Annotated Bibliography & Problem Statement

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SECTION

IV Beyond the “Pilot” Phase: The Core Components of the Agile Selling Enterprise—Positioning

for Efficiency

Thus far in our book we have discussed why companies need toembrace the elements of the Agile Selling model, what that model looks like in practice, and some of the core capabilities necessary to get- ting the model off the ground.In Section IV, we explore the core infras- tructure needed to sustain the critical relationships with customers, channel partners, and other entities that are critical to Agile Selling.

It is somewhat ironic that many of the things that are disrupting companies’ sales efforts and pursuit of profitable growth are also the “cure”—especially mobile technologies and cloud computing. More than any other tools, mobile and cloud solutions hold massive promise for helping companies create the Agile Selling organization—one that can rapidly respond to new market demands, quickly drive new prod- ucts through the R&D pipeline, share information to interact with cus- tomers and partners in real time, and satisfy customers’ unique needs. Mobile and cloud solutions are fueling the development of highly flex- ible and collaborative business processes that are ideal for today’s new selling ecosystem.

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Wollan, Robert, et al. Selling Through Someone Else : How to Use Agile Sales Networks and Partners to Sell More, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harrisburg-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1112258. Created from harrisburg-ebooks on 2020-11-16 07:32:59.

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The IT organization plays a critical role in the development of such processes and, indeed, in the selection and implementation of key supporting technologies and infrastructure. And that’s why, as they move forward, companies must ensure that the sales and IT organizations are on the same page. Without tight coordination between the two, technology can fall far short of helping the sales organization—both internal and external—respond as quickly and nimbly as the market demands. In fact, both the CSO and CIO must be intimately involved across all segments of the sales organization and agree on how the sales technology infrastructure and supporting applications must evolve over time as business needs change.

Companies must also choose the right method of implementing new agile technologies—a decision that’s influenced by two main fac- tors. One factor is what we call “business penetration,” or the extent to which sales, channel partners, and other customer-facing entities and activities need to change to accommodate the technologies. The other is “process intensity,” or how much the new application affects key business processes. Assessing the situation using these two dimensions will help companies determine whether they should opt for a “plug and play,” trial, proof of value, or iterative transformation approach.

From a mobility perspective, there’s been an explosion of mobile device use among sales forces. And for good reason. Mobile devices enable salespeople to inject speed, responsiveness, and easier access to vital information into the sales cycle, with the end result being more deals closed, more quickly. However, in most organizations, salespeo- ple are making their own decisions about which technologies to use and how and when to use them, which opens the door to a whole host of potential problems—consistency, standardization, optimization, and security—for the larger enterprise. These challenges are espe- cially problematic when a company sells through multiple channels. Thus, it’s critical for IT organizations to help build more strategic and standardized mobility-technology programs and strategies without exerting so much control and so many restrictions that it compromises their effectiveness.

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15 The CIO Sales Agenda

How to Build an Advanced Sales and Distribution IT Infrastructure

Robert Wollan, Paul Daugherty, and Saj Usman

Chapter Summary

• The CSO and CIO agendas are converging, but dealing with envi- ronmental and business changes are pushing them farther apart.

• Ambitious plans to respond to market complexity at the right speed is exposing operational complexity from years of layering on sales tools.

• CIOs today are taking on exponentially more complex issues as they deal with aging legacy applications and hardware that are slow, but not “obsolete enough” to make replacement justifiable from a cost standpoint.

Special acknowledgment to the Accenture High Performance IT Research team for their contributions to this chapter.

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• CIOs have an opportunity to play a significant role in the move to Agile Selling by adopting a more agile IT operating model and con- tributing their expertise to sales network enablement.

As we discussed in Chapter 1, advancements in technology have failed to deliver any measurable improvement in sales organization perfor- mance since the advent of sales force automation tools two decades ago. We underscored the fact that “dueling complexities” of the chief sales officer and chief information officer have played a major role in that failure, typically preventing the sales and IT organizations from more effectively aligning their agendas in the pursuit of growth. Such mis- alignment simply must be overcome for any company to successfully make the transition to an Agile Selling model.

In this chapter, we explore in more detail the operational com- plexities the typical IT organization confronts, discuss how the IT organization must evolve to rise above these challenges to be better positioned to support an Agile Selling model, and highlight some ways the CIO can play a more prominent role in a company’s extended sales ecosystem.

IT and the Battle of Operational Complexity

We have spent considerable time to this point in the book discussing the complexity the sales organization confronts on a daily basis and how that complexity challenges the current sales operating models in most companies. However, the IT organization faces its own challenges to address unprecedented operational complexity across the entire enter- prise. Some of the most significant of these challenges are:

• Supporting new business models: Today’s complex new business models are rapidly outpacing the capabilities of many existing technologies. CIOs are trying to adapt the existing IT infra- structure and applications to whole new ways of doing business— not just in the sales arena, but also in finance, marketing,

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manufacturing, and logistics. Doing so is akin to the proverbial “changing the tires while the car is speeding down the highway.”

• Fostering speed to online: The online channel offers immense promise to improve many aspects of a company’s business— something that leading companies have recognized. According to Accenture’s High Performance IT research,1 for example, high performers have web-enabled 42 percent more of their customer interactions and 93 percent more of their supplier interactions. Yet most companies still struggle to fully adopt online solutions that can strengthen customer and channel partner relationships.

• Imbuing enterprise agility: CIOs are confronted by the reality that legacy technologies are too rigid, heterogeneous, and often out- dated as a result of decades of patchwork maintenance, merger and acquisition (M&A), inadequate governance, and many other factors. Making matters worse, ongoing pressure to reduce oper- ating costs has stymied many IT organizations’ efforts to upgrade their core applications (although many companies are approach- ing the tipping point at which it becomes more cost effective to replace these systems than continuing to pump more money into maintaining them).

• Accommodating social media and mobile: These technologies offer substantial promise on so many levels. However, as we discuss in Chapter 16, many companies are having difficulty keeping pace with not only the innovations in these tools, but also user demand for them in their work environments. In fact, in our experience, most companies still don’t have robust, relevant strategies for how social media and mobile tools are deployed across the company.

• Avoiding being “disintermediated”: Frustrated with IT’s sluggish- ness and inability to respond to their needs, business users increas- ingly are buying technology solutions directly—especially cloud solutions,which require minimal technical expertise on the part of the end users to get up and running. For instance, chief marketing officers are expected to outpace chief information officers in direct technology spending within the next five years.2 Less involvement from IT in the purchase and deployment of technology solutions

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introduces a whole host of issues for enterprises—not the least of which involve standardization and security.

• Managing “big data”: The promise of “big data” is tantalizing, and companies are rushing to determine how they can leverage big data to unlock new growth opportunities. Along the way, they have come to realize that to be truly effective and impactful, big data analysis efforts must be coordinated and centralized—and have determined the CIO is the person for the job. Managing and capitalizing on the power of big data is neither easy nor straight- forward, and requires significant IT attention and resources (both of which are in short supply in many companies).

• Winning the battle for technology talent: Just as CSOs struggle to recruit and retain the right sales talent, CIOs face their own tal- ent crisis. They find it increasingly difficult to strike the right balance between having the skills needed to maintain legacy appli- cations and bringing in or developing new skills necessary to sup- portemerging tools and technologies (especially mobile and social media) that are rapidly becoming critical elements of the business technology landscape. To more strongly support the business’s need for agility, CIOs must have the right people on board.

Clearly, CIOs face huge challenges—challenges they must address if they are to become a more valued partner in the sales organi- zation’s drive toward Agile Selling.

The Need for an IT Evolution

Bringing CSOs and CIOs closer together starts with an evolution of the traditional IT operating model.

