ENABLING FRONT OFFICE TRANSFORMATION

Transcription

1 CASE STUDY ENABLING FRONT OFFICE TRANSFORMATION How Salesforce and a humancentered digital transformation approach accelerated Cognizant s marketing and sales In 2015, Cognizant Technology Solutions was at the top of its game. After a little more than 20 years in business, we had become a respected global IT and consulting services leader, growing to more than 200,000 employees with revenue over $10 billion. Yet rather than celebrating our successes, we decided to turn our technology and consulting expertise on ourselves. Cognizant embarked on an ambitious organizational change program centered on redefining how and what we delivered to our clients. Why perform such potentially risky sales surgery on a healthy patient? Because we saw the rising tide of digital transformation. And like many companies today, it was clear that what fueled our past growth would not ensure our future success. BEGINNING A REVENUE GROWTH TRANSFORMATION Revenue Growth is one of the top strategic objectives of most organizations, and Cognizant is no different. In today s environment, meeting revenue objectives is increasingly challenging. Quickly changing market dynamics, resource AT A GLANCE Outcomes: 1400 basis point improvement in win rates within first twelve months of implementation. A 30% improvement in pre-qualified opportunity visibility, enabling substantially earlier talent supply decisions and better ongoing management. Substantial improvement in accuracy and consistency of forward-looking revenue guidance (enabled by signaling forecast decisions in Salesforce) resulting in a 35% decrease in manual revenue forecast adjustments. Almost 20% increase in backlog (committed sales).

2 constraints and the impact of digital on market opportunities and market threats can all be factors limiting an organization s future growth. For our revenue growth transformation, we planned to digitally disrupt our market strategy, and align our sales and marketing functions in a journey to create significant improvements driving sustainable and predictable revenue growth. What direction did we set based upon this case for change? Leadership quickly focused their ambitions on those objectives that would have the highest strategic returns. But as we do with our clients, we recognized that the true starting point for our journey would vary greatly depending upon our current level of maturity. SETTING OBJECTIVES Our assessment of our current state showed that at our current level of maturity, it made the most sense to focus on the fundamentals. There was no common language, scorecard, messaging or shared vision around the right business opportunities to take on. We also lacked consistency in identifying and developing critical sales skills, and had no shared definition of success. And these inconsistent approaches were beginning to make an impact: Without a standardized CRM approach and demand data capture tools, we had little or no transparency in the sales pipeline. Manual revenue adjustments were common, and in some cases we had to restate our forecasts. And poor demand visibility was making it difficult to accurately anticipate staffing needs. The patient was healthy, but it was clear that an intervention would be needed soon to prevent serious issues in the future. PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE: THE CASE FOR CHANGE Disruptive results come from committing to transformations in business, operating and technology models simultaneously, in the context of delivering exceptional and often surprising customer value by staying highly relevant to their needs. At Cognizant, we recognized that our sales, marketing and service models were all potential targets for disruption, and we began our journey by developing a Cognizant Way to Sell and Cognizant Way to Market that set our vision for service excellence and our behavioral objectives for sales and marketing effectiveness. These disrupted operating models, along with our business model pivot to being the digital transformation partner of choice for our clients and our new, cloud-based technology platform for sales and marketing served as the foundation for a highly successful journey to increased revenue growth. Strategic Intent PURPOSEFUL REVENUE GROWTH GO ON OFFENSE Strategic value REQUIRED BUSINESS PROCESS INFRASTRUCTURE Have world-class operating processes Sales Process & Enablement Improve win rates, loyalty, deal size/velocity, funnel management Marketing Process & Enablement Improve market awareness, lead gen & nurture, marketing program design and execution Efficiency AUTOMATE / OPERATE Ensure state-of-art revenue infrastructure to Maintain the agility Keep Costs aligned with growth Take advantage of outsourcing Take advantage of Sales-Tech and Mar-Tech Be Customer relevant Evaluate and sell into new segments and geos Leverage strategic partnerships/channels Innovate new value to market Innovate service delivery and economics Rationalize investment portfolio(go ON OFFENSE) Utilize data driven insights Maturity

