Winner Summaries
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING
Diamond Winner SAP North America: Transforming Marketing and Sales Engagement: Creating and Sustaining Relevance Through Account Based Marketing .........4Gold Winner Cisco Systems/Cisco Partner Consulting & Innovation Business Practices: Investing in Partners with Consulting and Data Analytics Yields High Returns in Loyalty, Agility and Revenue ...................................................................................................................................................................... 5Gold Winner KPMG: Making Big Impressions at the United Nations .........................................................................................................................................................6
CAPITALIZING ON MARKETING’S NEW TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Diamond Winner Cisco Systems: Data-Driven Automation Drives Incremental Service Revenue for Cisco .................................................................................................7Gold Winners Dell: Dell’s Integrated Marketing Technology Stack ............................................................................................................................................................8
DELIVERING AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Diamond Winner HCL Technologies: The Relationship Beyond the Contract Campaign - Positioning HCLTECH’s Brand Promise through Integrated Marketing ..........9Gold Winners Cisco Systems: Cisco Services APAC Customer Lifecycle Marketing Engine: Innovation in Omnichannel Marketing ...................................................10
DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Diamond Winner Cisco Systems: Cisco Internet of Everything Thought Leadership Platform: Visionary Insights Grounded in Real-World Business Outcomes ..........11Gold Winner Amdocs: Amdocs Sets the Agenda for Customer Experience in the Global Communications Market ...........................................................................12Gold Winner PwC: Driving Business with Thought Leadership ..............................................................................................................................................................13
ENABLING SALES AND SME CHANNELS FOR DEEPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Diamond Winner SITA: STARS program ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................14Gold Winner Hewlett Packard Enterprises: What We Sell – Sales & Marketing Enablement Platform for Hewlett Packard Enterprise ............................................15
MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE
Diamond Winner CSC: CSC Digital Marketing Dashboard ..............................................................................................................................................................................16Gold Winner Avanade: Avanade Global Marketing Eff ectiveness Program ...........................................................................................................................................17Gold Winner Avaya: Avaya CMO Funnel Dashboard ...............................................................................................................................................................................18
2015 FINALISTS All Categories .................................................................................................................................................................................................19
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About the Marketing Excellence Awards
Launched in 1998, ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards (MEA) focus exclusively on the largest segment of the technology business: technology services and solutions.
The awards program is based on a comprehensive and strategic approach to marketing, recognizing that business success today requires marketers to move beyond the traditional realm of communications into such areas as developing new solutions, increasing sales effectiveness, and managing the customer experience.
The program looks beyond flash and glitz to emphasize excellence in the three most critical aspects of success: innovation, execution, and business results.
The Marketing Excellence Awards are open to all companies that market and sell technology-related services or solutions. Applications for awards are due in June and the awards are announced at a special awards dinner during our Annual Marketing Conference in the fall.
MEA judging is based on a peer review process. The awards jury consists of members of ITSMA’s senior executive staff, ITSMA’s member advisory board, and other senior marketing executives and experts. No judge reviews submissions for which there is a potential conflict of interest.
The MEA program includes two awards in each marketing category:
Diamond Awards: • Best in class for the industry, as measured by innovation, execution, and business results
Gold Awards:• Standout achievement in improving marketing performance, as measured by innovation, execution, and business results
Past award winners have included Accenture, Agilent Technologies (partnering with PARTNERS+simons), Alcatel-Lucent, Alfa Wassermann, AT&T, Avaya, BMC Software, BT, CDW, Cisco, Cognizant, CompuCom, EMC, Fujitsu Services, GE Healthcare, HCL, HDS, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM Global Services, IKON, Infosys, Iron Mountain, Microsoft Services, NCR Teradata, NetApp, Northrop Grumman, Oracle, Patni, SAP, Mahindra Satyam, Siemens, Sprint Nextel, Tata Consultancy Services, TELUS, Unisys, Wipro, and Xerox Global Services among other top technology and professional services firms.
For more information on the MEA program, visit www.itsma.com/marketing-excellence-awards/.
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BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SAP North America developed an account based marketing (ABM) program to focus and customize marketing efforts for large, strategic customers. Like many mature B2B companies, SAP receives a very high percentage of revenue from a small number of strategic accounts. With the top 10% of our accounts delivering up to 80% of rev-enue in North America, it became clear that field marketers needed to become true “business partners” to sales and our customers in order to drive sustainable account growth, accelerate opportunities, and cultivate customer relationships. SAP’s challenge was to consolidate and modify previously unfocused marketing efforts, create a common methodology to our approach across regions, and maintain consistency by sharing best practices.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
SAP’s main objective was to add strategic value to our relationships with top accounts and to become true busi-ness partners to sales and to our customers. The team also focused on building future pipeline through market-ing practices rather than focusing on near-term needs. The program was designed to deliver value to sales in two primary ways: 1) by enabling customers to accelerate decision-making processes; and 2) expanding the SAP presence within these large accounts.
Another ABM driver was the need to extend support to more of a sustainable, year-long program of activities which demonstrated to customers and sales teams alike how marketing can support a partnership with SAP – not just be viewed simply as a vendor. By utilizing the ABM marketing strategy, SAP could achieve its objective of increasing the level and quality of customer engagement as well as ensuring a long-term value recognition and growth from customers.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
SAP NA addressed this need through establishing a centralized Account Based Marketing (“ABM”) program office and creation of a comprehensive ABM program in 2014. ABM marketing efforts utilized a strategic approach in which highly targeted awareness and demand generation programs were executed for a specific customer. The SAP team delivered formalized training programs for a core group of marketing professionals, studied external best practices around ABM, worked closely with Sales colleagues on account selection and establishing rules of engagement, and created a marketing Bill of Materials as well as an execution engine to deliver against those tactics. Implementation of Account Planning sessions helped to identify new opportunities, as well as to ensure sales and marketing alignment.
New tactics were implemented into the ABM program, such as employing a dedicated marketer, developing an 18-month plan, and securing a budget for customized activities. Other tactics included customized newsletters and webcasts, dedicated enterprise social networking sites, account-specific digital marketing, and onsite 1:1
events. One of the most effective tactics known as Customer Co-Innovation Days brought a customized, on-site event directly to the customer. The overall focus of these events was to inform customers about how they can co-innovate with SAP.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The ABM marketing strategy exceeded its goals across all key objectives. The indicators used to measure what has been accomplished to date include pipeline touched, new pipeline created (value and number of opportunities), as well as quality contacts created in new buying centers.
2014 results exceeded expectations and demonstrated that SAP’s ABM approach is having significant, incremental impact:
Marketing Pipeline Touched (MPT): $209M Touched, $27.6M has closed »
Marketing Progressed Pipeline (MPP): $57M Progressed, $30.3M has closed »
New Opportunities Created: 49 for $27M in new pipeline »
1,200 New Line of Business (LOB) Contacts »
As a result of ABM success, the program has expanded to include 55 accounts in 2015, with additional budget and headcount allocated to the effort. SAP has also established a global ABM program office to leverage the success of the North American region and syndicate it throughout other regional marketing teams. The 2015 ABM program has evolved from 1 dedicated person to 4 – as well as an extended team of 15, and ABM funding has been increased by 50% over 2014. The results derived from the impressive effects of ABM marketing have demonstrated to customers and sales how marketing can support account growth, accelerate opportunities, and deliver customer value.
