Boost Customer Experience: Etex Achieves 360-Degree View with Salesforce

A 360-degree customer view is a single profile that brings together every customer interaction — sales activity, orders, service cases, and marketing engagement — so teams can act on the same information. For global organisations, it reduces data silos, improves service consistency, and enables more personalised experiences across channels and regions.

Customer experience is rarely held back by one team’s effort. It’s held back by fragmented information.

In large organisations, customer data tends to live in multiple places — different CRMs, spreadsheets, inboxes, local systems, and regional processes that evolved over time. The result is familiar: sales can’t see service history, service can’t see open opportunities, and leadership can’t reliably answer a simple question like “What’s the true health of this account?”

That was the challenge facing Etex, a global construction materials manufacturer operating across 34 countries, with more than 2,000 employees needing a consistent view of the customer.

Working with Deloitte, Etex implemented a Salesforce-powered approach designed to give teams a shared, 360-degree view of customer relationships — helping them move from disconnected touchpoints to joined-up, predictable experience.

Why a 360-degree customer view matters now

The term can sound like a buzzword, but in practice it’s one of the most useful outcomes a CRM programme can deliver.

A 360-degree view helps organisations:

• Reduce time wasted on rework and handovers (because teams stop chasing context across systems)

• Improve service consistency (because customers don’t have to repeat themselves)

• Protect margin (because order, service, and account data supports better decisions)

• Increase customer confidence (because responses are faster and more relevant)

For organisations operating across multiple regions, the stakes are higher. Every country or business unit that runs its own processes creates a new silo — and those silos compound over time.

Etex’s challenge: customer data spread across 34 countries

Etex’s operating model created a familiar issue for global manufacturers: valuable customer information was distributed across teams and geographies.

That fragmentation affects day-to-day execution:

• A salesperson might not see recent service issues.

• A support agent might not see order history or contract details.

• Marketing engagement might not connect cleanly to pipeline and retention.

When teams don’t share a common view of the customer, organisations tend to compensate with manual workarounds — and customer experience becomes inconsistent by default.

The approach: Deloitte Cloud4M, built on Salesforce

Etex partnered with Deloitte to deploy Cloud4M, a Salesforce-powered solution designed to help manufacturing organisations connect customer, sales, service, and product data into a single view.

Rather than treating CRM as “a sales tool”, the programme focused on the full customer lifecycle — from lead generation through ordering and service, and into long-term account growth.

At a high level, Cloud4M is designed to:

• create a single customer profile accessible across functions

• automate key steps in the customer lifecycle

• support data-driven insights for account and service teams

The outcome Etex targeted was simple: give people the context they need, at the moment they need it.

What “360-degree view” actually looks like in practice

For most organisations, a 360-degree view isn’t one screen or one dashboard. It’s a set of joined-up capabilities that make work easier.

A practical 360-degree view usually includes:

1) A unified account and contact record

One place where teams can see core details, relationships, and relevant history.

2) Sales activity and opportunity context

So service teams know what’s in flight, and sales teams know what’s at risk.

3) Order history and commercial context

So teams can make decisions based on the reality of what has been bought, delivered, or disputed.

4) Service history and open issues

So customers don’t repeat themselves, and teams can spot patterns before they become escalations.

5) A shared timeline of engagement

A simple, readable history of significant interactions across the lifecycle.

When these elements come together, experience improves because teams stop operating in isolation.

The benefits Etex targeted (and why they matter)

Etex’s programme is a useful case study because it shows the practical value of unifying customer data across a distributed organisation.

Unified customer data (no more regional blind spots)

Centralising customer data helps eliminate the “local truth” problem, where each region has a different version of the same account.

Empowered teams (context without chasing)

With the right access and governance, more employees can act confidently because they can see what’s happened and what matters next.

Better service delivery (consistency at scale)

A shared view enables faster triage, clearer ownership, and better continuity for the customer.