3 Recent sales benchmarks show most sales organizations are not generating the top line sales results they were looking for after investing millions of dollars in sales training COGNIZANT S REVENUE GROWTH TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY Aligning to strategic intent by operationalizing a model for revenue growth Beginning our journey Cognizant s Sales and Marketing Excellence program delivered significant results less than twelve months after implementation. But what drove this successful transformation? Our journey mirrors the kind of holistic solution we bring to our clients, connecting technology expertise with a change consultation approach that embraces the human side of digital and applies a leading-edge approach to managing disruptive organizational change. What are the key success factors that lead to a truly valuable sales disruption journey? Here are the steps that are powering our continuing transformation. Rethinking what we do. Creating a compelling case for change is a critical starting point for any transformational effort. But how do you make a truly revolutionary change deliver results? Our executive sponsor for the initiative supported a tight alignment between our change messaging and our current performance measures and organizational language. We selected Salesforce as the enabling technology for WinZone, our single source for customer relationship management. Development of WinZone was managed under a fail fast mindset that encouraged experimentation and innovation. The market strategies, customer experience and commercialization that ensure a company s products or services have a value customers cannot live without. Winning at each stage of the buying process and ability to monitor key metrics toþ accurately forecast revenues. Achieving the highest levels of market awareness and demand generation. Using market insights to influence how the organization addresses customer buying habits. Ensuring customer satisfaction throughout the customer life-cycle, a critical component of revenue generation and CLV. The capability to translate strategy into action and deliver strategic business outcomes as a result. Customer Relevance Sales Marketing Service Transformation Leadership and enablement Reimagining our approach to sales and marketing. Cognizant introduced a complete business and technical design to guide our approach. A new Client Value Framework defined a single global selling methodology for all business units globally, leveraging our digital sales playbooks stored in assetserv, our digital asset management solution linked directly to WinZone. This linking includes a one stop search capability within Salesforce. Pipeline data, pursuit risk assessment, action-oriented digital call plans and a first-of-its-kind digital integration of Huthwaite International s SPIN selling techniques are available from one search field linked directly to the opportunity management process. This creates the clearest possible line of sight between vision, critical behaviors, key performance indicators and performance support resources, integrating best practices in technology implementation and organizational change management.

4 Rethink Reimagine Reinvent Realize Customer Relevance Define KPIs and roadmap aligned to stragegic objectives Introduce Client Value Framework to align client need and services Establish Sector and Account Growth Plans with clear targets & KPIs Modernize Service Catalog and establish regular review cycle Sales Define Cognizant way to Sell (CWTS) & select SFDC platform Establish revenue growth community, pilot & validate CWTS model and roll-out globally Embed Key sales behaviors via Sales Training and Deal Reviews Establish compensation plans aligned to Sales Behaviors & KPIs and monitor compliance Marketing Define Cognizant Way to Market (CWTM) & select Marketing Automation platform Mobilze integrated marketing plans & mobilize a shared services campaign team Align marketing plans optimize marketing campaigns, channels & tactics Service Define Cognizant service model & select service plaform(s) Pilot & validate multi channel service model and roll-out globally Tranformation Leadership and enablement Build Vision, objectives, mobilize governance & delivery workstream Assure workstream delivery and quality via regular gate reviews, address change concerns & needs Track adoption and complaince, deploy change interventions to drive desired behaviors Track goal achievement and benefits realization Re-inventing our working framework. How do you create the right operational conditions for success? Embed the right behaviors in the organization through processes, training, tools and clear performance indicators. Standardized account planning and streamlined pipeline tracking processes, methods, and tools helped create a single, integrated and accurate pipeline and forecast. Prototyping, piloting and scaling new ways of working were also critical to our success. Sales professionals prepare for client conversations about our very latest digital offerings and solutions with digital sales assets, on-demand e-learning programs and both in-person and virtual training courses. Realizing tangible results with people... supported by technology and clear communication. Our digital change enablement program takes a 360-degree approach to supporting our teams through the entire marketing and sales process. Marketing qualified leads from Salesforce Pardot campaigns are passed to account teams automatically. Our vision and goals are reinforced through collection and sharing of customer feedback on both our successes and failures. And both sales and marketing professionals are supported with new automation and tools supporting internal processes, development of market insights and facilitating regular interaction with our clients. CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS AT EACH STAGE OF THE JOURNEY Accelerating your path to success From new ways of thinking... As part of our 2020 strategy, Cognizant embarked on a transformation of not only our processes, but our thinking to better prepare our leaders to help clients shift to digital and achieve our targets for profitable growth. From our four steps below reframing our challenge to focused activity work streams designed to deliver key business outcomes, here are some of our steps to success.