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING DIAMOND AWARD
Transforming Marketing and Sales Engagement: Creating and Sustaining Relevance Through Account Based Marketing
SAP NORTH AMERICA
This is a very well thought out and comprehensive ABM program, including organization, planning, tac-tics, and measurement. SAP has used ABM as a novel way to improve recognition, build relationships,
and increase sales in a large organization. This entry demonstrated solid execution with clear objectives and metrics, a program off ice including training and best practice assessment, strong links with account teams, joint account planning, great marketing tactics, and impressive results in the fi rst year.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
5
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The Cisco Services Partner Consulting & Innovation (PC&I) Business Practice is a strategic business initiative that combines account based marketing strategies with consultative solutions for our partner community. PC&I invests in partners’ success by solving their most important business challenges and accelerating their ability to increase revenue, improve efficiencies and mitigate risk in rapidly changing market conditions.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Because Cisco has spent decades building a powerful partner ecosystem, partners look to us for new ways to enable them to make successful market transitions. This became the program objective for PC&I. To help partners adopt new capabilities, increase profitability, and mitigate risk, in FY14 we launched the Partner Benchmark-ing Index (PBI) to provide an objective baseline of their existing capabilities. Recognized as one of Cisco’s most strategic channel investments, the PBI leverages analytics to:
Quantify partners’ overall performance »
Identify partners’ strengths and gap areas »
Gain insight into market opportunities and prioritize investments »
The PC&I Business Practice drives collaborative execution of recommendations from the PBI findings via a regular and thorough cycle of partner and Cisco engagement and tracking. These interactions cement the relationship with partners by improving transparency to our respective organizations, empowering collaborative working rela-tionships, fostering teamwork and trust, and uncovering critical insights for strategic planning, resource allocation and business model transformation.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The four key phases of the initiative included:
Phase 1: Piloting the Partner Discovery Process: After completing a highly successful initial face-to-face conference to mitigate issues with a specific partner, an expanded effort was launched, offering the same type of engagement to a variety of partners to support their goals and provide fresh perspectives as their business and market conditions changed.
Phase 2: Building Out PC&I Capabilities: Macro-level partner analysis provided insight into common critical partner gaps and needs. Additional workshops were added and formalized including:
Partner Discovery: A holistic, business-centric engagement focused on benchmarking and improving all »functional business capabilities
Unique Value Proposition: Marketing-centric workshop to help partners defi ne and communicate key »strengths and unique diff erentiators
Business Strategy: Strategic planning session to defi ne, document and communicate long- and short-term »objectives, initiatives and metrics
Human Capital: Best practice sharing and training to help partners improve their human capital lifecycle com- »petencies and productivity
Service Adoption and Acceleration Workshop: Analysis and recommended action plan for creation or im- »provement of services-specifi c practice (Cisco and partner-branded services)
Resource Optimization: Analysis and recommendations for custom integration of Cisco Advanced Services »capabilities into a partner’s go-to-market strategy
Phase 3: Standardizing Analytics and Processes via the Partner Benchmarking Index: Having amassed significant data over hundreds of partner engagements, we produced a benchmarking model that delivers unprecedented visibility and insights for improving efficiencies, making strategic investments and prioritizing go-to-market decisions.
Phase 4: Scaling with Expanded Capabilities and Geographical Coverage: As we continuously increased and refined our capabilities, skills and approach, we also expanded into additional geographic theaters. To further accelerate partner business transformations, we built the Partner Opportunity & Capability Profile, which provides the next step in data-driven blueprints for more informed improvement targets and stronger, in-depth business cases for transformation.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The business results were convincing, demonstrating that partners who engaged with the PC&I team show greater loyalty to Cisco, with a stellar Walker study loyalty score of 97%. In turn, PC&I-engaged partners also command similarly strong customer loyalty. While the average IT industry customer loyalty score with the channel is 45%, the loyalty score for customers of Cisco partners who engaged with the PC&I team is 93%. In addition, PC&I-engaged partners achieved year-over-year Cisco growth that was 50% higher, on average, than the aggregate Cisco partner community for the past 5 years.
To our knowledge, there is no other practice like the Cisco Partner Consulting & Innovation Business Practice. This strategic business initiative applies account based marketing strategies and unique business analytics with consultative solutions in an entirely new way. We focus on our partners to deepen relationships, transform partner business models, and ultimately, accelerate our mutual profitability and growth.
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING GOLD AWARD
Investing in Partners with Consulting and Data Analytics Yields High Returns in Loyalty, Agility and Revenue
CISCO
Cisco’s entry addresses a long-standing challenge of driving maximum business out
of partnerships. One half is understanding the partners better and the other is getting them to address issues that prevent them from reaching their top potential. This is a great example of a standardized way to engage with partners one at a time to build joint plans for business growth and customer loyalty. It is real value-add ABM.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
6
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In an effort to enhance KPMG’s global brand visibility and deepen relationships at the United Nations (UN), a U.S. Platinum account for KPMG, an account-based marketing campaign strategy was launched in support of the UN’s Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Our ultimate goal was to proactively change the client’s perception of KPMG as merely one of many undifferenti-ated “professional service vendors” to one of KPMG as a trusted advisor with shared values and accountability in shaping the client’s post-2015 global agenda.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The UN Global Account Team accomplished a series of firsts by executing the SDG Industry Matrix campaign. Not only was this their first actual ABM campaign but they also broke new ground within KPMG’s broader marketing organization in the following ways:
First account-based marketing campaign that combined a mix of digital and traditional media channels to »drive brand, relationships, and sales at KPMG
Seamless coordination within KPMG’s marketing organization brought the best of the fi rm’s resources to the »account. By leveraging internal market research tools, as well as local, national, global, and off shore resourc-es, the team was able to achieve a cost savings of approximately $225,000 USD in print production, event marketing execution, market research and campaign management costs
First integrated client-centric marketing plan with a global reach and scale of this magnitude and promi- »nence—drawing in C-Suite executives and global leaders across eight countries
First within KPMG’s Platinum marketing program to establish a global lead partner as a leading subject matter »expert in a major, global campaign initiative that was not focused on a service line
BUSINESS RESULTS
Lead Acquisition that accelerated the UN account team’s understanding of and connection to key buyers, influencers, and coaches within the UN
Approximately 85 new relationships were created »
Eight new speaking engagements were identifi ed and managed by KPMG marketing that credentialized the »UN Global Lead Partner as a leading subject matter expert in the Post-2015 global debate
Using the MarketEdge relationship scoring methodology, the campaign led to a 40 percent increase in the »relationship scores of Post-2015 strategic contacts across the UN’s 10 largest entities
Third-party brand perception study confirms that the ABM campaign helped change perceptions of KPMG at the UN:
The Director of the UN Development Programme noted that KPMG is “an innovative interlocutor on a wide »range of development-related topics,” and credits the fi rm with providing ideas on sustainable development and advocating for private sector-led, inclusive growth
The head of the Business Partnerships Group of the UN Industrial Development Organization notes that »KPMG is a “leading professional fi rm in the area of global development” with the “capacity and know-how to signifi cantly contribute to pressing challenges around the Post-2015 agenda”
Positive media sentiment from the campaign enhances KPMG’s overall brand equity
Top KPMG executives are being covered across the media regarding their views on SDGs and how the private »sector can guide the investment decisions of the sector while solving economic, social, and environmental challenges—thereby creating real, shared, tangible value
KPMG’s views on the SDGs garnered positive coverage on social and digital platforms, especially aft er the »account’s active involvement in creating high touch event programs at the UN General Assembly and World Economic Forum
37 UN-related events were identifi ed and attended by the account team, 11 of which were hosted by KPMG, »yielding upwards of fi ve million brand impressions in eight countries across 6 main industry verticals
From a revenue growth perspective, the UN Global Account team expects the campaign to influence a 33% US revenue increase by the end of FY15 and an increase in global revenue of 45% over the same time period given its proven effectiveness in building the UN account team’s continued exposure and credibility across the UN system.
Analysis of the latest figures from the 2014 UN Annual Statistical Report published this past August show that KPMG has ascended from 7th place provider to the 3rd largest services provider to the United Nations for appli-cable services, and 2nd within the Big 4 globally.