Many IT organizations have evolved from discrete, project- oriented technology providers to multisourced, multilocation services businesses. IT operations are increasingly characterized by a smaller but more dispersed workforce, complemented by multiple sourcing partners that deliver a variety of capabilities. For the most part, CIOs have managed this evolution as efficiently as possible. However, as many businesses centralize governance and control to support global

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operations, the increased organizational complexity has placed new demands on how CIOs manage and run the IT function. Increasingly, IT organizations are expected to be flexible, responsive, and innovative in supporting the business growth agenda—all while continuing to aggressively manage costs. CIOs must balance these sometimes conflicting agendas in the context of disruptive technology trends such as cloud computing, mobility, and the growing desire of employees to bring their own technology into the enterprise. Each of these trends pushes IT organizations farther away from the historic model of an integrated, in-house line function.

Unfortunately, the very sourcing models that helped CIOs improve IT’s efficiency and cost structure may now be hampering the flexibility that many IT organizations need to deliver cloud-based and other emerging services to the business. The ability to strategically use sourcing relationships to provide value to the business is one of the key differentiators between high performance businesses and those that are simply trying to keep up. For example, Accenture High Performance IT research shows that high-performance companies provide IT services via a standard, services-based catalog at twice the rate of other IT organizations.

During the downturn, many organizations emphasized running IT as cost-effectively as possible.Now, as businesses revisitinvestments in growth initiatives, attention turns to agility and innovation. How can IT organizations achieve excellence in these areas? Managing an increasingly complex, global “shared services” model—characterized by the integration of historically independent business functions such as finance, procurement, and marketing—requires a rethinking of everything from core IT architecture to IT skills. Fortunately, CIOs have many tools to help them improve the IT organization’s flexibility and effectively support the business growth agenda.

Four Steps to Improve the Global IT Operating Model

Accenture High Performance IT research shows that 67 percent of CIOs want to position IT as a strategic asset that will help the business

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grow through the use of innovative technology, products, or processes. Unfortunately, many IT operating models that were built around cost management during the downturn cannot sufficiently support the new growth-oriented agenda. Adding to the challenge, uncertainty about future growth is forcing many businesses to hedge their bets about where and how to invest, with the expectation that they will have to respond rapidly to unanticipated market or customer shifts. It is this market uncertainty that convinced a multinational energy company to adopt a new IT organization model that can respond more quickly to varying scenarios—and, in some cases, lead business innovation instead of following.

As the energy company is discovering, increasing an IT orga- nization’s agility while simultaneously balancing efficiency with the need to innovate requires changes to four key organizational elements. First, the IT architecture must evolve to support new and more diverse business models and processes. Second, the IT sourcing model must incorporate an increasing array of in-house and third-party solutions as businesses embrace the cloud and other emerging technologies. Third, the IT workforce must adopt new skills—ranging from technical expertise to relationship building—to support the new model. Finally, CIOs will need disciplined governance policies to establish priorities for innovation and manage both internal and external stakeholders in the new IT operating model.

Evolving the IT Architecture

Today’s IT architecture is made up of an increasingly diverse mix of standardized software and service components, from open-source plat- forms to cloud services, many of which must be integrated with legacy systems. Supporting this heterogeneous footprint is not easy; Accen- ture High Performance IT research found that one out of five CIOs admits he or she is struggling to modernize application architecture. The challenge is heightened by the need to design and develop appli- cations and tools for multiple communication and collaboration chan- nels. Consider how the rise of smartphones in the enterprise requires new mobile-enabled “apps” and functionality layered on existing archi- tectures, or how changes in the ways that customers research products

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online require a shift to corporate websites that are more content- oriented than transactional or promotional.

Competing in this complex environment requires agile IT archi- tectures that can scale up or down to accommodate business needs. Traditional approaches—consolidating around one of the major enter- prise software platforms, and building supply side capability that the business may or may not leverage—are quickly becoming outdated as IT organizations seek more flexible IT sourcing models.

Accenture High Performance IT research, for example, shows that high-performance businesses are three times more likely to prior- itize regular refreshes of their application architecture than are other organizations. Although many companies are hindered by legacy envi- ronments, high performers have mapped out transition plans that take into account short- and medium-term business needs and then match the right architecture components to those needs.

The globalenergy company cited earlier is in the early stages of its IT architecture transformation. A major first step was recognizing the challenge of being a truly global business. A clearer view of the drivers of business success is helping the IT organization to design an architec- ture that is less rigidand more diverse than in the past, with an emphasis on cloud and other emerging technologies. A large European retailer has embarked on a similar transformation journey. The company has spent the past three years consolidating the IT architectures of its three main retail businesses—grocery, pharmacy, and liquor—to increase supply chain and other operational efficiencies. Although the archi- tectural transition is still under way, the IT organization has already achieved significant improvements in scalability, flexibility, and cost control. (We explore how to develop a more flexible IT architecture in Chapter 17.)

Building Flexibility in IT Sourcing Models

With the IT architecture agenda in place, IT organizations can fine- tune their sourcing model, not simply to improve cost efficiencies but also to use external capabilities more effectively to drive innovation and growth. Unfortunately, many of the sourcing partnerships that CIOs established in the past decade may not be the best relationships to

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support the business’s growth agenda. The first wave of outsourcing was established largely to address cost and improve IT’s ability to oper- ate more efficiently. In many ways, this early outsourcing model cen- tered on plugging in capacity and new capabilities as needed to replace or augment more costly or less efficient in-house capabilities. For the most part, organizations have moved beyond this early approach to outsourcing, but they may now find themselves restricted by partnerships that were built from a cost-management perspective.

Enterprises have evolved from buying capacity to buying services, often involving multiple vendors, solutions, and skill sets. An Asia Pacific financial services company, for example, has restructured all of its IT activities into a services catalog that enables IT to quickly deliver emerging technologies or additional capacity to its business units. Proactively managing these services in support of business initiatives has enabled the IT organization to operate more efficiently and respond more rapidly to business needs.

As this company has demonstrated, the next generation of outsourcing is all about matching the growth agenda with the most appropriate IT sourcing options. CIOs must be proactive in the IT/business planning process. Close alignment with the business will help CIOs identify the best types of IT sourcing relationships as well as the in-house skills required to support these relationships. In a multi- source model, the capabilities of both the internal organization and the sourcing partners will change.

Information technology organizations require in-house person- nel who are as skilled at managing partnerships as they are at writing code. Managing suppliers requires a specific type of knowledge, and managing the business/IT interface—not just as an order taker but as an active participant in business process development—requires dif- ferent skills as well. Information technology is in a unique position to develop processes that align business users with the third-party services that best address their needs.

Adapting the IT Workforce

The emergence of new sourcing models, including cloud services, is reshaping the IT workforce. In the past, IT organizations focused

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primarily on internal enterprise software and developed specialized knowledge and skills to support this environment. Now, with many of those resources provided through managed services, IT organi- zations may lack expertise about the applications they are running. Shared services models are forcing CIOs to take a fresh approach to their workforce.

Some CIOs are moving more quickly than others. Accenture research shows that high-performance businesses are seven times more likely than other IT organizations to have invested in new technology skills development and three times more likely to be addressing skills development for application and technology architectures and information management. One large financial services provider in Europe discovered an IT skills gap as it reorganized around three core platforms: SAP, Microsoft, and business intelligence. The IT organization retained its top performers, eliminated roles that were no longer core to the new structure, and moved to an IT sourcing model with strategic partners for each platform. This strategic sourcing model enables IT to scale quickly to meet business demand, while retaining the knowledge the IT workforce is developing in support of these platforms.