5 RETHINK Align vision & metrics of transformation to strategic objectives Create a compelling case for change around which to align stakeholders REIMAGINE Develop a common language, scorecard and messaging Be sure there s clarity and brevity on what s truly different Establish an optimal business and technical design to fulfill the vision Ensure the future operating model is feasible RECREATE Create the right conditions to focus the organizations for success Define, promote and scale what great looks like Modernize the technology backbone Prototype, pilot and scale new ways of working REALIZE Build a fully integrated change network to drive impact Teach and coach what you expect Integrate sales methodologies with process, tools & recognition... to new ways of doing. Enabling a marketing and sales transformation. How did we leverage our digital consulting capabilities to run better and run different with Salesforce? We started with a comprehensive marketing and sales transformation, from defining and automating new best practices to fully integrating Salesforce and Pardot with existing systems. We ensured tight alignment organizationally between our vision, success metrics and strategic objectives. The result was a global Growth Community committed, empowered and supported to improve revenue pipeline, implement a modern digital marketing organization. The Cognizant Way to Sell and Market automated with Salesforce drove tangible results, including a 1400 basis point improvement in win rates as we enabled ROI-based reporting for marketing campaigns. Building a new platform for revenue growth. Cognizant validated our new Salesforce platform and created the blueprint for success by creating a common language, scorecard and messaging to all sales and marketing professionals. Our change network and digital change tools helped embed new behaviors, allowing our start small, scale fast pilot-to-enterprise expansion model to rapidly expand our new CRM solution into the single source of sales and marketing tracking for Cognizant. Establishing this network helped us bypass the typical reluctance sales teams have to spend discretionary effort and time on non-revenue producing activities. Baseline metrics and scorecards tracking our progress against agreed success measures continued our momentum, and we established a consistent client value framework to inform client-facing communications. Creating a Salesforce delivery factory. How do you move from initial pilot to completion in 9 months over 4 rollout waves, covering 7 business units, 20 horizontal teams and almost 7000 users? By building an exceptional capability to build, test and implement cloud solutions like Salesforce in enterprise settings. Our center of excellence has developed and delivered 10+ releases of new capabilities, each of which powered additional revenue and pipeline performance gains. Coaching teams from change impact to organizational readiness. Our Early and often training approach integrating digital classroom and self-help resources, including WalkMe and video-based learning, set expectations for human performance early and eliminated the need for an expansive training team. We found that sales training - not just sales tools are the key to accelerate behavior and process changes. Support after initial training was scalable and shared with existing operations teams while

6 remaining relevant and concise to users. Change network and stakeholder feedback groups ensured a virtuous cycle of customer feedback and platform improvements. Transformation leadership and enablement. Leadership is critical to any transformative initiative, and our sales and marketing leadership stepped up to energize global stakeholders around a compelling case for change and established rapid transformation frameworks to drive adoption. We committed to a global sales platform built on digital design principles to enable future scaling, increased compliance, and digital training initiatives. Business unit teams established and maintained a governance framework enabled by cadenced health checks, advanced analytics, and business transformation teams to execute on continuous improvement initiatives. Integrating acquisitions effectively to ensure success from day one. Growing organizations like Cognizant acquire new talent on a regular basis. Our people-first, process-led acquisition approach set clear expectations and supported ongoing success for our new colleagues using a number of change support tools. From 24-hour 800-number help centers to joint planning and communications sessions, new sales and marketing professionals enjoyed a hands-on, playbook-driven approach to migrating from their legacy systems into Salesforce and receiving the training they needed to excel. Digital innovation and change management. Stakeholder interviews and change impact assessments revealed the need for a diverse time-zone, learning style and availability-agnostic approach to digital change management. Our multi-tool approach led to over 20% improvement in compliance once we fully leveraged two-way mobile first, interactive methods such as Salesforce Chatter, Vyn (mobile video) and WalkMe online learning tools to support digital communication, digital leader engagement, and video-based online training programs. Change checkpoints were integrated into the CRM platform from day one, Continuing post-implementation momentum and simplification. Cognizant s digital agile project management approach has supported more than ten new releases to the Salesforce platform, introducing over 200-user requested process and system changes over a two year period. A maturing Sales and Marketing Operations function continues to accept transformative processes as business-as-usual support functions as the platform and overall program continue to evolve. To continue to monitor and manage change, KPIs with leading and lagging metrics / indicators were established to measure success, with sales teams in development to build a sense of ongoing ownership. Over time, we continued to encourage adoption by making our Salesforce platform the single source of sales tools, training and other performance-assisting assets tied directly to sales processes. ENABLING SUCCESS THROUGH DIGITAL INNOVATION Real-life experience in digitally transforming sales and marketing capabilities not only for our clients, but for ourselves Tools from science fiction, results at the bottom line Cognizant s close partnership, depth of expertise and experience with Salesforce.com made it the clear choice for our own CRM environment. Opportunities are tracked through the entire five-stage sales lifecycle in WinZone, supported by a robust digital adoption ecosystem. The results we achieved are what we aspire to with every Digital Transformation client we serve: Step-change, transformative improvements in strategic focus, efficiency and effectiveness. We united seven business units and fourteen product offering teams with a common sales language, process and pipeline. We significantly enhanced collaboration, transparency and our ability to identify and strategically manage key