Making Big Impressions at the United Nations
KPMG LLP ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING GOLD AWARD
Given the complexity of both the UN and KPMG itself globally, this was well executed, driving impressive results and competitive advantage. With relatively
low penetration into the account, KPMG used ABM to change perception within the UN from a good supplier to a partner that really understood their organizational imperatives and was able to leverage their own wider business relationship to help support the UN agenda. This submission shows a good understanding of a large and dispersed client with many cultures and relationship/purchasing criteria. It also demonstrates good coordination within KPMG’s organization.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
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BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The Cisco Global Customer Success (GCS) organization was formed to simplify and digitize an end-to-end customer engagement model that supports customers for life. As part of this model, GCS established an initiative to develop a data-driven, automated renewals engine that enables partners to address all service renewals, no matter how small. Aimed at improving the efficiency and success of service sales renewals across the Americas, the initiative was formed to transform the way Cisco helps customers achieve their business outcomes.
Based on Cisco research, customers with a service contract have a 33% higher retention rate. And to keep them on contract, Cisco executives recognized that the business opportunity meant more than winning the initial service sale: it required ongoing customer engagement over multiple cycles of the service renewal.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
To extend its business transformation goals across the partner experience, GCS needed enhanced big data, analytics, and automation capabilities to power the initiative. It began by leveraging MaintenanceNet’s (now a part of Cisco) data analytics and automation platform to improve the subscription and renewals experience for Cisco partners and customers by streamlining tedious, time-consuming tasks in the quoting and ordering process.
Because Cisco partners were missing out on a substantial number of service sales opportunities each year, Cisco also implemented MaintenanceNet’s AutoQuote campaign engine to help partners stop service revenue leakage and close service deals faster and more cost effectively. While selling a service renewal may sound easy, partners often neglect contract renewals because they’re difficult to track and manage, with hundreds or even thousands coming up for renewal each month.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Using AutoQuote, Cisco transformed its service renewal business into an automated process that ran smoothly on autopilot. The initiative allows sales representatives to see and take action on more sales opportunities, and also helps Cisco and its partners better engage customers at specific touch points in the customer’s lifecycle by ensuring their service contract needs are addressed on time, efficiently, and intelligently.
The first step in the initiative was to tap into customers’ service contract data residing in ERP, pricing, point of sale, CRM, entitlement, and other systems. Cisco then aggregated and enriched these disparate data sources to make the data complete and actionable, providing a full 360-degree picture of services that had yet to be transacted and renewed. The enriched data enabled partners to know precisely who to reach out to and when – with the right service renewal offer.
AutoQuote leverages this same enriched data to fuel automated service renewal quotes, which are emailed out first to partners and then to end customers, 90 days in advance of service expirations. The expiration date of the quote is listed within the AutoQuote email and a built-in quote validation tool incorporates up-to-the-minute Cisco pricing and partner-specific discount models to ensure quote accuracy. To support global sales, localized languages and currency can be used.
BUSINESS RESULTS
Using innovative data-driven processes and relying upon collaboration and automation, GCS has made nearly 96% of the service renewal opportunity actionable across Cisco’s partner base. In addition, it doubled the annual percent of available service renewals closed globally, delivered more than $3 billion in automated quote opportunities to the worldwide market in FY14 and saved Cisco distribution partners thousands of hours of sales and administrative time.
Through the initiative, Cisco has successfully revolutionized its low-dollar, high-volume service renewals business with an effective and efficient way to capture lost revenue. By digitizing the end-to-end customer engagement model for partners, it has established the foundation for the future of the GCS organization, setting the stage for Cisco to:
Expand its data-driven automation platform to address and manage the full customer lifecycle opportunity, »across all customer touch points spanning the attach, onboarding, adoption, expansion, renewal and technol-ogy refresh stages
Extend automated, personalized notifi cations across all lifecycle motions to the customer (under the partner »brand) to improve the end-to-end customer experience
Integrate a powerful commerce capability, using AutoQuote, to give customers the ability to transact instantly »and conveniently
Data-Driven Automation Drives Incremental Service Revenue for Cisco
CISCO SYSTEMS CAPITALIZING ON MARKETING’S NEW TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES DIAMOND AWARD
Working with partners is tough. Not only did Cisco deepen its relationships with channel partners through this initiative, the company also delivered huge cost and time eff iciencies while generating
fi nancial wins. As well as being a success for Cisco the program also benefi ted Cisco partners. The increase in renewal rates has been particularly noteworthy, from 17% in the Americas to approximately 55%.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
8
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The customer journey has changed. The world is more digital than ever and contacts demand a personalized experience. At the same time, Dell has thousands of products, services, and solutions. We needed some way to reach our contacts with personalized, timely, and relevant content. The goal was to create an always-on digital program to educate and enable throughout the buying cycle.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
At the core, messaging and engagement had to be relevant and timely – focused on the customer’s needs, not necessarily on the product or solution that Dell wanted to push. Considerable analysis was done, from under-standing the opportunities and solutions to better engage with the customer to understanding various depart-mental needs including a “meeting of the minds” across Marketing and IT. We also conducted an ROI assessment to understand what type of impact investing in marketing technology would have on the business.
Shifting to an advertising tech stack has enabled our Marketing teams—ranging from media to production—to identify the right customers based on 1st and 3rd party data to effectively target them based on their needs and interests while customizing that creative messaging real time.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Dell Marketing and IT designed a multi-platform ecosystem to enhance our ability to scale, personalize, and react to customer behavior. Our vision leverages the Oracle Eloqua, Oracle RTD, Oracle BlueKai, Adacado, Mediamath, Shutterfly (CMS), and Captix.
AdTech MarketingMoving towards programmatic media buying involved and continues to involve new collaboration – from global engagements to local business engagement to having traditional partners/vendors extend outside of the current ways of doing business to evolving their models to support that new vision. This has meant sometimes bringing in 3rd parties to facilitate that change conversation and redefine roles and responsibilities.
Oracle Eloqua and Content Management System (CMS)Oracle Eloqua and the CMS are key enablers of powering a truly flexible marketing engine. This custom integra-tion has on average 691 versions of emails encompassing 6 languages in 10 countries supporting over 2,000 unique customer experiences.
Oracle Eloqua and Oracle RTDThe logic in Oracle RTD enables real time decisions with our Eloqua nurture programs. Multiple variables are used to provide a recommendation of the right topic and the right phase of the customer buying cycle. This informa-tion is then sent to Eloqua so the correct email can be sent to the customer.
Oracle Eloqua and CaptixThis integration created a real time automated sync between field event activities, Salesforce, and the Eloqua nur-ture program. Now, leads go to sales quicker while the contacts that are not ready to talk to sales are nurtured.
BUSINESS RESULTS
In the ad tech space, new metrics have been and continue to be redefined on the impact to business results. In some cases, this is as straightforward as the immediate revenue uplift or the attributable revenue impact by engaging more relevant customers. In others we look at simpler online engagement results like lead generation or even the ability to drive stronger cookie matching within the digital space to drive more targeting messaging to our customers. Within the coming year, we expect to see:
More eff icient use of our digital spend (lower cost per acquisition (CPA)) »
Higher return on our ad spend (ROAS) »
Higher value customer engagements that drive to the end of the funnel (larger attributional revenue/customer »spend – up to 8X)
These results are key and play a role in the future marketing strategies the business deploys.
“Always-on” nurture emails are vastly more successful than Dell push marketing activities.
157% increase in open rates with an average 30.78% open rate »
536% increase in click-through rates with an average 6.38% click-through rate »
In addition, as successive content engagement deepens, we’re seeing open rates of 40% and click-thru »rates of 7%.
The integration of multiple audience sources has contributed to a 273% increase in audience over the »last year.
Contact leads from the nurture program convert at a rate of 80% (pipeline opportunity to revenue). This »is a 129% lift over contacts that are not in the nurture program.
Customers in the nurture program spend on average 3 times more per order than those who have not been »in the nurture program.