CIOs should not underestimate the complexity of this type of cultural change. All participants in the IT ecosystem—including inter- nal staff, external vendors, and even business users who interface with IT—must adapt their skills to accommodate new global models for technology services. But there is a significant potential upside to the new IT operating model: It can help the CIO make proactive choices about which competencies to build in-house.

Running IT as a Business

As IT workforce competencies evolve, CIOs will need to adapt their own skills as well. Many CIOs are in the midst of a transition from managing a technology organization to managing a business, in which their primary mission is building relationships and helping senior lead- ership drive the business agenda as a partner, not a provider. A seat at the table is a cliché, but it is precisely what the CIO requires to foster innovation and prove IT’s value to the business. The CIO has

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historically been charged with keeping the lights on while control- ling costs. In the new world, with a broader set of technology options available to serve the business, the CIO must become more adept at matching those options to current and future business needs. With its deep technology expertise, the IT organization remains a catalyst of innovation, but the CIO must be able to show the business how to capitalize on that innovation.

IT governance models should also adapt to accommodate the changing relationship between IT and its sourcing partners. High- performance IT organizations are adept at ensuring that service providers conform to the security and performance expectations of IT and the business. For example, three-quarters of high performers in Accenture’s 2010 High Performance IT research said they employ sophisticated metrics and processes to track the effectiveness of application outsourcing providers, compared with 36 percent of other IT organizations in the survey.

Achieving maximum return on investments in cloud and other external services requires high levels of both stewardship and account- ability. A clearly defined IT governance model and service catalog will also help business users follow a consistent process for procuring ser- vices, without having to sacrifice the flexibility they need—and now expect—to quickly deploy or scale new services and functionality.

New IT operating models are also likely to require revised security and compliance policies that account for the integration and interoperability of third-party services. In particular, IT organizations will have to ensure that customer information or other sensitive data maintain the same high-level protections within third-party services as they do behind the enterprise firewall. IT governance models that are aligned with business needs can make it easier for CIOs to secure future investment in strategic initiatives. Nearly 9 in 10 high-performance IT organizations say they develop a business case for most new IT initiatives, and they are eight times more likely than other companies to measure the benefits realized from these IT projects, Accenture High Performance IT research shows. At one large energy services provider, business cases for new IT projects are developed jointly by IT and the business sponsor. ROI is categorized in two ways: “tangible” (will the investment deliver calculable returns

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to the general ledger or payroll?) or intangible. This process has helped raise the realization rate—the actual harvesting of business benefits in the project business case—to 98 percent.

The CIO’s Role in Agile Selling

The changes just discussed can go a long way toward helping CIOs cre- ate a more nimble and flexible IT operating model and, subsequently, provide greater value to the sales organization. But their contributions don’t have to stop there. CIOs also have an opportunity to play a more significant role in the extended ecosystem that is the hallmark of the Agile Selling model. They can help boost the effectiveness of a company’s channel partners and encourage them to sell more of the company’s products.

For example, they can play an instrumental role in providing robust training to partners on the company’s products and selling processes. Although all channel partners need training that helps them understand the basics, in an Agile Selling model, a company goes far beyond simple training courses to provide partners with comprehensive learning programs—such as what Avaya has done, as mentioned in Chapter 2. But those learning programs don’t happen by accident. They require a top-notch IT infrastructure and applications to be effective. By teaming with the sales organization to design and deliver leading-edge learning programs, IT can help make both the sales force and the selling force more effective.

CIOs also can provide valuable assistance in the area of sales per- formance analytics and coaching. For instance, a company could offer (where permissibleand where data may be properlyexchanged) its most important partners significant analytics support in exchange for down- stream customer and sales data, going so far as to actually run analyt- ics operations on partners’ own sales forces to generate insights that help partners improve their marketing, leads management, compen- sation, incentives, and other related activities. American Express®, for example, has long provided retail merchants with advanced analytics on credit card transactions and cardholder information to optimize store sales.

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A third way that CIOs could actively help the company equip and optimize its partners is by creating a de facto CSIO role—or “Chief Sales Information Officer.” This role may even be played by the CIO directly. The CSIO could provide specific technology expertise to the sales organization to ensure that sales and its network are taking full advantage of the right technologies and tools. The CSIO could help in two distinct ways.

Assessing the Data and Technology Capabilities of the Existing Partner Network to Identify and Eliminate Waste and Bottlenecks

Companies often have many different types of network partners: franchisees, independent agents, distributors, and resellers. Some are larger, more influential, or more strategic than others. Some are simply low-cost ways to maintain a presence in a specific market that can’t support a large investment in a sales force. For instance, large hardware and software companies often run massive partner networks, ranging from large, strategic, multinational consulting firm partners such as Accenture, to small shops that meet the specific router needs of a town or city.

The CSIO could have clear accountability for helping to create a network whose performance can be optimized by providing advanced technology and data support, isolating partners that have the ability to take advantage of that support, identifying areas in which partners are not taking advantage of what’s available to them, and uncovering ways in which the company could help existing network partners beef up their data and IT capabilities.

Evaluating Prospective Partners’ Data and Technology Aptitude and Capabilities

The CSIO also could play an integral role in the assessment of potential channel partners to provide the deep technology expertise necessary when evaluating prospective partners’ IT capabilities. Today, the use of such expertise in partner evaluation is rare. Most CIOs find that they are excluded from partner evaluations, but then must figure out how

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to support the relationship technologically once the decision is made. This scenario is neither efficient nor effective, and only adds to the burden CIOs must manage. By getting involved early in the partner evaluation process, the CSIO could identify which partners would be better equipped technologically to support the company’s sales efforts, as well as how much time and money might be needed to integrate those partners’ systems with the company’s own. Such insights could prevent a company from making a potentially costly move by bringing aboard a partner that needs far more attention and work to enable and support than it’s ultimately worth.

In both cases, the CSIO could employ a framework that helps a company prioritize its technology investment in channel partners to get the greatest return. This framework would assess the availability and maturity of the data, process, and technology in the internal and partner networks today; identify potential changes that could be made to those capabilities to raise the maturity level; and calculate the overall return on investments in such changes (in the form of improvements in specific sales performance metrics).

Conclusion

As the sales organization moves toward the Agile Selling model, CIOs have an opportunityto positiontheir IT organizations as strategic part- ners that can help make that transition successful—and, in the process, become a more active contributor to the company’s growth agenda. To be successful, the IT organization requires a new type of operating model, one that is global in scope and offers the right mix of services and skills that can adapt quickly as business needs change. Such an agile operating model will provide a foundation for IT’s own evolution in a rapidly changing business environment, serve as a foundation for the CIO to play a more active role in enabling the entire selling ecosys- tem, and help close the gap between the sales and IT agendas that has existed for far too long.

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16 Tablets, Smartphones,

and Apps

The Importance of a Clear, Standardized Mobility Strategy

Yusuf Tayob, Terri Rinella, and Aidan Quilligan

Chapter Summary

• Early adopters have exposed the most common new issues from the mobility explosion, and also which investments are paying off.

• It’s different this time: Mobility rollouts to salespeople (including tablets and smartphones) should have less adoption issues than the previous two decades, but only if it is a trade of value with the field.

• This is more than just for frontline salespeople. The convergence of cloud, mobility, web, and social media has created a new opportunity to roll out new solutions to others.