7 Sales teams can collaborate on documents, ask for assistance or information, do research and share best practices using Salesforce Chatter and the Salesforce mobile app Just-in-time performance support is available in WinZone using WalkMe, a browser-based change enablement tool Sales teams receive in-person, virtual and video based training and are supported by a dedicated help desk available by phone or through Chatter. Smart video notes provide a mobile coaching, meeting note capture, and knowledge sharing platform. accounts. Integration with PeopleSoft and early visibility of opportunities provided effective signaling to recruiting and training, increasing our agility and ability to serve clients. And our consultative digital change enablement approach enabled our first global deployment over five months earlier than the originally committed deadline. Cognizant has revolutionized the entire way we sell, from the language we use to the clients we engage. Our sales teams have not only helped our clients implement digital solutions, but also reinvented themselves as truly digital organizations. And the digital ecosystem connecting and supporting our revenue growth transformation continues to evolve Using digital innovation to support human change Cognizant has embraced the perspective that digital innovation enables human imagination, unlocking the best we can offer and facilitating learning change and growth. Here are just a few of the applications of digital technologies we used to accelerate adoption of the key behaviors powering our revenue growth transformation. Chatter. Salesforce s own digital collaboration environment is a cornerstone of communication and collaboration within our sales and marketing community, providing a platform for groups to collaborate on everything from sales opportunities to working smarter with WinZone. Mobile apps. The Salesforce app and Vyn by Human Learning are field tools used daily to record contacts, track proposal development, record coaching or client meeting report videos, and more. Micro videos and virtual training. A robust blend of continuously updated self-service and instructor lead training provide everything from just enough, just in time refreshers to comprehensive workshops on the latest reporting, marketing automation, opportunity tracking and customer contact features. WalkMe. This digital helper guides Salesforce users step-by-step through complex tasks, eliminating the need to carry reference guides or other job aids and ensuring sales professionals can quickly get back to doing what they do best. Come innovate with us Cognizant s approach enables your company to go beyond tools and technology and helps you bring about a complete transformation in the ability to grow revenues in a predictable and sustainable manner. Contact us today and let us tell you about our end to end transformation capability to envision, enable and manage your revenue growth transformation, from strategy through execution.

8 LEARN MORE For more information about how we can help you begin your disruptive digital revenue growth transformations, contact us at ABOUT COGNIZANT Cognizant (Nasdaq-100: CTSH) is one of the world s leading professional services companies, transforming clients business, operating and technology models for the digital era. Our unique industry-based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S., Cognizant is ranked 195 on the Fortune 500 and is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at or follow World Headquarters 500 Frank W. Burr Blvd. Teaneck, NJ USA Phone: Fax: Toll Free: European Headquarters 1 Kingdom Street Paddington Central London W2 6BD England Phone: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) India Operations Headquarters #5/535 Old Mahabalipuram Road Okkiyam Pettai, Thoraipakkam Chennai, India Phone: +91 (0) Fax: +91 (0) Copyright 2018, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.