Dell’s Integrated Marketing Technology Stack
DELL CAPITALIZING ON MARKETING’S NEW TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES GOLD AWARD
Dell’s entry is a great example of marketing working with IT and other cross-functional groups to integrate multiple marketing systems to drive cost
eff iciencies in marketing spend and customer engagement. This was a very complex process that required signifi cant collaboration between Marketing and IT, as well as reigning in the individual marketing teams. The approach to de-signing a multi-platform ecosystem built on top of their core system represents a good vision that has been implemented at scale with some admirable results.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
9
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Through possibly the worst recession that this generation has witnessed, HCL Technologies delivered an ex-tended period of tremendous growth, as measured by business indicators and customer satisfaction, thanks to aggressive sales and effective delivery capabilities. However, marketing faced three challenges:
Various lines of business within the company were marketing their services independently and with only a »suggestive alignment with the core company messaging
We needed thought leadership. As HCL took on the role of a more seasoned participant in the IT services »market, our customers and prospects wanted to know if we had a vision for IT Services that extended past the technology of the season.
It is HCL’s business strategy to increase our customer base in the top Global 2000 companies. While we had »been increasing our customer base overall, the number of G2000 customers was still low. Within this elite group of IT service buyers, we won more than 50% of the deals we participated in, but were invited only to less than 10% of deals to begin with. For the campaign, this was an awareness problem that required immediate intervention.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The objectives of the program were the following:
Align all the lines of business under a unified messaging architecture1.
Ensure that messages directly resonated with HCL’s core beliefs 2.
Express how the relevance of our brand promise directly translated into the robustness of our business model 3. as our vision for the future of IT Services
PROGRAM EXECUTION
To crack the integrated communications strategy for an omnichannel customer experience, HCL initiated a global unified messaging campaign called Relationship beyond the Contract (RBtC).
At the heart of the campaign was a 105-second film that used a father-son relationship over a 20 year period to creatively showcase our simple message – that every relationship has an underlying contract. However, the true joy and memorability of that relationship emerge in moments when the parties go beyond the contract. This was HCL’s way of placing our faith and future in the power of our relationships with our customers and not only on the contract signed with them. This film received smiles and emotional responses from customers, prospects, and employees but, more importantly, became a vehicle to drive multiple communications across various stakehold-ers leveraging digital, collaterals, website and various other channels.
With its core message of Relationship beyond the Contract (RBtC), the campaign has focused not just on chang-
ing but strengthening the brand promise through programs and artifacts. Here are some of the sub-initiatives as a part of the campaign:
The Spirit of RBtC Video: 1. 105 second film that used a father-son relationship over a 20 year period, to creatively showcase our simple message
The LinkedIn-HCL Collaboration App: 2. HCL collaborated with LinkedIn to create a first of its kind in the world application using LinkedIn’s powerful API framework
The RBtC Coffee Table Book: 3. it showcased 10 iconic relationships from around the world- relationships that we as a brand could aspire to have with our customers.
Digital Outreach and Thought Leadership:4. CEO’s blog on LinkedIN Influencer platform led to organic media mentions across a variety of top media outlets.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The Integrated Digital Campaign has an exposure of 100 million impressions from G2000 organizations and 1. the online community.
G2000 organizations visits to HCLTECH’s website jumped from 300 organizations in June 2014 to 1,300 in June 2. 2015, a 400% jump as a result of the campaign.
The fastest film in the history of IT industry to reach 3. 2 million views on You Tube. 50% of views come from the U.S. and Europe.
A first-in-class digital app created in collaboration 4. with LinkedIn, with more than 10,000 usages of the app across the G2000 community.
25,000 followers added on HCLTECH social media 5. destinations since Dec 2013, an 83% increase in the last 12 months.
RBtC leveraged in 130 large deal pursuits with a 6. total pipeline value of over 4.5 billion USD. RBtC-led business campaigns generated a pipeline of $500 million.
HCLTECH brand favorability increased by 9% to 29% 7. as measured by a LinkedIn Study.
The Relationship Beyond the Contract CampaignPositioning HCLTECH’s Brand Promise through Integrated Marketing
HCL TECHNOLOGIES DELIVERING AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DIAMOND AWARD
What came through in this entry was the pride HCL has in the overall program. This
is a great overall case study in developing and executing a B2B brand message that is much more than just a high-level rally cry. There’s a lot of innovation in here, for example the use of LinkedIn as both a platform and leveraging LinkedIn executives as sponsors. HCL included and involved employees as a channel to ensure message consistency. This is a good example of an internal/external, online/off line multi-channel campaign that links into operational activities.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
10
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In the dynamic, rapidly expanding economies that make up Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China (APJC), Cisco recognizes that much of the economic acceleration and transformation that will occur will be made possible through rapid and pervasive adoption of technology as a scaling engine. The APJC Customer Lifecycle Engine was created with these changes in mind, offering an omnichannel experience for customers to realize the full potential of technologies purchased and to maximize lifetime value with them.
Designed to drive Cisco annuity services renewals and next generation services expansion across APJC, it enables the right engagements at the right time – all focused on customers’ unique needs. It builds trust and deepens relationships by taking customers on a journey that anticipates what they are interested in, where they are in the technology lifecycle, and where they want to go.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The APJC Customer Lifecycle Engine contributes to Cisco’s strategic goals in forging greater knowledge of and relationships with customers in this vast and important region. It has afforded Cisco a new, innovative way of working across borders and across cultures. The initiative takes into account shifts in IT demand as well as shifts in selling practices, along with an understanding of customer and market needs in a region of the world in which many unique IT challenges and complexities exist.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Using a data-driven approach, the Lifecycle Engine turns massive amounts of information into actionable insights for those who sell Cisco products along with those who buy them. The Lifecycle Engine:
Provides coverage of a wide range of off erings from Cisco’s large and complex portfolio of services »
Unlocks business value from large data sets of structured and unstructured customer data »
Provides a balanced marketing mix of digital content, virtual and face-to-face events to engage with business, »fi nance and IT buyers the way they desire
Treats customers with personalized and relevant insights using automated email campaigns, social communi- »ties, digital content and high-touch human interaction
Serves timely thought leadership content and sales collateral and tracks insights on usage »
Provides access to subject matter experts (SMEs) in a variety of communications modes, and enables sales »teams to act as SMEs
Expands the customer journey to nurture relationships beyond the initial sale »
Delivers insights into a multi-cultural, multi-language world, with content in four languages – English, Chinese, »Japanese and Korean – and deep analysis into demographics and patterns to off er a unique user experience
As omnichannel success requires personalization, we translate data and cross-channel interactions into a unique experience for customers. To achieve this, we have built the Lifecycle Engine on two integrated platforms:
1) The Digital Customer Engagement Platform delivers customer-focused content, engages customers with social and interactive features, tracks and analyzes customer behavioral data and feeds insights to sellers.
2) The Account Based Marketing Platform maps this behavioral data with installed base and other sources of data to predict where the customer is in the journey. It equips sellers with all the information they need to take customers on a seven-step customer journey across multiple digital and human touch points.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The Customer Lifecycle Engine enables a one-to-one brand experience with Cisco far beyond our previous efforts. It maps marketing and sales efforts specifically and uniquely to each customer to maximize opportunity. In only two quarters of full operation, we have built large-scale engagement and sales impact, including:
Touching customers in 15 countries, 631 customer organizations and 1,203 individuals across Asia Pacifi c and »Japan with compelling content and multi-touch customized journeys
Consistently increasing numbers of subscribers by 20-25% quarter over quarter: 25% of total subscribers are »partners, 75% are customers, 10% are C-Level and above and 28% are directors and senior managers and above
Incremental impact in pipeline creation estimated at an average of 22.5% aft er engaging with customers »through the experience
Most importantly, the Customer Lifecycle Engine is earning Cisco deeper relationships and greater trust with our APJC customers, allowing us to cultivate the coveted role of “trusted business advisor,” which is priceless.