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Tablets, Smartphones, and Apps 297

The use of mobile technology is nothing short of staggering. Consider these comparisons: There are 1 billion cars and trucks in the world and 3 billion credit cards. But, there are 6 billion mobile phones, of which 1 billion are smartphones. And, while the world population is roughly 7 billion, there are more than 9 billion connected devices in use globally.1

With numbers like these, the business implications of mobile technology (and the need for proactive, cohesive mobility strategies) shouldn’t be surprising—especially because more and more employees are using their own devices for work-related functions. However, increased usage is not the only reason companies need a mobility strat- egy. Coordinated use of tablets, smartphones, and apps can also help salespeople work more efficiently, make better account-management choices, shorten sales cycles, and create better and more tightly tailored customer experiences. Outside of your enterprise, standardized use of mobile technology makes it easier for selling partners to interface with you anywhere and at any time, access up-to-date information about your products and services, and readily promote your capabilities and information. A partner whose mobility capabilities are well-aligned with your own may also be more inclined to work with you first.

As Gary W. Loveman of the Harvard Business School aptly observed: “Gains come not because of technology, but because it sup- ports breakthrough ideas in business process.”2 This axiom serves true with mobility; deploying tablets alone will not improve sales execution, which Accenture defines as the planning, design, and implementation of selling methods, sales, and sales supporting processes, enabled with appropriate selling tools. Determining where mobility fits into the overall sales execution approach is a critical component for achieving measurable results.

Therefore, you must pick a strategy before it picks you. When it comes to mobile technology, companies cannot wait for consumer trends and pockets of employee usage patterns to dictate how mobile tools are deployed across the company. Instead, organizations need a proactive strategy—clear but not overly dictatorial—that can help ensure a profitable, shared experience between sales representatives

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and their customers. This chapter looks at the role mobile tech- nology can play in an Agile Selling model, and how companies can build mobility strategies that help sales forces—both internal and external—improve their performance.

New Tools, New Potential, New Challenges

Everywhere you look, sales professionals are formulating their own mobile strategies—not just deciding which mobile tools should sup- port their selling efforts, but making specific decisions about how those devices are used. These efforts are obviously well intentioned: Reps are just trying to sell as much as possible, as fast as possible. However, employee-directed mobile-technology decisions are invariably based on personal views and preferences. So it’s nearly certain these choices will not (in the aggregate) produce maximum benefit for the organiza- tion. The more likely results include:

IT headaches and challenges: Salespeople are using their personal devices for work functions. So IT is pressured to handle the management of devices and applications and contend with the security risks of this “bring your own device” trend.

Oversight barriers: The longer ungoverned usage remains in force, the tougher it becomes for companies to monitor, guide, and improve mobility-related sales behaviors.

Process standardization challenges: As technology adoption rates rise, companies find it harder to implement organization-wide sales approaches, such as account planning, pipeline, and forecast man- agement and activity reporting.

Compromised information sharing: With mobile devices, salespeople can talk to each other voice-to-voice and e-mail-to-e-mail. But consistently tabulating, analyzing, summarizing, and exchanging data is more difficult in a highly diverse, user-defined mobile tech- nology environment, without integrated data.

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Too many paths to the same end : With easy access to small, inde- pendent, mobile sales applications, representatives may download their own sales productivity tools, thus creating a chaotic assem- blage of apps across the organization. From a B2C perspective, this varied selection of apps may also result in inconsistent brand and marketing messaging to the end customer.

Legal and information-security problems: Corporate security, data rights, and total cost of ownership are rarely considered when employees make their own mobile technology decisions. With customer data accessed and stored on mobile devices at the edge of the network, organizations are at risk if unsecured phones or tablets are lost, stolen, or used improperly.

Unfocused skills and expectations: As sales representatives spend more time with various tools and applications outside the work environment, they may expect employers to provide the devices with which they (the employees) are most familiar. This can wreak havoc on procurement, technology support, and overall efficiency.

Compromised potential : Uncoordinated use of technology limits a company’s ability to optimize any one tool.

All of the above challenges are amplified when a company sells through multiple channels. After all, more channels generally means less control, more coordination problems, and increased risk. Which is why most sales organizations’ mobility strategies should make inter- action and integration with strategic partners and other allied organi- zations a primary consideration.

In sum, the difference between mobile technology’s current (ad hoc) and ideal (strategic and standardized) situations is similar to the distinction chemists make between mixtures and compounds: Various contributors to a mixture coexist in the same container without creating a distinct, potentially valuable entity. In a compound, ingredients unite to form a singular substance with new characteristics and new potential. When it comes to mobile technology—and mobility strategies—companies need compounds, not mixtures.

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Social Media: Consider the Similarities

There are many similarities between companies’ mobile tech- nology issues and those associated with social media—another widely embraced consumer-centric medium over which most organizations have an uncomfortably low level of control. For example, nearly two-thirds of respondents to a 2011 Accenture survey stated that social media is an “extremely important” or “very important” channel for interacting with customers, prospects, partners, and other stakeholders. But like mobile technology, most organizations have been slow to act: Only 8 percent of B2B companies currently consider themselves heavy users of social media. In addition, research results suggest companies’ limited involvement with social media is closely linked to the uneasiness they feel about making good investment decisions. Even though many have identified specific social media goals, only one-quarter of respondents expressed great confidence in their company’s social media investments; nearly 20 percent have little or no confidence in those investments.

So like mobile technology, executives understand social media’s potential value, but they continue to play an awkward waiting game. Not many have set up active policies concerning employees’ use of Facebook or Twitter, just as few companies have established specific hardware, software, or brands as company-wide standards for mobile-device use. For neither technology have most organizations considered specific sales- optimization opportunities; salespeople pretty much do what they think is best. And few performance benchmarks exist for either area, which makes it difficult to define, much less measure, optimal behaviors.

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Not surprisingly, there are many similarities to fixing the problem. Not unlike mobile technology, the most important component of a social media program is a robust strategy that aligns with, and supports, companies’ larger business objec- tives. Likewise, it’s vital to position social media—or mobile technology—as part of a holistic customer strategy whose success in a sales context requires flexibility, innovation, and the avoidance of user (salesperson) disempowerment.

How Are Companies Responding to Their Mobile Technology Challenges?

Despite the earlier mentioned pitfalls, most sales organizations are sitting on the sidelines—unready to make hard decisions about mobile technology standardization and strategy development. This is a key finding drawn from a recent sales performance optimization study sponsored by Accenture.3 From that study, researchers determined that more than 90 percent of firms are using (or starting to use) tablet devices in their sales organizations—a 50 percent jump in only one year (Figure 16.1). However, more than half the members of that group do not have a formal program for tablet usage (Figure 16.2).

To be fair, Accenture research shows that CIOs are working to establish mobile technology goals. When asked what mobile capabili- ties they plan to implement, a majority mentioned streamlining oper- ations with enhanced order, asset, and inventory tracking. Cited next most frequently was accelerating the sales cycle by improving access to back-end systems and data.4

These are viable goals. But in our experience, many sales execu- tives are more concerned about sales reps making their numbers than about technology consistency and standardization. These priorities may also be appropriate, but the stark reality is that both missions are critical. However, CIOs are probably more cautious about mobile

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<10% 31.3%

Do not know 3.1%

>75% 12.5%

51–75% 9.4%

26–50% 12.5%

10–25% 31.3%

FIGURE 16.1 What Percentage of Your Sales Force is Currently Using Tablet Devices to Support Their Activities?

Source: CSO Insights, Sales Performance Optimization Research, 2012.

We have no program 22.6%

We are starting a program 25.8%

Formal program 41.9%

Informal program 9.7%

FIGURE 16.2 Which Statement Best Describes Your Company’s Policy toward Tablet Device Usage in Sales?

Source: CSO Insights, Sales Performance Optimization Research, 2012.

device mandates because they are hesitant to simply order salespeople to use (or not use) a particular tool or application. This is a critical point: Because force-feeding usage standards can backfire, companies will need to accommodate, embrace, and optimize rather than dictate.

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They will have to establish boundaries and guidelines that abet stan- dardization, but do not set down unenforceable rules or discourage innovation. In short, they need a clear, flexible strategy.