Streamlined operations (automation instead of workarounds)

When key lifecycle steps are standardised and automated, teams stop relying on spreadsheets and email chains to get work done.

Stronger insight (decisions based on joined-up data)

A reliable 360-degree view creates better reporting and trend analysis — which is essential for leaders making decisions across regions.

How to replicate this outcome in your organisation

If you’re leading a CRM or CX programme, the Etex example offers a useful blueprint. Not because every organisation should copy the same technology stack — but because the sequence of work is repeatable.

Step 1: Agree what “360-degree view” means for your business

Define the minimum set of data your teams need to deliver a consistent experience. This prevents the programme becoming an endless “data lake” project.

A helpful starting point is:

• What should sales see, in under 10 seconds?

• What should service see, in under 10 seconds?

• What should leadership see weekly or monthly?

Step 2: Map the customer lifecycle end-to-end

Most CRM pain comes from broken handoffs. Map:

• lead to opportunity

• opportunity to order

• order to fulfilment

• fulfilment to service and support

• service to renewal/expansion

Then identify where data drops, where ownership is unclear, and where the customer experience becomes inconsistent.

Step 3: Fix data foundations before you scale

A single view is only as useful as the quality of the inputs.

Focus on:

• account and contact matching rules

• data governance (who owns what)

• permissions and access control

• standard definitions for key fields

Step 4: Design for adoption (not just go-live)

Global rollouts fail when people don’t change behaviour.

Build adoption into the plan:

• role-based training tied to real tasks

• regional champions and feedback loops

• simple success measures (usage, time saved, case handling quality)

Step 5: Use the 360-degree view to drive better workflows

Once teams have a shared customer view, the next step is making work faster.

This is where many organisations now combine CRM data with workflow and knowledge tools to reduce manual coordination and speed up decision-making.

Internal link suggestion: If your teams struggle with “work outside the CRM”, see Asana for Sales: Run Pipeline, Deals & Handoffs on Generation Digital’s blog.

Common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

Pitfall 1: Trying to unify everything at once

Avoid boiling the ocean. Start with the highest-value customer journeys and scale from there.

Pitfall 2: Treating CRM as a sales-only system

Salesforce can support sales, service, and marketing, but only if you design the operating model around cross-functional outcomes.

Pitfall 3: Under-investing in governance

Without clear rules, the “single source of truth” becomes a new version of conflicting truth.

Pitfall 4: Assuming dashboards equal insight

A dashboard doesn’t fix process. Use insight to trigger action — not just reporting.

Summary

Etex’s Cloud4M programme shows what happens when a global organisation treats customer experience as a data and execution problem — not a branding exercise.

By aligning teams around a shared customer profile and a more connected lifecycle, Etex moved towards a consistent experience across countries, functions, and touchpoints.

Next steps

If your organisation is dealing with fragmented customer data, a 360-degree view is one of the fastest ways to improve customer experience and operational efficiency.

• Start by defining the minimum viable 360-degree view.

• Prioritise the customer journeys that matter most.

• Build governance and adoption into the core plan.

Want help turning customer data into a usable, day-to-day advantage? Generation Digital helps organisations design practical transformation roadmaps and embed AI and automation into the systems teams actually use.

FAQs

1) What is a 360-degree customer view?
A 360-degree customer view is a single profile that combines sales, service, order and engagement data so teams can deliver a consistent customer experience.

2) What is Deloitte’s Cloud4M?
Cloud4M is a Salesforce-powered solution designed for manufacturing organisations to connect customer and lifecycle data into a single view and accelerate CRM transformation.

3) Why do global organisations struggle with CRM data silos?
Because regions often run different systems, processes and definitions. Without shared governance and integration, customer records fragment quickly.

4) What should be included in a 360-degree customer profile?
At minimum: account details, key contacts, sales activity, order history, open service cases and a readable engagement timeline.

5) How do you make a global CRM rollout succeed?
Define the operating model, invest in data quality and governance, train by role, and measure adoption continuously — not just at go-live.