Cisco Services APAC Customer Lifecycle Marketing Engine: Innovation in Omnichannel Marketing
CISCO DELIVERING AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE GOLD AWARD
It’s refreshing to see Cisco take a lifetime value view of its customers, and to see the use of analytics with automation to scale engagement. This entry does a great job of sharing a real omnichannel experience
spanning digital and off line across the customer journey. The very strong focus on customer needs is evident throughout the submission has clearly helped Cisco build the initiative on excellent insight.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
11
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
As Cisco evolves from trusted network advisor to trusted business advisor, our target audience has expanded from IT and industry influencers to include C-suite and line-of-business executives. Accordingly, Cisco must meet their demands for thought leadership (TL) that merges cutting-edge, business-relevant market discussions and the convergence of IoE-related technologies.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The main goal was to codify Cisco thought leadership. Cisco has proved its ability to catch market transitions and become a market-leading vendor in a short period of time. Throughout these transitions, we have exerted tremendous thought leadership, but have never codified, defined and packaged it in a programmatic company-wide fashion. We needed to establish a unified, long-term thought leadership agenda for the entire organization.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
We embarked on a long-term, orchestrated thought leadership journey, taking a phased approach to executing and building momentum:
Phase 1: THE WHAT – Identifi ed the Internet of Everything (IoE) as a major market transition and defi ned it for »the industry
Phase 2: THE WHY – Discovered signifi cant economic value being created by IoE »
Phase 3: THE HOW – Introduced roadmaps – how to capture IoE value »
Phase 1: The WHATIdentifying “White Space”: Cisco defined the “Internet of Everything” as the networked connection of people, process, data, and things, thus differentiating our approach to this market transition from other technology companies and research/analyst firms.
Driving Internal Alignment and a Path to Execution: We leveraged a network of subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop hypotheses quantifying the IoE opportunity.
Undertaking Ground-Breaking Research: We engaged a world-class economist – Erik Brynjolfsson – and his team at the MIT Center for Digital Business to help us define and design a new approach combining economic analysis and primary market research.
First PoV Release: In December 2012, our IoE Point of View positioning paper opened a provocative view to the exponential growth of the Internet and tantalized audiences to pay close attention and learn more.
Phase 2: The WHYWell-Orchestrated Releases Build Momentum: A month after releasing the initial IoE PoV, we followed with the release of the IoE $14.4 Trillion Value at Stake Report for the Private Sector. This paper was presented to a select audience at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland by Cisco CEO John Chambers
In May 2013, we introduced our IoE Value Index (for private sector only), which analyzed the IoE readiness of industries and countries in 2013. We followed this with the release of the IoE $4.6 Trillion Value at Stake Report for the Public Sector in January 2014.
Phase 3 - The HOWNow we were ready to introduce roadmaps for how customers could capture IoE value with practical examples and recommendations. To enable sustained market conversations, we forged a platform-based approach focus-ing on either 1) vertical industry lens or 2) business-driven technology lens.
Internal Education: We promoted TL to the field via internal webinars, events, and created the first internal “TL Sales Companions” for the field.
Ramping Up Industry-Specific and IoE Enabler TL Platform Releases: In FY15 (August 2014 – July 2015), we delivered five TL platforms:
IoE for Public Sector study: May 2014 »
IoE for Financial Services: U.S. only in November 2014; full global report in February 2015 »
IoE for Retail: U.S. and U.K. only in January 2015; full global report later in 2015 »
IoE for Oil and Gas: April 2015 »
IoT/Data Analytics: December 2014 »
Each Platform Is Fully Loaded and “Packaged”: We start with primary research yielding both qualitative and quantitative insights: in-depth interviews with executives and thought leaders from multiple countries; economic analysis and modeling to quantify the business case; video interviews with industry thought leaders that speak to the executive audience directly and provide an expert, non-Cisco voice.
BUSINESS RESULTS
#1 in Share of Voice worldwide; our 38% share is 2X that of the closest competition »
High sentiment: 85% positive, 14% neutral and 1% negative »
258 million impressions and 901,000 engagements »
57.4% sales conversion of sales qualified leads delivered »
Customer-validated business outcomes: 47 case studies complete and 196 in pipeline »
Cisco Internet of Everything Thought Leadership Platform: Visionary Insights Grounded in Real-World Business Outcomes
CISCO DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP DIAMOND AWARD
The real strength in the submission was the development of a programmatic approach delivering a structured framework and repeatable methodology, providing a sound
basis for the future as well as delivering results today. Cisco not only conducted primary research, using blue chip third parties to add further weight, but also had the vision to see this issue coming three years ago and stick with it. Companies so oft en get internally bored with a TL issue and forget how long it takes for the market to process and act on what they are hearing. It feels as though IoE has become a
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
12
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Turning over $3.6 billion in 2014 and employing more than 24,000 professionals worldwide, Amdocs is a leading provider of customer experience solutions, services and software serving the top 250 service providers globally. Our customers face increasingly brutal competition – from each other and from over-the-top (OTT) companies, such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Crucially, through ease of use and excellent design, the OTT en-trants into the communications market have made customer experience the new battleground for this industry.
While an undisputed technical leader, Amdocs realized it was lagging behind some of its competitors in terms of thought leadership. Only a small minority of customers saw the company as a “trusted advisor”. Some of our competitors were gaining mindshare, while Amdocs was flat-lining.
Against this fiercely competitive backdrop, the Executive Management team of Amdocs saw an opportunity to use customer experience as the theme to re-set perception, open new discussions, capture new revenue and drive business wins with our customers, while leap-frogging the competition.
As part of a broader repositioning exercise, which culminated in the launch of The New World of Customer ExperienceTM as the company’s new corporate messaging in February 2015, the Amdocs Market Insight and Strategy (MIS) team planned, designed, and executed a hard-hitting thought leadership program: The Customer Experience Spotlight.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The objectives of the Customer Experience Spotlight were to:
Facilitate conversations between Amdocs and the critical buying centers in our current and prospective ser- »vice provider customers
Accelerate the velocity of the sales pipeline »
Raise the awareness of Amdocs as the leader in customer experience solutions »
Working with a minimal budget, this innovative program over-achieved its targets, contributing directly to engage-ment with new buying groups.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The execution of the Customer Experience Spotlight thought leadership campaign comprised five distinct phases starting in May 2014 and running over a year.
Choice of methodology and hero message: the Global Customer Experience IndexThe MIS team worked with the Amdocs PR and AR departments to define the messaging platforms with most appeal to media and analysts. We decided to focus our thought leadership on generating a Global Customer Experience Index. Having defined what we wanted to say, we also fine-tuned our quantitative research approach so that it would deliver the proof points required.
Audience segmentation: Reaching parts of the customer organization others can’tA parallel phase of work focused on deciding the key buying persona(s) to be targeted by our Customer Experi-ence Spotlight program. Amdocs had already good connections with CIOs and COOs. Based on this input, we decided to orientate the Customer Experience Spotlight program towards the CMO persona.
Marketing mix decision: Making it Personal and FunGiven our chosen topic, we agreed in August 2014 on one simple guiding principle: the Customer Experience Spotlight would be a memorable experience for the CMOs we had decided to target. In addition to the traditional thought leadership deliverables, we focused on two high-touch and engaging delivery mechanisms:
A user-friendly online tool akin to a virtual TV game show »
A series of dedicated face-to-face workshops with our top CMO targets. »
BUSINESS RESULTS
The program over-achieved against its targets.
Brand awarenessThe Customer Experience Spotlight was mentioned in 81 publications in three months (vs. a target of 50). Our gamification video was the 6th most viewed on the Amdocs website (vs. top 10), and our press release reached 3rd most viewed article. Internally, the MIS brief-ing webinar was the 9th most downloaded asset on the company’s internal learning platform.