In the remainder of this chapter, we examine ways to develop more strategic and standardized mobility-technology programs with- out being excessively (and unproductively) heavy-handed.

Strategy-Development Cornerstones

The business case for a proactive, standardized mobility strategy is solid: increased efficiency, tighter relationships, more productive interactions, shorter sales cycles, and fewer security gaps. These benefits apply equally to external as well as internal sales forces. How- ever, formal mobility strategies are a particular boon to companies’ relationships with external sales partners: streamlining interaction, minimizing incompatibility and maximizing the exchange of ideas and information.

To achieve these ends, a variety of objectives should always be kept top of mind. For example, any mobility strategy for the sales force should align with the organization’s overarching enterprise-mobility strategy. Most companies’ CIOs are currently working to imbue multi- ple enterprise functions with mobile technologies. Mobility strategies developed for the sales organization must align with these corporate and IT strategies.

It’s also important to plan for the need for continuous innova- tion and evolution. Twenty-five years ago, it wasn’t unusual for a busi- nessperson to travel with a 30-pound “laptop.” Today, smartphones and tablets are de rigueur. Tomorrow, who knows? And when it comes to apps, the pace of innovation is staggering. The point is that mobile technology hardware and software (as well as our definition of what is “mobile”) is constantly changing, and companies must be flexible enough to keep up. That requires a commitment to allocating funds, resources, and capacity over an extended period of time.

Another vital mobility tenet is to not lose sight of the user and how he or she (1) uses mobile tools and (2) will respond to tighter, more- defined guidelines (see sidebar, “Why Sales Reps Push Back and What

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to Do about It”). Toward this end, it’s vital that any mobility strategy helps create a distinctive user experience. For every use of a smart- phone or tablet, a salesperson must get something back—something that helps him or her sell more effectively. The idea is to position mobility not simply as another tool, but as an unparalleled genera- tor of better performance and higher rewards. Along the same lines, any mobility strategy must emphasize ease of use. For example, device- management policies and data-refresh regimes must be as unobtrusive and intuitive as possible. The “holy grail” is complete transparency.

Emphasizing those features and functions that make mobile devices unique is a related way to maximize user acceptance. Mobile devices make many compulsory tasks easier and more fluid. Appoint- ment scheduling, customer contacts, and account data management are just a few examples. But simply replicating on a mobile device what salespeople formerly did on some other tool (e.g., a laptop) is far too limiting. Instead, companies can strengthen their standardization and strategy-development efforts by focusing most heavily on capabilities that set mobile devices apart. By promoting and enhancing features like location-based services, simple-to-use form factors, brilliant user interfaces, integrated photography, and rapid or automatic synching with corporate IT, companies play to salespeople’s selling strengths and potentially elevate their enthusiasm for higher levels of standardization and governance.

Several companies are exploring ways to make sales representa- tives’ conversations more interactive and engaging by using tablets. For instance, the tablet’s instant-on capabilities make it easier for sales rep- resentatives to quickly launch presentations. In addition, as highlighted in Chapter 5, tablets can drive the development of on-site, interac- tive, and customized content. A salesperson and prospect might work together to builda quote or proposalin real time or view the customer’s order history during a meeting. Every company and every industry will emphasize different things, but the need to maximize mobile devices’ unique value—to continue making them novel, interesting, and fun, as well as valuable—is universal.

Most important of all may be the need to encourage user creativ- ity. Today’s mobile devices have a high “cool factor.” Salespeople like using them and are excited to see what their new toys can do. However,

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the buzz won’t last indefinitely—particularly if people’s ability to experiment is stifled by corporate strictures. Sooner or later, in fact, smartphones and tablets could become just another burdensome tool whose cool factor is drowned in a sea of protocol. The point is this: Overarching mobility strategies are definitely needed to glean maximum value; but companies must find ways to let salespeople’s ingenuity flourish. Should this fail to happen, user adoption may never reach a high enough level, and valuable input—employee- generated ideas about using smartphones and tablets to maximize sales effectiveness—will be drastically curtailed.

Framing a Mobility Strategy

Clear-cut mobility strategies—whose missions include widespread standardization and enterprise-wide governance—can be achieved without heavy-handed dictums. It’s less about high levels of control than about high levels of consistency, innovation, and buy-in. To begin bringing shape to those strategies, consider the following high- level activities.

Take Stock of the Role Mobility Plays (and Could Play) in Your Sales Organization

Most of your people are already using mobile devices, so the key is not utilization but rather value and coordination. If the organization’s use of the devices is already improving sales performance, how much further could you go with better, more standardized use of mobile tech- nology? Involve representatives in the brainstorming of opportunities and desired features and functions of the mobile applications to help garner buy-in from the start.

Decide Who Will Lead

Should the effort be sales-led or CIO-led? Mobility policies relat- ing to sales cannot be defined without direct involvement of sales leadership, channel leadership, and a group of end users. In some

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cases, however, IT will have to take the lead. In this case, it’s doubly important to capture consistent, high-quality input from the sales organization—including feature/function insights and feedback from individual users.

Establish Target Benefits

What, specifically, do you hope to gain from a strategy of increased standardization and tighter governance? Sales organizations should have a solid, data-driven understanding of which mobile capabilities are game breakers, which ones are simply nice to have, and how various capabilities will deliver value across the enterprise and to individual sales representatives.

Determine How Mobile Technology Fits into the Overall Sales Execution Approach

A sales organization’s mobile technology approach will need to integrate with its overall sales execution approach (including planning, design, and implementation of selling methods, sales, and sales support processes). It must add value to the process, not simply replace what the sales executive would otherwise do on less mobile technology.

Identify and Enforce the “Nonnegotiable” Aspects of Your Mobility Strategy

Some elements of a mobility strategy are simply not up for debate. These must be identified early. Take safety and security of client data: Because anything less than “total protection” is not acceptable, secu- rity and data encryption are usually nonnegotiable points. Fortunately, the existence of some nonnegotiables can help frame the strategy and embed the organization’s values.

Decide How to Integrate Mobile Tools with Existing CRM Applications and Processes

Mobile device initiatives will generally fail to meet expectations if the tools are deployed without focusing on their integration with current

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customer relationship management CRM systems. Insufficient inte- gration can result in lower utilization, which can limit the value gained and turn the sales force away from future efforts.

Develop a Roadmap That Sales Force Automation Vendors Can Use to Help Develop Solutions

In some cases, an off-the-shelf solution will meet the core needs of the sales force and play well with other tools. However, there will likely be differences in timing, as well as role- or function-specific needs for which companies will have to build custom applications. In these cases, organizations should factor integration efforts into the solution plan, define the basic steps, and reach consensus about which people should be involved in the implementation.

Pilot and Experiment to Learn Lessons

Mobile technology development and implementation should be highly iterative, with constant feedback available about what works and what doesn’t. Rapid piloting and quick assessment/assimilation of lessons learned can speed up the identification of successful approaches and accelerate the attainment of real business benefit.

The answers to the following questions help form the foundation of the mobility strategy:

• What are the high-value mobile applications for representatives and what is the priority for implementation?

• Who will own the device(s)? • Will we control the devices’ apps or let salespeople maintain

control? • Will we build or buy key apps? • To what platforms and technologies should we give priority? • How will we integrate new devices with existing sales technology? • Without compromising our standardization efforts, what can we

do to encourage user innovation? • Are our organization’s brand, culture, and market positioning

reflected in our use of mobile technology?

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• How frequently should we expect to deliver new capabilities? • How will we maximize consistency in the use of apps? • How will we make sure that everyone is up to speed and trained? • Does our strategy enable and accommodate future implementa-

tions of mobile technology?

