How Persistent helped De Dietrich revolutionise its global sales management with Salesforce

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The Client

De Dietrich Process Systems (DDPS) is a leading supplier of complete process equipment solutions to pharmaceutical and chemical giants such as Bayer, GSK and Sanofi. De Dietrich currently employs approx. 1,400 people across international operations in the EU, US, China, and India.

The Challenge

De Dietrich’s management of global bids and projects needed to be more visible and coherent. Each subsidiary was using its own reporting system, making it difficult to get an accurate overview of the entire group’s commercial activities, conducted by more than 1,000 people across four continents.

This fragmentation of tools hampered the group’s ability to track ongoing opportunities effectively. This tracking is particularly crucial in the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors, where sales cycles are long (ranging from 8 months to 2 years). De Dietrich needed more comprehensive oversight of all pre-signature offers beyond estimates based on Excel files and meetings.

The company also wanted to refine its understanding of bid volume by customer and country — a key performance indicator for assessing market dynamism and anticipating downturns. The global implementation of a common tool was essential to centralizing information, optimizing long-term project follow-up, and maintaining solid customer relations throughout the complex approval processes.

The Solution

To meet De Dietrich’s needs, Persistent implemented Salesforce Core, Sales Cloud and Pardot. Deployment began in France and Germany, the group’s two biggest markets, accounting for around 75% of global business. This first phase provided a transparent, centralized overview of current offerings and projects.The project team’s approach was consistently global, aiming to achieve a single, harmonized system of group processes across all entities.

As each country has its own tools and internal processes, the integration was also customized to meet certain local specificities. For example, protecting the integrity of Germany’s existing advanced CRM system required special attention to avoid degrading functionality. Germany, Switzerland, and the French sites in Alsace and Burgundy were connected first. Audits are underway for subsidiaries in Benelux, Dijon, and Hungary.

The Outcome

Persistent’s implementation of Salesforce has significantly improved the client’s operations and business outcomes.

• Centralized sales and marketing processes provide greater visibility and operational efficiency.
• The sales staff greatly appreciate the user-friendly solution with comprehensive dashboards, as they can now easily create crucial project budget offers at the start of projects.
• Pardot enables precise market segmentation (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plant chemistry, etc.) and better targeting of marketing campaigns. The result? Increased effectiveness of marketing communications: an 18% e-mail open rate and an interaction rate of 10-12%.

Collectively, these results have enabled De Dietrich to optimize its operations and strengthen customer relations.

Next Steps

De Dietrich has planned a strategic Salesforce expansion in several phases. By the end of 2024, the company will integrate Salesforce into four recently acquired Heinkel Group companies. In parallel, from late 2024 until 2025, deployment will extend to the American hubs (USA, Brazil) and Asian hubs (India, Singapore, China). This phased approach aims to strengthen De Dietrich’s global presence and standardize processes worldwide.

Salesforce presented Persistent as the most suitable provider for this project. The Persistent team stood out for its commercial approach, demonstrating remarkable internal cohesion and a strong relationship with Salesforce.

Laurent Drummer, Group Marketing Manager, De Dietrich Process Systems