Business conversationsAgainst a target of 12 strategy workshops, the Customer Experience Spotlight was shared with 15 customers on a 1-1 basis in just three months, across 11 countries. Eight of these customers are included in the Amdocs ABM program. With an average of 15 customer attendees at each workshop, many at the VP or C-level, the MIS team achieved extraordinary intimacy with key decision makers, and beat the target of 125 individuals.
Amdocs Sets the Agenda for Customer Experience in the Global Communications Market
AMDOCS DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP GOLD AWARD
This is a great campaign addressing a very important topic with clearly defi ned objec-
tives. Amdocs took the time to work across functions to isolate the target audience and create messaging/content that would work for not just that target, but also analysts and other audiences. The initiative draws on some good basic practice, supplemented with innovative ideas such as the Quiz Show and gamefi cation for getting the message through to the audi-ence. It is customer focused throughout and demonstrates considerable tailoring to meet the needs of individual customers. Another strength is that this has been incorporated into the new hire induction.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
13
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In the midst of compliance turmoil and confusion over the Volcker Rule, PwC aimed to position its services as a trusted advisor with the right solution for any Financial Services company facing its implications. The PwC Financial Services Regulatory team set out to develop a complete set of offerings based on The Volcker Rule and turned to the Financial Services Marketing team to help them develop the market for this solution.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Recognizing the emerging opportunity, the PwC Financial Services Marketing team moved quickly behind the scenes to mobilize and develop a holistic approach. Thought leadership content was structured pre-emptively, adapted quickly based on possible outcomes and covered widely by the media. Spokespeople were adequately prepped. For roundtable events, valuable, thought-provoking agendas were assembled and subject matter experts were brought in. Representatives from almost all impacted banks attended.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Collaboration » amongst teams was prioritized from the start. Thought leaders and practitioners interpreted the rule’s eff ects on the fi nancial industry while also predicting its evolution. Simultaneously, the business development team drew from these interpretations to focus on how to best provide client solutions. All the while, the marketing team acted as a conduit amongst people and teams, facilitating invaluable dialogue and identifying key opportunities.
Events » were planned to encourage a sense of alliance and information-sharing amongst key clients. The agendas for these roundtables were thoughtfully constructed with the intention of driving discussion while also getting a sense of where clients stood in understanding the Volcker rule and being prepared to adapt to it.
Thought leadership » publications soared in popularity with over 13,000 downloads of regulatory focused thought leadership from the PwC regulatory site alone. A dedicated team of both subject matter experts and industry generalists made for a comprehensive understanding of the Volcker Rule. We remained dedicated to our branding methodology labelling publications as First Take, A Closer Look or Regulatory Brief. Our publica-tions were thus quick to market and, most importantly, were intellectually accessible and practical. People could easily digest them, unlike many competitors’ jargon-heavy publications.
Dedicated Volcker webpage » – Considering the volume and value of thought leadership produced, we created a webpage dedicated specifi cally to the Volcker Rule content. Our Thought leadership dominated Google search results. When searching for “Volcker Rule” PwC ranked #1, far and away, in comparison to other Big Four fi rms.
Public relations » prospects were capitalized on. We gained widespread and positive media coverage.
BUSINESS RESULTS
With a comprehensive and collaborative strategy for the Volcker rule, Our marketing strategy served us well, placing us atop all other Big Four firms and we now serve a whopping 13 of the largest 30 global SIFIs.
Beyond driving thought leadership publications resulting in first-to-market wins, we also had thousands of content downloads.
Thought leadership publications # of publications # of downloadsFirst take 3 2,000A closer look 3 3,000Regulatory briefs 8 8,000Total 14 13,000
By hosting numerous events, we capitalized on gaining insider intelligence into our clients’ current status with implementing the Volcker Rule.
Events # of events # of attendeesRoundtables 8 300Webcasts 1 700Total 9 1,000
Driving Business with Thought Leadership
PWC DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP GOLD AWARD
Speed and agility were the defi ning—and distinctive—features of this campaign. The FS marketing team at PwC took the lead in a collaborative eff ort to help interpret and communicate the company’s
views on what impact the Volcker Rule would have on large banks. This submission demonstrated a clear view of the business need and the customer need, a good plan, excellent collaboration internally, and great results. The team worked closely with customers to consider their needs and how best to respond, then used this intelligence to target messages and engagement eff iciently and eff ectively. The ‘intense and systematic’ collaboration throughout the initiative shines through and clearly underpinned the great results achieved.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
14
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2013 we realized that SITA’s ambitious 3-year business plan and 2020 vision called for a significant step up in our sales capability to drive growth. While overall we were consistently achieving our sales objectives and retaining most of our contracts, we were facing a challenge winning the level of new business required. In addition, while our customer relationships were good (NPS & brand scores) they were not all at CXO level, which constrained our ability to position our offering and solution capabilities.
Meanwhile, with a continual progression in passenger numbers and air transport becoming a profitable industry, competition was becoming increasingly aggressive.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
To drive the growth required, Marketing & Sales Operations led the development of a strategic sales transforma-tion plan to improve SITA’s commercial effectiveness, requiring $20m+ of funding over three years.
The plan, approved at CEO level, was to:
Help our sales and extended sales organization up-skill in an increasingly competitive market and growing »portfolio of SITA solutions
Increase sales eff ectiveness through integration of a large number of stakeholders and SMEs at all levels of the »program
Build sales confi dence, increase portfolio learning, improve coverage model » —in turn accelerating SITA’s growth
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Our target audience represented about 10% of SITA’s total workforce - 450 staff - dispersed across the 170 coun-tries. To ensure buy-in, to support the change management effort and provide clarity, a structured program with clear brand identity and engagement was rolled out over 24 months under the umbrella name STARS.
Highlights include:
Aggressive hiring plan: sales workforce to be increased by 23% »
Trained 487 people in 7 newly-created training modules and online sales guides with 65% certifi ed YTD »
93% of the fi eld engaged in our fi rst ever worldwide Gamifi cation to encourage proactive acquisition of »portfolio knowledge
2 editions of President’s Club run in Bahamas and Mauritius with our CEO, driving right behaviors from »our top sales performers
1600 users on Salesforce, our new sales platform, fully deployed in September 2014 with user adoption »and satisfaction above industry benchmarks
BUSINESS RESULTS
Although each program has a different maturity level, we overachieved on all indicators in 2014 and are on track to impact key performance metrics in 2015.
Contracts worth US$220m have been closed as a direct influence of this program, significant pipeline progression in nearly all deal categories from Q1 2014-Q1 2015 and a win rate increased of +8%, showing an improved capac-ity to win business.
Above all those tangible results, the most striking one is that the shift has started to happen. There is clear, posi-tive uptake in all Geographies; the sales organization sees the value in addressing their needs. 12 months into the program, 100% of our stakeholders agree it is necessary to change and 87% believe STARS is driving that change.
“[I] fully agree STARS is starting to have an impact. And it is a journey,” GEO President MEIA.
STARS program
ENABLING SALES AND SME CHANNELS FOR DEEPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT DIAMOND AWARDSITA
SITA’s program demonstrates ambition, execution, and results. This is an innovative and thoroughly im-pressive initiative to address a sales and growth challenge. It is a sweeping transformation of the sales
approach and the way that marketing supports it. The STARS program is a comprehensive investment in sales training, sales tools, and coaching—driven my marketing—that has generated sales endorsement, fi nancial returns, and the praise of executive management.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
15
What We Sell is the single destination for enterprise services sales teams within Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for what to sell and how to sell it. A cloud-based, mobile-enabled platform provides instant access for services Sales and Account Executives (AEs) to the latest collateral, targeted messaging, ROI examples, and supporting tools, all carefully curated to maximize the value of each client and prospect interaction.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Prior to What We Sell, fragmented, scattered, and non-standard sales materials frustrated sales teams. They were spending too much time searching for what they needed and often had to edit and repackage what they found, making it difficult to respond quickly to client requests.