Of the preceding questions, one of the fundamental issues that sales leaders and CIOs wrestle with is how to handle the “bring your own device” decision within the strategy. Many companies recognize the difficulties associated with compelling or preventing the use of a specific device. In fact, an Accenture Institute for High Perfor- mance survey5 in late 2011 found that despite employers’ concerns around data security and IT protocol, nearly one in four (23 percent) employees worldwide regularly use personal consumer devices and applications for work-related activities. As a result, many companies are pursuing hybrid approaches that involve both company-owned and independently acquired devices. Each company should determine its best approach given its culture, security requirements, industry, and other factors. Toward this end, several vendors offer mobile device and application-management solutions that can help companies overcome the challenges associated with employees bringing their own device to the workplace.

Why Sales Reps Push Back and What to Do about It

In a 2012 Harvard Business Review post6, business author and thought leader Tammy Erickson offered some reasons as to why organizations may fail to get employees to adopt social media tools:

• “We are ordered to use this equipment rather than invited.” • “Little of what we actually get paid to do (or believe we get

paid to do) requires information or input from most other people on the network.”

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• “Participation feels like dropping pearls into a black hole. There is often no sense of getting something in return for sharing an idea or suggestion.”

• “We have no control over who sees our information and lit- tle idea what they are doing with it.”

• “An encyclopedic manual is needed to get started.” • “Software is generic and requires a workaround to do the

specific things we really want and need to do.”

These concerns directly reflect the larger issue on which this chapter focuses: A great many organizations are enam- ored with mobile technology. They want to embrace the new thing—even before they’ve created a solid reason for doing so, and before developing the discipline they need to make the move pay off. Sales representatives, on the other hand, may recognize the tools’ potential value but feel their creativity—and the technologies’ value—are quelled by an endless wave of rules set down by the sales organization. People may also perceive that tool-usage guidelines are taking away their autonomy or that the directives are increasing their workload without adding any value. When implementing mobile sales tools, organizations can avoid these pitfalls by providing and communicating value directly to sales representatives at every interaction point.

Delivering Results through Sales Innovations—Exploiting

the “Cutting Edge” of Mobility

The good news is that companies that have created proactive mobil- ity strategies for sales have found several predictable areas to exploit that are both attractive to their teams (which drives better adoption) and deliver incremental business (i.e., better results). Some of the most common areas a company should explore first are:

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• Improved representative effectiveness: One leading company is con- sidering leveraging location-based services to notify sales repre- sentatives when they are near an account where they owe a follow- up. Driving more timely and consistent follow-through can lift the performance of the sales teams, increase customer satisfaction, and help to improve sales.

• New levels of flexibility: A leading global pharmaceutical company is redesigning its traditional sales tools for tablet devices to create new levels of role and geographicflexibility. By disaggregating the individualfunctions into smaller, bite-size functions, the company can use one common sales force automation platform to deploy different combinations of sales force tools to different types of sales representatives across the globe.

• Locating nearby opportunities: Companies are taking advantage of location-based services on Apple iPads to show nearby opportu- nities and unclaimed leads. With this information in hand, repre- sentatives can take advantage of downtime between sales calls to prospect qualified leads that are in close proximity.

• Remote presence: Several high-tech companies are exploiting the connectivity and rich media capabilities of tablets by implement- ing live video conferencing to enable their sales representatives to bring remote subject matter specialists directly into the customer conversation. In this case, mobility is making it possible for the sales representative to deliver answers at the point of need and minimize follow-up work.

• Richer customer dialogue: A number of companies are explor- ing ways to make sales representatives’ conversations more interactive and engaging by using a tablet’s touch screen capabili- ties to deliver content. For example, the instant-on capabilities of the Apple iPad make it easier for sales representatives to launch quickly into customer presentations. In addition, tablets can deliver rich, interactive media based on customers’ preferences as they select content that is directly relevant to them. This might include collaboratively building a customer’s quote or proposal in real time, or viewing a customer’s order history to answer questions during the meeting.

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• Real-time order placement: An organization is complementing its enterprise systems by building a front-facing ordering application for the iPad. The application leverages the tablet’s usability and combines with on-line and off-line working capabilities, allow- ing sales reps to place customer orders immediately during the sale. This accelerates the order-to-delivery process, makes order confirmations available more quickly, and helps the seller realize revenue more rapidly

Case Study—Delivering Results through Sales Innovations Salesforce.com’s Approach

to Tablet Adoption

Salesforce.com’s (SFDC) strategic approach to tablet use and adoption is a great example of emphasizing value, ensuring communication, and considering user and customer. When SFDC announced that all salespeople would receive iPads, the devices had been on the market for only three months. Thus, SFDC capitalized on the excitement its employees would have for this new technology.

SFDC also combined its tablet implementation with a new sales methodology. Before receiving their iPads, people had to receive training on the methodology and the device. Part of the methodology’s cornerstone is a consistent, common sales process that articulates all the mobility capabilities needed to execute suc- cessfully.

SFDC also built a series of apps and installed them on all issued devices. Every iPad thus came “fully loaded,”with the same look and feel, and the ability to communicate the same informa- tion in the same format to sales leaders and teams. Each device looks the same—right down to the order in which the apps show

(continued)

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Case Study—Delivering Results through Sales Innovations

(Continued)

up on the desktop. SFDC knew that, when it comes to reporting, varied formats and communication mechanisms are almost never beneficial.

Last, SFDC stressed continuous innovation. The company continues to build and disseminate new apps, and to emphasize standardization and consistency. Everyone from vice presidents to new reps uses tablets in the exact same way and understands that ongoing improvement is part of the package.

The net effect is that SFDC maximized buy-in and excitement by perching itself on the leading edge of a new phenomenon—a shiny new toy that everybody wanted and that most people didn’t yet have. So even if standardization and tight governance were the rules of the day, salespeople could still be avid proponents. Today, tablets, smartphones, and emerging apps are more or less mainstream entities. But the buzz is nowhere close to wearing off, nor is the potential for new uses, enhancements, and leverage points. To build successful mobility strategies, companies must capture that energy and ensure that it isn’t buried by an avalanche of rules and requirements.

Looking Ahead

If the advent of digital technology has taught us anything, it’s that innovations we can barely conceive of are always over the horizon. Mobile technologies (tablets, smartphones, and apps) are perfect examples: tools that almost no one envisioned a decade ago are now established parts of people’s private and business lives.

However, in a business context—particularly because employ- ers often issue the devices or otherwise subsidize their use—a certain amount of coordination and control is simple common sense. It’s like

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any other business context: Planning and executing a strategy that is results- and customer-focused is good business. However, mobile tech- nologies’ concurrent role as consumer devices can’t help butchange the game. So any strategy a sales organization formulates should acknowl- edge that consumer-driven experiences and preferences will affect peo- ple’s business-related use of the same devices. This is why it’s essential to formulate strategies that (1) communicate real user value, (2) avoid heavy-handed mandates, and (3) encourage innovation and feedback.

Mobile tools will continue to evolve. More uses and devices will come to the fore. CRM and cloud technologies will become more powerful. Consumer behaviors will go on driving enterprise innova- tion. These are some of digital technology’s great inevitabilities, and companies and sales organizations that are smart about acknowledging and leveraging them should have an inside track for a long time.

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17 New Rules for Tools and IT Infrastructure

The Cloud and Agile Tools, Processes, and Systems

Saideep Raj and Beth Boettcher

Chapter Summary

• The “cloud dilemma” is real: It is a hot topic with fantastic promise, but many are not clear on how to get started.

• Promise stems from the convergence of the cloud, mobility, and business analytics—attacking bigger problems,at faster speeds, than the previous generation of solutions.

