Panasonic Avionics supports more than 200 airline customers worldwide, but its sales CRM could no longer keep pace with the complexity of their requirements. Teams spent hours searching across systems and re-entering details for unique fleet configurations, contracts, and service needs. With ServiceNow already supporting customer service and other business functions, Panasonic Avionics decided to extend that trusted platform into sales operations.
Six years ago, Panasonic Avionics turned to ServiceNow to improve how it served its customers. The results gave the company confidence in the platform and the team behind it. Over that period, phone-based calls from customers looking for support fell from nearly 100% of cases to approximately 1%. Today, about half of cases arrive by email, while more than half are submitted directly by airline customers through the ServiceNow portal. With that service foundation in place, Panasonic Avionics chose to extend ServiceNow into sales operations when its legacy CRM could no longer keep pace with the complexity of its airline business.
Panasonic Avionics is sunsetting a CRM that could no longer keep pace
Panasonic Avionics’ customer operations developed along two paths. Customer support adopted ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM), while global sales operations continued using a separate sales CRM from another vendor.
As airline requirements changed and the systems customers considering buying became more complex, sales teams had to repeatedly retype information into a rigid CRM that could not always capture the operational detail behind each request. Sales, service, and product teams searched across systems and manually translated requirements, making it harder to maintain a shared view of each airline relationship.
Kevin Abbott, Head of Global IT and Cybersecurity, saw employees begin working around the CRM instead of relying on it. When he raised the issue with the incumbent CRM provider, the proposed path was another implementation, additional licenses, and more time.
“They told us we should do a new implementation, buy new licenses, spin our wheels a little bit longer,” Abbott says. “I left that meeting discouraged.”
Results in customer service and other areas gave Panasonic Avionics confidence in sales
Panasonic Avionics had already expanded ServiceNow beyond customer service into IT Service Management, HR Service Delivery, and ESG Management. Those deployments gave employees a familiar platform for daily work and deepened the company's relationship with ServiceNow.
That experience shaped the decision to extend ServiceNow into Sales CRM. Rather than start with another disconnected implementation, Panasonic Avionics could build on the airline accounts, service workflows, and customer information it was already managing in Customer Service Management.
“Before we even said a word, the ServiceNow CRM team came in and said, here are your challenges,” Abbott says. “Not only did they know what our problems were, they were able to identify solutions.”
Sales CRM is the natural, enhanced extension of the service experience
Cathalee Stewart, Senior Director of Global Sales Operations and Strategic Initiatives, sees Sales CRM as an opportunity to apply what Panasonic Avionics learned through customer service to the company’s sales processes.
“I was beyond excited when I heard we were moving to ServiceNow Sales CRM,” Stewart says. “I was thinking through all of the ways that we can reimagine our processes from the ground up, connect all the different stakeholders cross-functionally, and have a single source of truth for our data.”
The planned Sales CRM solution, including Configure, Price, Quote capabilities, is designed to give sales, service, and product teams access to the same airline, contract, product, and service information. The expansion could reduce manual research and interpretation while improving collaboration across teams working on each account.
“It’s going to enable our teams to work together better because they have the tools and data to work together in real time. It fuels our momentum to keep moving forward,” Stewart says.
The next opportunity is faster answers across airline data
The same information challenges that shaped the Sales CRM decision also point to a potential role for AI. Panasonic Avionics is exploring how ServiceNow Otto could help customer service and sales teams find accurate answers faster across many data sources.
Andy Brunker, Senior Director for Customer Support, describes the potential value, “ServiceNow Otto’s ability to look at a large amount of data sources and bring back an answer lets us respond faster and more accurately, so customers are more satisfied.”
For Panasonic Avionics, one value of the relationship is that the ServiceNow team already understands how its airline customers, service workflows, and internal teams fit together. The company has already seen measurable results with ServiceNow Customer Service Management. Its Sales CRM and AI initiatives are intended to build on that experience, with their broader business impact still ahead.
Abbott’s advice to other IT leaders considering a similar move is to get honest feedback from stakeholders, agree on a clear mission before work begins, and choose a partner that understands the business and can enable change.
“What’s harder than any difficult implementation,” Abbott says, “is continuously using a platform that doesn’t meet your needs.” He is looking forward to extending ServiceNow so Panasonic Avionics’ sales and customer-service teams can share a more complete view of each airline relationship.
“I’m excited about where we’re at and where we are going.”