After conducting 500+ surveys and interviews with Sales and AEs and reviewing performance analytics from Sales-force.com data, the What We Sell program team concluded that the average Sales person was spending at least 20% of their time searching for and packaging sales content for client meetings.
When Sales spends time hunting for information, that is time not being spent winning the client. If Sales can’t tell a compelling services story and showcase actual client results, it’s challenging to grow the business.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The business had a clear objective: provide Sales with a single, trusted source of quality content and make it accessible anywhere.
The What We Sell program team knew that a technology solution alone would not solve all the issues – it would require a combination of content quality, scalable technology and stakeholder relationships to provide sales and marketing enablement.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The What We Sell program team used a systematic approach to manage the initiative: define requirements for the project, measure the current state and establish baselines, analyze and identify root causes of frustrations, set key improvement metrics, and design and deploy the new solution: What We Sell.
Focusing on the program objective, the What We Sell program team:
Surveyed and interviewed 500+ sales, AEs, and sales support employees to measure the current state and un- »derstand the root causes of problems. The survey data, combined with Web best practices and user-centered design, guided the What We Sell program implementation plan.
Created a governance process and data architecture using information from multiple rounds of surveys, inter- »views, and user testing with card sorting & wireframes. The program team incorporated this approach into a continuous improvement process.
Gathered requirements to design and test the website and content processes, launch the program, and imple- »ment ongoing improvements based on feedback.
Organized work eff orts based on areas of expertise, including content strategy, user experience, technical de- »velopment, web design, database/content management, mobility design, and stakeholder communications & training.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The development of the What We Sell platform has radically improved the efficiency and effectiveness of sales enablement & supporting functions. What We Sell is a cost-effective, enterprise-scale platform that enables:
Consolidated and consistent content that adheres to strict quality standards managed through governance »processes supported by automated workfl ow
Instant access to relevant and valuable information securely hosted in HP Helion Cloud »
User-friendly, mobile-enabled interface for Sales with universal search and embedded automation to fi nd all »content in one destination
Customization for an enterprise business»
Collaborative go-to-market relationships across business functions »
What We Sell – Sales & Marketing Enablement Platform for Hewlett Packard Enterprise
HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE ENABLING SALES AND SME CHANNELS FOR DEEPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT GOLD AWARD
Although building a mobile app to enable sales is not unique, this was an innovative approach in combination with a sweeping set of changes in collateral and sales support. In particular, the elements
to aid in customer engagement—the microsite wizard and campaign opt-in tool—were particularly distinc-tive. The depth of analysis (500+ interviews) and strong focus on understanding the needs of sales set this submission apart.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
16
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Does marketing work? That’s a question CSC can now answer with its Digital Marketing Dashboard.
Recent technological advances, including Web analytics and automation, promised to transform marketing. But the result was a virtual explosion in the number of new marketing tools available, many of which required significant operating resources. These tools can also leave reporting gaps.
CSC realized it would need an expansive, integrated suite of digital marketing tools. The company set out to create just that.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
CSC sells to large commercial entities and public sector organizations worldwide. Buying cycles typically last from nine to 18 months. To report on its marketing campaigns, CSC had many systems producing many reports. But the company realized that real value would have to come from integrating the data these systems produce, then delivering analytics and knowledge in a simple, organized way.
To do this, CSC created its first Digital Marketing Dashboard. This involved leveraging several tools, including Demandbase B2B Marketing Cloud, Salesforce, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Eloqua. Yet the goals were simple:
Provide a high-level summary of charts and key marketing metrics »
Create a simple user interface and at-a-glance reporting so the tool is used daily »
Accurately attribute marketing sources »
Remove the walls separating Marketing from Sales »
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The CSC team saw it would need to centralize all core sales and marketing KPIs. This information was available on a shared spreadsheet with several worksheets. One sheet corresponded to the overview tab, showing the core KPIs for digital marketing as a whole. Beneath those were the various groups, such as Web, social and content. The team could go into the spreadsheet and add whatever KPIs they thought made sense for the various groups.
CSC determined the dashboard would need no more than 10 reports per area. So the company defined the key areas that needed reporting, and it limited reports to pieces that would link to the core KPIs. Then CSC started pulling the data and making the transformation.
Today, the dashboard enables CSC executive’s to see how marketing is doing, and to define the company’s core marketing KPIs. The dashboard shows the number of marketing leads generated, the TCV from closed deals, and the pipeline created with open deals—all resulting from marketing actions.
Users can drill into leads, Web, brand, content, social media, campaigns and more. All are linked back to CSC’s core KPIs, which are prioritized around leads resulting in cash.
The data presented in the dashboard helps initiate daily conversations across the CSC marketing organization. For example, the dashboard’s content-scoring model shows higher performing content on the CSC homepage; this lets content managers see which campaigns are contributing to KPIs, and which need improvement.
CSC also designed and built a custom real-time personalization enablement system. Called Isana, it gathers input from various sources in a weighted fashion. Isana uses factors such as recentness and frequency to compute scores along various dimensions at both the individual and account level.
BUSINESS RESULTS
CSC’s Digital Marketing Dashboard is now available to all CSC employees who request it. For marketing associ-ates, Dashboard has become their go-to place for measuring success. Dashboard lets them view all marketing KPIs, whether from web analytics, social and campaign trends, or a complete leads-to-cash audit trail from every lead ever contributed by marketing.
Dashboard also helps CSC’s marketing team to work more closely with sales. Marketing often uses Dashboard to share account-based analytics with strategic-account sales teams, and it collaborates daily with inside sales to closely track leads through the funnel.
Finally, the Digital Marketing Dashboard lets CSC closely track success metrics and ROMI for every marketing campaign. That includes small, regional campaigns as well as large, global integrated campaigns that have con-tributed a marketing-sourced pipeline as high as $25 million and marketing-assisted pipeline as high as $2 billion.
Chris Marin, CSC’s head of digital marketing platform & analytics and also the person credited with bringing the dashboard initiative to life, says: “The fact that we can say, ‘Here is where marketing actually contributes to the bottom line,’ is powerful.”
CSC Digital Marketing Dashboard
CSC MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE DIAMOND AWARD
CSC’s submission is a fantastic example of marketing automation at its best. This is a highly complex project to integrate multiple platforms and improve the eff ectiveness of marketing throughout the
buyer journey. The marketing link back to business impact with proven results is particularly impressive. Among the quantitative assessment of business impact, CSC showed a $1 billion pipeline contribution from one campaign alone.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
17
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Imagine wanting to improve client impact and demonstrate marketing’s contribution to the business but lacking some of the necessary people, processes, and tools. That was Avanade’s situation three years ago.
So we looked at internal and external factors and at our marketing organization and determined that we needed to transform.
Internally, marketing and sales were not well enough aligned. Marketing was assigning inconsistent quality leads to sales, and those leads that were of a good quality were not being progressed by sales through the pipeline. It was impossible to tie sales and pipeline growth to marketing activities, leaving us unable to measure ROI.
Externally, our market was increasingly competitive. IT buyers and the buying process were changing, leading us to examine how we addressed the marketplace. We saw that our marketing activities were ineffective, with below-industry response rates.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
We knew we needed to create a more strategic, complete marketing function. Key objectives were to be able to measure performance, assess ROI, improve effectiveness and demonstrate marketing’s value to the business.
In 2013 Avanade launched a three-year Global Marketing Effectiveness Program to:
Better understand clients and the market »
Increase our relevance to clients »
Increase marketing’s value to the business »
Improve closeness with sales »
PROGRAM EXECUTION
A marketing operations leader was brought in to run the effectiveness program and develop the operations function. Early partnerships with our CIO and IT department, sales and sales enablement, and service lines were essential to the program.