• Ecosystem-wide collaboration will open doors to vastly different business solutions, and emerging technologies will power that innovation.

• Four different approaches have emerged; picking the path wisely has never been more important to delivering results.

• IT basics still apply to implementations, but overconfidence in today’s capabilities without looking for new skills in the IT team spells danger in cloud solutions.

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New Rules for Tools and IT Infrastructure 315

As we discussed in the opening chapters of this book, the market is demanding that businesses operate at an unprecedented pace—rapidly responding to new demands, quickly driving new products through the R&D pipeline, sharing information to interact in real time with cus- tomers and partners, and satisfying customers who want their specific need met “now.” These market demands are placing significant pres- sure on businesses to be more nimble and efficient in how they go to market. In this environment, high-performing sales organizations must make more collaborative,rapid, rigorous,and outcome-baseddecisions and they need the technology support to make this happen. These are all characteristics of the Agile Selling model.

For the first time, the technological confluence of cloud com- puting, mobile technology, and business analytics software can enable sales organizations to achieve outcomes at the pace required. However, companies must take a careful and coordinated approach because the changes can be substantial. Cloud-based agile processes and systems must be designed and developed the right way or they could result in an inflexibility that prevents the experimentation and speed they offer.

There is no “silver bullet” for how to implement more agile tech- nologies; there are different ways to deploy technology, each suitable for different environments. This chapter discusses how business and IT should work in concert to select and deliver the best approaches that will help support an Agile Selling model that brings the promise of pace to fruition.

The Need to Be Collaborative, Rapid, Rigorous, and Outcome-Based

In the highly complex and rapidly evolving selling ecosystem that is a hallmark of Agile Selling, high-performing sales organizations need the ability to be more collaborative, rapid, rigorous, and outcome-based:

• Collaborative to orchestrate sales activities in a complex eco- system.

• Rapid to intentionally and strategically respond to quickly chang- ing opportunities and issues.

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• Rigorous to bring discipline and science to bear to improve operations and outcomes.

• Outcome-based to make key decisions based on strong business cases, data, and analytics in addition to intuition and judgment.

Collaborative

The drive to increase collaboration across the business has been under way for some time. After all, the more seamlessly sales teams can orchestrate sales activities within their company, the better the sales outcome. But today, this orchestration extends in many more directions. Collaboration requires navigating a complex network of interactions: across business units, across functions, partner to partner, partner to customer, all in an effort to generate demand. It is no longer a world of “we” and “them,” but one of “us,” as companies integrate activities across multiple channels and partners to create a consistent customer experience, coordinate their go-to-market approach, and, ultimately, increase their sales.

This level of collaboration will require information-sharing between partners and across lines of business at an unprecedented level, using new technologies and skills that most organizations don’t yet have. And although it’s challenging to get data from new and different sources, there are also many tools that organizations already have—such as e-mail—that possess valuable information companies don’t fully utilize. So although collaboration is vital, it continues to be elusive to many organizations.

The sales organization of a financial services company offering insurance, banking, and investment products is tackling the collabo- ration challenge through a “big data” effort. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS®) must gather and analyze information across lines of business to be proactive in cross-selling the company’s offerings. It is using big data techniques to join together disparate data sources including transactional customer records, demographic data, macroeconomic data, stock-market data, aggregated feeds, and any number of social media sources. It then uses a proprietary tool as well as other tools (such as sentiment analysis and text mining) to analyze and identify a

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customer’s propensity to need new financial products, and to be able to suggest these products in a timely and optimal manner.

Rapid

In many ways and to many companies, the need for sales teams to be “rapid” is intuitive. Organizations must quickly respond to global megatrends such as rapid growth in Asia and South America and an expanding middle class around the world. Accelerating product inno- vation means that a company has shorter windows of time to sell new products, which means that the sales organization must be armed more frequently with the right selling information to generate returns on big product development costs. Just consider software companies that now issue product releases every three months compared with what was historically an 18- to 36-month cycle. The sales executives who represent this software need frequent education to keep pace with such rapid product releases.

Social media and mobile devices are accelerating the need for sales teams to be rapid in response. Sales teams are pervasively quick and tactical as they try to respond to new business opportunities, social media chatter, and customers who are increasingly reachable anytime/anywhere through any mobile device. Successful companies embed processes that foster rapid decision making and tie those processes closely to their technology platform.

Rigorous

Rigor is required to bring a combination of process discipline, the right analytics, and the right decision criteria to bear to make the best deci- sions. As detailed in Chapter 9, Accenture refers to this as bringing science to the art of selling. Rigor enables sales teams to better deter- mine whom to spend time on influencing, conduct thorough health checks of the sales force, have a sharper sense of what pieces of the marketing mix are working or not working, and much more.

Typically a company that uses rigor in decision making makes optimal technology choices. These choices strike the right balance between transformation and tactical efficiency gains. By applying a

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more rigorous and standardized approach to how sales organizations are enabled by technology (regardless of the market they serve), companies can employ modular solutions that reduce total cost of ownership and improve efficiency. Although a global organization may not be able to be 100 percent standardized across countries, Accenture experience indicates that sales teams can achieve at least 60 to 80 percent standardization.

Outcome-Based

Accenture research found that between 2008 and 2010, a large proportion of business decisions in surveyed companies were based on judgment rather than business analytics.1 In fact, weak analytics capabilities—ranging from siloed data, outdated technology, and a lack of analytical talent—are preventing organizations from gaining valuable insight that could lead to better business results. By basing key decisions on insights from data and analytics tools, sales teams can improve their ability to take the right actions at the right time to the right target customer. Such outcome-based decisions result in a more optimized allocation of time and resource and an improved return on investment for the sales organization.

In addition, successful companies ensure that when making technology investments, they focus on the up-front business case. Without this business case, teams face an excessive administrative burden trying to keep measurements on metrics that seem to change considerably.

What Technology Can, and Must, Deliver

Technology is the underpinning of the Agile Selling model, enabling the sales organization to be collaborative, rapid, rigorous, and outcome-based as described above. As such, IT infrastructure and governance models for developing and optimizing technology must advance to deliver the capabilities needed at the pace of change

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required by evolving sales needs. There are several implications for what technology must be able to deliver for the business.

Provide the Sales Organization with Lower Cost, Higher Value, Faster-to-Implement Tools

Agile sales organizations need tools that can deliver immediate value and flex with changing needs. They need new sales and marketing technologies that don’t “break the bank” in the traditional cost buckets of new hardware, software, and training, much of which will be abandoned when a better offering hits the market. The tools must be easy and fast to implement and—because they may only be useful for a limited time until the next innovation comes along—lower cost to pur- chase and less costly to maintain. Whatever technologies are deployed, they must be accessible from multiple devices—tablets, smartphones, desktop, and otherwise—so any transaction can be completed on any device.

Taking advantage of lower-cost, more-disposable tools will enable businesses to not only get technology in the hands of sales executives, but also in the hands of partners and customers to engage with them in more meaningful ways. Although in the past it was cost- prohibitive to equip customers and partners with technology, today it’s both affordable and fast. For example, utilizing software-as-a-service technologies, a company can have a customer portal established within a matter of days.

This approach even raises the question of why a company should develop or purchase software versus using technology that’s available to the mass markets to help mine data (within legal boundaries) to achieve a company’s business goals. Specifically, think about how a company can use social media to mine critical customer information to conduct contact management, and leverage information about life events to instigate a specific action. For example: If a customer publicly posts a note on Facebook about the new car he bought, how can an insurance provider use that information to offer an insurance quote or to notify a local agent to contact the customer? Or, consider

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another life event: A customer publicly posts about her new baby. How can a financial advisor help set up a savings/investment account for the newborn?

