Overview
European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX) is a pan-European joint venture bringing together five of the continent's leading broadcasters — Mediaset, ProSiebenSat.1, TF1 Group, and Channel 4 — to create a unified premium video advertising marketplace. As a newly formed entity operating across multiple territories and ownership structures, EBX had no CRM infrastructure in place. This engagement delivered the organisation's first-ever CRM system from the ground up: a Salesforce implementation scoped, designed, configured, and deployed to serve the Sales and Finance Operations functions across a complex, multi-stakeholder business.
The Challenge
Standing up a CRM for a greenfield joint venture carries a distinct set of challenges — there is no legacy system to migrate from, but equally no established processes, data structures, or shared ways of working to build on. For EBX, this was compounded by the inherent complexity of operating across four countries and five shareholder organisations, each with its own culture, commercial priorities, and expectations. Key challenges included:
- No existing CRM foundation: EBX had never operated a CRM. There were no defined sales processes, pipeline structures, or data standards to anchor the implementation — everything had to be established from first principles.
- Cross-functional scope: The CRM needed to serve both Sales and Finance Operations — two functions with distinct workflows, data needs, and success criteria — requiring careful requirements definition to ensure the system worked coherently across both.
- No internal Salesforce capability: As a newly formed organisation, EBX had no in-house Salesforce expertise. The engagement therefore needed to deliver not only a working system but also the knowledge and confidence for the team to operate it independently going forward.
- Adoption risk in a startup environment: In a fast-moving joint venture context, user adoption could not be taken for granted. Without embedded habits or mandated processes, buy-in had to be earned through relevance, usability, and effective training.
The Solution
The engagement was structured as a full-lifecycle CRM implementation, beginning with project scoping and stakeholder alignment and running through to configuration, deployment, training, and ongoing post-go-live support. Given the greenfield nature of the work, particular emphasis was placed on the discovery and requirements phase — ensuring the system was built around real business needs rather than assumptions, and that stakeholders across Sales and Finance Ops had shared ownership of the solution before a line of configuration was written.
Implementation
Project Scoping
Defined the scope, objectives, and boundaries of the CRM programme in close collaboration with EBX leadership and representatives from the joint venture partners. This included establishing success criteria, identifying the core user groups, and agreeing the phasing of delivery — ensuring the project was set up with clear direction and realistic expectations from the outset.
Requirements Gathering & Analysis
Conducted structured requirements gathering across Sales and Finance Operations, using workshops and stakeholder interviews to surface current workflows, pain points, and the capabilities needed from the new system. Requirements were documented at both functional and technical levels, providing the blueprint for configuration and serving as the reference point for scope decisions throughout delivery.
Salesforce Configuration & Administration
Designed and implemented the Salesforce environment from scratch, configuring the platform to reflect EBX's commercial model and operational needs:
- Sales Cloud: Built core CRM functionality including account and contact management, opportunity pipeline, activity tracking, and reporting — structured to support EBX's pan-European sales operation.
- Process automation: Configured workflows and process automation to reduce manual effort and enforce consistency across the sales cycle.
- Finance Operations: Implemented supporting structures for Finance Ops users, enabling visibility into deal status, revenue tracking, and cross-functional data sharing between sales and finance.
- Reporting & dashboards: Built out reporting and dashboard capability to give sales leadership and finance stakeholders real-time visibility into pipeline, performance, and commercial activity across territories.
- Ongoing administration: Provided continued Salesforce administration support post-go-live, managing configuration changes, user requests, and system maintenance as the business evolved.
Training & User Enablement
Designed and delivered role-specific training for both Sales and Finance Operations users, tailored to the distinct workflows and system interactions of each group. Training was structured to build genuine understanding of the system — not just procedural familiarity — to maximise the likelihood of sustained adoption in a self-sufficient team environment.
Ongoing Support
Provided post-implementation support to the EBX team, ensuring issues were resolved quickly and the system continued to meet business needs as the organisation grew and its requirements developed. This continuity of support was critical in a newly formed business without dedicated internal Salesforce resource.
Outcomes
- First operational CRM successfully delivered: EBX moved from having no CRM infrastructure to a fully operational Salesforce environment within the engagement period — a significant capability step for a newly formed joint venture managing complex pan-European commercial relationships.
- Unified sales and finance visibility: For the first time, Sales and Finance Operations worked from a shared system of record, reducing reliance on offline tracking, improving data consistency, and enabling more effective cross-functional collaboration.
- Structured sales pipeline established: The implementation introduced a defined, governed sales process across EBX's commercial team, replacing informal tracking methods with a consistent pipeline structure that gave leadership reliable visibility into revenue forecasts and deal progression.
- Self-sufficient Salesforce capability: Through hands-on training and sustained post-go-live support, the EBX team developed the internal knowledge and confidence to operate and maintain the platform independently — a critical outcome for a lean organisation without dedicated CRM resource.
- Scalable foundation for growth: The Salesforce environment was architected with EBX's growth trajectory in mind, providing a platform that could accommodate expanding user numbers, new commercial products, and evolving reporting requirements without requiring a rebuild.
- Strong user adoption: Tailored training and close stakeholder engagement throughout delivery resulted in high adoption rates across both user groups — demonstrating that CRM value was understood and the system was seen as a genuine operational tool rather than a compliance obligation.