We identified three success factors:
The program should focus on helping marketing become more strategic and aligned with business objectives. 1.
It had to cut across the entire marketing organization – corporate, areas, regions.2.
We needed to increase our digital marketing capabilities and presence.3.
The program was organized in four workstreams. A formal plan incorporated milestones for each workstream.
1. Planning, Budgeting, Measurement and ReportingDriven centrally and focused on measuring marketing’s performance and impact on the business through:
Standardized central planning and budgeting to align marketing and business objectives »
Marketing measurement framework »
Standard KPIs, scorecards and reporting »
2. CapabilitiesFocused on execution, including solutions and industry marketing, go-to-market model with global programs and campaigns, virtual centers of excellence, alliance marketing, and digital marketing.
Digital marketing was identified as a key improvement area. Activities included the development of a digital marketing strategy, marketing automation, website modernization, and expansion of our social media strategy and activities.
3. People and OrganizationFocused on getting the right people with the right skills on board. We strengthened skill sets, added and reorga-nized several corporate marketing functions, built out field marketing with focused training and formalized the marketing career model.
4. Tools and ProcessesFocused on implementing new tools and processes to ensure that we realize results. An experienced marketing technologist was brought in to lead digital channels and platforms and implement a marketing automation system. This enabled us to create a closed-loop lead management system to properly route, assign, progress and track leads through the integrated sales and marketing funnel.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The Global Marketing Effectiveness Program has significantly strengthened our measurement and reporting capability.We deployed a performance measurement framework, with multiple scorecards and globally standard-ized KPIs. The framework enables more realistic, rigorous target setting.
Campaigns are brought to market faster, more consistently and with better results. On a more qualitative – but important – note, our campaigns enable us to broaden the conversation with clients beyond IT to business issues.
Most significantly, we now use the right data to tell a more powerful story and gain insight into what’s working and what needs attention. And we can now demonstrate marketing’s value to the business with measures such as sales and pipeline influenced. At the same time, marketing gained a seat at the executive table, helping to position us as more strategic in the company.
What a difference three years make. Avanade’s Global Marketing Effectiveness Program will end shortly. But with the right people, processes and tools in place, we will continue to develop as a world-class marketing organiza-tion with the ability to connect better with our clients and demonstrate our impact on business results.
Avanade Global Marketing Effectiveness Program
AVANADE MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE GOLD AWARD
Avanade’s submission presented a comprehensive marketing transformation story, not just a measurement one. It’s almost the creation of an overarching “marketing genome.” The emphasis on change manage-
ment was key to success. The entry demonstrated a well defi ned methodology for process improvements and strong knowledge of interdependencies across marketing and the rest of the organization.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
18
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Marketing performance reporting had long been a pain point for the marketing organization and executive leader-ship team at Avaya. The marketing team was reporting far too many meaningless metrics, many of which were fo-cused on activities rather than outcomes, or were strictly quantitative with no emphasis on quality. Likewise, the team was unable to provide a view of how marketing was impacting the customer journey or buying cycle, and could show no logical link to business outcomes. The group was also hampered with inconsistencies in tracking metrics between various functions and across regions. It was obvious that a new measurement framework was a priority, which meant a new solution needed to be delivered in a very short timeframe, despite limited resources, limited data, and no available budget.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Avaya’s CMO Funnel Dashboard and overall measurement framework project kicked off with three key objectives. The first objective was to develop a consistent and unbiased model to measure performance in driving high level business goals across every stage of the marketing funnel. Second, the team wanted to utilize data visualization techniques to better demonstrate results to all stakeholders, from the marketing functional teams, all the way up to the Board of Directors. Lastly, it was important to ensure marketing was focused on generating meaningful metrics, with an emphasis on providing actionable insights and promoting data-driven decision making at every level.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The most challenging aspect of the program was the design of the overall measurement model and methodology that would be used to aggregate the various data elements within the framework. The framework design was focused on providing an overall score that would demonstrate performance at each phase of the funnel, so this step included categorizing all of the metrics by funnel area and identifying any gaps that needed to be addressed.
After testing various methodologies, the optimal framework was finalized. This solution consisted of two key performance indicators. The Avaya Benchmark Score ranks marketing performance on a scale of 1-5. The scale is based on industry standards from a ranking of 1 for the worst performers to 5 for best-in-class performance. The Avaya Performance Index measures the change in year-over-year performance from a baseline index of 100 points. The score and index are both based on a weighted, aggregate calculation of relevant disparate elements that together provide a single cohesive representation of performance across each area of the marketing funnel.
With the framework completed, the team moved on to the creation of the actual dashboard that would be used to capture, calculate and report all of these results. With no available budget, Avaya utilized advanced functional-ity and features to build a dynamic dashboard in Excel. The team started by building a data map and establishing the necessary formulas and functions that would be needed to provide the various views. The actual dashboard was then built based on that blueprint and was tested extensively to verify functionality. Once the dashboard was complete, the team gathered and added the data, and was immediately able to begin reporting results.
BUSINESS RESULTS
Avaya’s CMO Funnel Dashboard launched in January 2015, complete with Q1 results and analysis. The insights provided by the dashboard so far have already driven the following business results:
The team was immediately able to identify a need to shift marketing resources between functions in order to »focus on capturing higher value targets. These changes led to an increase of 26% in the average deal size of wins in just four months.
The dashboard also enabled the team to recognize a downward trend in the lead to opportunity conversion »rate, which dictated a move to improve the quality of leads at the top of the funnel. As a result of those actions, the opportunity to win conversion rate recovered, which drove an increase in marketing sourced bookings, in the range of 8-12% in Q215.
Avaya’s new measurement framework embodies more than a standard measurement program, it represents a completely new way of measuring and reporting marketing performance at Avaya. Moreover, it establishes a completely new way of aggregating and reporting performance across the entire marketing funnel.
Avaya CMO Funnel Dashboard
AVAYA MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE GOLD AWARD
This is a well thought-through plan with tangible benefi ts and impact to the organization. Avaya generated quantifi able business benefi ts with buy-in from key stakeholders. The submission details a
good process for identifying business goals and delivering against them without unnecessary technology convolutions. In the current technology frenzy, it’s nice to see such an eff ective but lean job.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
19
ITSMA’s 18th annual Marketing Excellence Awards program honors the marketing programs, campaigns, and new initiatives that have achieved excellence worldwide. The awards put special emphasis on the four most
critical aspects of marketing success: planning, execution, innovation, and measurable business impact.
“I continue to be blown away by the quality of the submissions that we receive and the results that these marketers are delivering for their companies. The competition for our program is tough, but this year’s
finalists really stepped up” said Dave Munn, President and CEO of ITSMA.
The 2015 ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards categories and finalists:
Accelerating Growth with Account Based Marketing:
Cisco, HCL, HP, KPMG, SAP
Capitalizing on Marketing’s New Tools and Technologies:
Avanade, Cisco, Dell, HCL, IBM
Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience:
Avanade, Avaya, Cisco, HCL, Misys
Driving Business with Thought Leadership:
Amdocs, Capgemini, Cisco, Optum, PwC
Enabling Sales and SME Channels for Deeper Customer Engagement:
Amdocs, Cisco, HP, SITA, Unisys
Measuring and Communicating Marketing Performance:
Avanade, Avaya, CSC
2015 MARKETING EXCELLENCE AWARDS FINALISTS
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions. As a membership organization, we work with the world’s leading technology and professional services firms to
generate new business, strengthen customer loyalty, and increase brand differentiation.
Learn more at www.itsma.com.
1.888.ITSMA92 (Outside the U.S. +1-781-862-8500)
91 Hartwell Avenue | Lexington, Massachusetts 02421 | USA
www.itsma.com/2015-mea-winners/
