Lapland Hotels & Safaris started with a clean slate with Salesforce

Lapland Hotels & Safaris started a long-term cooperation with Loikka Solutions for a comprehensive Salesforce re-launch.

If the system does not support day-to-day work, it won’t be used

With the expansion of the hotel chain, Lapland Hotels & Safaris saw the need to structure its sales activities. We have been using a Salesforce license package since 2013,” says Thumas Miilumäki, CRM Operations & Development Manager at Lapland Hotels & Safaris.

Originally, the system was intended to be an end-to-end solution that would guide sales, customer relationship management, marketing and day-to-day customer service. In practice, however, Salesforce remained disconnected from the company’s day-to-day processes and users did not feel that it provided significant benefits or added value. In everyday life, the use of Salesforce may even have been perceived as an additional workload and therefore remained limited.

Loikka Solutions is well aware of the problem. Loikka’s Matti Sartonen says that, unfortunately, digital systems are often developed and sold in an engineering-oriented way, which does not necessarily understand the needs of the company and its business.

“If Salesforce is unpleasant or difficult to use, or if you feel that it is not useful but rather an extra workload, then it is not built right,” says Sartonen.

Salesforce got a new opportunity

At the beginning of 2024, Lapland Hotels & Safaris started to actively explore different system options and IT partners. Salesforce was considered for retirement as it had not served the needs of the organisation. There was also a problem of overlap, as Hotel Haiko Kartano was part of the hotel chain and had a completely different customer management system in place.

Miilumäki says that there were complex discussions on the subject. Both the company’s management and the consulting partners initially thought that it might be more sensible to start from scratch and introduce a completely new system, which would not be associated with preconceived ideas or negative experiences in the minds of the staff. Surprisingly, however, it turned out that the attitudes towards Salesforce within the organisation were largely positive and users saw potential in the system if it was more firmly embedded in their own processes.

Surprisingly, however, it turned out that attitudes towards Salesforce in the organisation were largely positive, and users saw potential in the system.

In the end, Salesforce proved to be both the most suitable and cost-effective solution for the company’s needs. Loikka Solutions was chosen as the partner.

“Loikka has a good understanding of our history with Salesforce and the pain points that have been involved. It was also important for us to find a partner that understands the services business and is willing to listen to us and learn the core of our business and our values, rather than just going system or technology first.”

The first step was to create a tool and processes for the B2B sales team

The first phase of the project will focus on standardising and automating the processes of the corporate sales team. The result will be a reduction in manual work and therefore the risk of errors.

“It has already been tried once, to put a system with comprehensive functions in place and expect it to intuitively go about its business. Now we decided to do things differently and look more for solutions in those areas of everyday work where agility, efficiency and aspects that facilitate and support the work could be introduced.”

They wanted a fresh start with the system. Lapland Hotels & Safari abandoned the data collected by Salesforce over the last 10 years and started collecting data with new definitions and a forward-looking approach.

There is a lot of talk these days about the use of artificial intelligence, and the quality of data is an essential part of that,” Sartonen points out. If a system is considered cumbersome or redundant, it will not be used, and the data will not be comprehensive or up-to-date. So a system that does not support everyday processes well also causes problems from a data quality point of view. It easily leads to a negative spiral and is poison for the organisation’s AI plans.

According to Miilumäki, in discussions with the teams, it has been seen as helpful to get rid of old data. Getting rid of old data does not mean wasting it: it is possible to access the data that is archived now at a later date, should the need arise. However, it is more cost-effective not to have to clean up old data before starting a project.

Towards a more holistic customer understanding

In cooperation with Loika, a development pipeline was designed for Lapland Hotels & Safaris, with several development actions lined up after the first phase. Miilumäki praises Loikka’s proactive and process-oriented approach.

“We wanted to have active weekly communication so that we could develop and correct operations quickly if necessary. It is important for us that we don’t just wait for something to happen by a single deadline. With Loika, active thinking is always present. They help us challenge our own processes while we develop the system.”

With Loika, active thinking is always present. They help us challenge our own processes while we develop the system.

For Lapland Hotels & Safaris, customer satisfaction is the most important factor in all development. The aim is to gather experience and customer data from the first phase and to plan the next steps based on that.

“Our vision is to get to know our customers even better and to provide a more seamless and holistic service.”

Initially, Sales Cloud will be introduced from the Salesforce products, but Miilumäki says that in the future, there may also be a need for Service Cloud, which will help to build a more comprehensive set of customer data with less manual work. The aim is to provide customers with the best service. That’s where Loika can be of great help. “It’s good to be able to ask questions, consult and challenge your own thinking, and that’s where a partner like Loika with a broad repertoire and business insight is a great asset. One of the cornerstones of this acquisition was that we were looking for a partner who would not only solve this very specific problem for us in the first phase, but would be willing to work with us to develop CRM operations and