Salesforce case study ยท Technology
Turning a Fragmented Sales Process into One Lead to Cash Flow
How a Salesforce architecture reset connected lead capture, quoting and order handoff into a single automated flow, removing manual re-entry between teams.
- Industry
- Technology
- Solutions
- Salesforce, Sales Cloud, CPQ
- Engagement
- Consulting, Implementation
The Challenge
Marketing, sales and finance each worked in their own tools with manual exports connecting the steps between them. Leads captured on the marketing site were exported to a spreadsheet, re-keyed into Salesforce by a sales operations analyst, and enriched by hand before a rep ever saw them, which meant a lead could sit for two or three days before any outreach happened at all.
Once a deal reached the quoting stage, the process got worse, not better. Sales reps built pricing in a shared spreadsheet template that lived outside Salesforce entirely, with discount approvals handled over email threads that had no connection to the opportunity record. By the time a deal closed, finance had no visibility into what had actually been agreed until a signed order document landed in their inbox, which meant revenue recognition and invoicing routinely started from scratch rather than from data that already existed somewhere in the process.
None of this was any single team's fault. Each tool had been chosen to solve a local problem at the time, and nobody owned the seams between them. But the cumulative effect was a pipeline nobody fully trusted, a quoting process that scaled by adding more manual checks rather than better structure, and a finance team perpetually reconstructing deal history after the fact.
Our Approach
Zealit began by mapping the actual path a deal took from first touch to signed order, not the idealized version in anyone's process documentation. That map made the re-entry points and approval bottlenecks visible in a way that made the redesign priorities obvious rather than a matter of opinion.
The rebuild centered on a single Salesforce data model spanning lead, opportunity, quote and order, so a record created at the top of the funnel carried forward without being recreated at each stage. Guided quoting replaced the spreadsheet template, with pricing rules and discount approval thresholds built directly into the flow so reps saw what they could approve themselves and what needed a manager, in the moment, instead of over email.
The last mile mattered as much as the redesign itself. Order data now flows to the finance system through a native integration the moment a deal closes, rather than through a document forwarded by hand, which meant finance's own process had to be revisited alongside sales' process rather than treated as someone else's problem to solve later.
Key decisions
- Built one canonical lead to cash object model instead of patching the existing fragmented structure with more automation.
- Put discount approval rules inside the quoting flow itself, not as a separate email-based sign-off step.
- Connected order data to finance through native integration rather than a scheduled export, so nothing depended on someone remembering to send a file.
- Involved revenue operations and finance in the design workshops from day one, not as reviewers of a finished design.
Results
Lead handling
Leads moved from capture to a qualified opportunity without a manual re-entry step.
Quote turnaround
Guided quoting and approval rules replaced ad hoc spreadsheet based pricing.
Pipeline accuracy
Sales leadership could trust pipeline reports without a manual data cleanup pass first.
Focus areas
- Single lead to cash flow
- Fewer manual handoffs
- Cleaner pipeline data
- Faster quote turnaround
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