Background & Challenge
Meteor Education, a Bain Capital Double Impact portfolio company, designs, furnishes, installs, and measures instructionally aligned environments and CTE labs that deliver real impact for students and educators. Their CRM ecosystem had grown fragmented, with separate systems (SugarCRM and a bespoke ERM/CRM system) managing customer, design, quote, bid, and project data.
A prior partner’s proposed MDM (Master Data Management) solution was misaligned—optimized for product data instead of customer records—and no significant build progress had been achieved.
As departments grew more interdependent, inefficiencies compounded. Users were required to manually enter data between systems causing inaccurate data, incomplete visibility across sales and logistics, and quoting workflows limited by legacy app constraints.
The request was clear: consolidate CRMs, support the complex quoting experience, and integrate deeply with NetSuite and field operations—all while maintaining flexibility for growth.
Solution & Implementation
Elevate took over CRM leadership mid-stream to realign strategy and execution, ensuring progress despite IT team turnover. The implementation emphasized departmental collaboration, iterative delivery, and change management advocacy through executive sponsorship.
1. Salesforce CRM & Department Consolidation
All 12 departments’ workflows were analyzed and re-engineered into a cohesive Salesforce framework. Custom interfaces and data models unified disparate processes—from bidding and design through sourcing, procurement, and field service—while ensuring security and ease of use.
2. NetSuite Integration via RESTlets
Custom RESTlets connected Salesforce with NetSuite to meet specific business needs, including order management and financial synchronization. A specialized Order Split process was developed to address NetSuite’s sales order line item limitations, ensuring accurate, scalable data handling.
3. Project Management & Field Service Enablement
Due to NetSuite’s limited PM module support, all project manager functionality was migrated into Salesforce, providing native task tracking, fulfillment, and reporting. Scope expanded mid-build to include Field Service operations, ensuring end-to-end visibility from quoting through delivery.
4. Data Governance & Migration
- CRM consolidation: Sugar and Cosmos migrated into one unified Salesforce instance.
- Custom quote migration scripts: Seamlessly transferred legacy and in-progress quotes.
- Master Data Management realignment: MDM repositioned for customer data, not product data, ensuring integrity and long-term usability.
5. Change Management & Iterative Development
Frequent demos and steering committee presentations kept stakeholders aligned. Custom user interfaces—particularly on top of CPQ—were built to address the unique needs of project coordinators.
Elevate supported the change management team throughout the process, reinforcing adoption through hands-on training and communication.
Results & Outcomes
Meteor Education now operates on a single, integrated CRM platform supporting nearly every facet of the business —from customer acquisition to service fulfillment.
“The entire Elevate team did a wonderful job with the entire implementation. They made it scalable, easy to use, and accommodated all of the needs and asks set forth for the build, including customizations that only those with deep development experience could achieve to make the lives of our users easier.”