveness of different sales strategies in each country where it operates.

ShopBack’s in-house development team is now handling all future Salesforce integrations, with the company employing a specialised Salesforce architect.

As ShopBack evaluates the features of Salesforce’s offerings, the company is working to understand the core design principles to align existing capabilities with its specific needs.

“By studying Salesforce’s established products and drawing from the experiences of large-scale implementations in other companies, we aim to tailor our Salesforce setup to suit our particular business requirements. This approach enables us to scale our operations efficiently,” Gan concluded.”