Provide the Sales Network with Greater Access to Information

Information from all parts of the company and outside the company must be integrated and available to support the sales organization’s decision making. However, unlike the historical approach of doing this through highly inflexible, integrated systems, this must be accom- plished through a nimble technical architecture. The architecture should draw on both structured and unstructured data to provide a single source of customer information that reduces internal confusion over what data is accurate and enables salespeople to sell to more informed, more savvy customers. This information must be available for new analytics tools so the sales organization has the insight to make rapid decisions. This is also enabled by the right IT architecture.

In an Agile Selling organization, it is equally important to share data with channel partners and equip them with more and deeper insights about their markets, customers, and competitive envi- ronment. This requires defining what kinds of information will and can legitimately be shared through which means, and also requires devel- oping a level of trust with third parties regarding privacy and how to appropriately exchange information.

Companies could even shift the burden of keeping customer information up to date from their customer relationship management (CRM) systems to their customers. Companies have spent a lot of time and money on building a customer master and maintaining the best customer information. Now with Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media, customers are updating their information every day. By figuring out how to embrace social media as the “system of record” and integrating that back into their enterprise systems, companies can place the responsibility on the customer to be the single source of truth for customer information. Although there are likely to be few, if any, large enterprises utilizing this approach today, it is certainly a design consideration for forward-thinking companies to contemplate.

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Utilize Different Mechanisms for Developing and Deploying Software

As companies implement systems such as software-as-a-service plat- forms, the new tools no longer align to traditional application devel- opment models. New tools require different mechanisms for develop- ing and testing software that enable companies to test as they go, and accomplish the faster implementation the tools profess to offer.

Many leading companies are using a hybrid approach to deploy- ing and testing software, particularly to respond to new market opportunities. For example, pharmaceutical companies are using cloud computing to rapidly distribute sales capabilities to new markets while putting more robust technology in mature markets where they have more established operations. If the companies find the technol- ogy or new business process in the new market isn’t useful, they can shut it down without having made a huge investment.

What Happens When Business and IT Aren’t on the Same Page?

There is tremendous potential for companies to use technology as a competitive weapon in this complicated new selling environment. However, without a coordinated business and IT effort, technology can easily fail to enable sales teams and channel partners to deliver at the pace and agility the market requires. Neither the CSO nor the CIO can tackle technology efforts in isolation. Common CSO and CIO leader- ship is needed across all segments, and there mustbe agreement on how the technology road map changes over time.

When IT and the business are working in isolation, they tend to take tactical steps that have incremental value or they attempt to fix problems in an uncoordinated way. Addressing point problems rather than looking at the entire sales value chain (which includes multiple channels to customers) is certainly less expensive. Such small expen- ditures can often be included in small departmental budgets. But over time, such an approach can result in a proliferation of technology tools

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that are costly to maintain and nearly impossible to integrate. Change is almost unfeasible, and if not that, then costly and slow.

In the end, a collection of tactical steps doesn’t achieve the ulti- mate goal of turning a sales organization into a powerful, coordinated, integrated selling machine—the type necessary now to attract and retain customers.

When the sales organization or line of business doesn’t partner with IT to enable their sales force with tools, they run the risk of developing business-ledsolutions with a number of issues. Business-led solutions are typically very nimble because they aren’t integrated with the rest of the enterprise systems, but they often have data integrity issues for the same reasons. But, also because they are not integrated, independent sales tools don’t have “one version of the truth” for cus- tomer and other information, decreasing the sales team’s confidence in the insights they draw from customer data.

Business-led solutions also typically result in a higher total cost of ownership because they are purchased by individual lines of business, regions, or sales functions instead of being aggregated to create purchasing power. Not only can license costs be higher, there also can be more administrative costs to maintain the solution, run reports, and perform analytics. Furthermore, if solutions are not inte- grated into critical corporate systems, this typically leads to manual “workarounds” that reduce efficiency. Independent practices also don’t promote enterprise-wide best practices, as each line of business or region defines its processes and best practices within the technol- ogy and does not share them more broadly for the organization to collectively benefit.

Conversely, solutions that are developed by the IT function run the risk of being technical-led solutions that have decreased adoption. Rather than thinking of the solution as solving a business need, IT may see the solution as a data mapping and migration exercise. If neither the sales rep (IT’s customer) nor the end customer (the sales rep’s cus- tomer) are “front of mind,” IT runs the risk of developing solutions that are perceived to increase the administrative burden on the sales reps and diminish the customer experience. As a result, salespeople fail to adopt the solution, staying focused instead on old ways of selling and next month’s numbers.

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Companies need the proper collaboration, sponsorship, and lead- ership balance between business and IT to successfully deploy sales technologies and take full advantage of new tools. Without this bal- ance, value (in a variety of forms) is left on the table.

The Promise of Cloud and Agile Delivery Methods

For the first time, the technological confluence of cloud computing, mobile technology, and business analytics software can enable sales organizations to achieve outcomes at the pace required. The cloud and agile tools, processes, and systems give companies the affordable means to be more collaborative, rapid, rigorous, and outcome-based in their decision making.

Consider the era of technology before the mid-2000s. To provide the sales organization with tools, companies implemented enterprise sales force automation and customer relationship management systems that resided on their own in-house servers. Such projects were (and still are) expensive, took a long time to implement, and required lots of training. Furthermore, often by the time they were deployed, the sales processes had changed, organization structures had been updated, or other changes had occurred that diminished the usability of the solu- tion before it was even in use. The amount of information available for salespeople in the field was limited to what could be sent to their lap- top computers when downloaded from a hotel room—which was not extensive and certainly not current. The lack of ubiquitous Internet access meant that information was hardly available in real time.

The technological confluence of cloud computing, mobile tech- nology, and business analytics software gives companies the means to redesign how they use tools to enable the sales ecosystem. Cloud com- puting is dramatically lowering the cost of tapping into software— CRM, social media-based collaborative tools, and once-costly business analytics software. When these applications are made accessible by a public cloud (owned by a third party), companies can pay for such capa- bilities on an as-used basis (similar to how customers pay for resources

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actually used such as electricity or cable services) rather than having to make massive investments in their own systems. And when they put such applications in private clouds (meaning, cloud systems that can be used by only one organization’s multiple business units), this, too, can lower the cost.

Such cloud-based systems have ushered in the era of “disposable IT”—the ability of companies to test and try new technologies that improve demand-generation without having to make huge bets in terms of technology investments. This, in turn, will enable companies to experiment continually with new technologies to improve sales, which, of course, then will require them to be able to update their processes and people’s skills much faster than in the past.

The lower cost and disposability of cloud computing means that companies can now enable the selling ecosystem in ways that were pre- viously not possible. The customer is making purchase decisions and influencing the purchase decisions of others through many mediums. Because tools are affordable, and allow companies to share information in a more dynamic manner, companies can make tools and information available to a much broader audience. Phuong Tram, CIO of DuPont, expanded on this point in 2012: “In the past I could do something [deploy software] for maybe 10,000 users, or maybe I could do some- thing for 100,000 users. But there are a massive number of contractors, partners, customers, and potential customers. No company has been able to do that. That’s where cloud computing comes in. Any other way would be cost prohibitive and unsustainable.”

Although cloud-based processes and systems offer great promise, they must be designed and developed the right way. Otherwise, they could result in inflexible sales processes and systems that prevent com- panies from speedily experimenting with and implementing new sales processes and technologies—and, thus, not allow them to achieve the power of pace. If these new solutions are not designed correctly, the sales organization’s ability to be nimble is reduced. Companies have to find ways to develop sales applications that don’t reduce their ability to alter the solution to support their need to be rapid and collaborative.

Agile software development methods offer the means to reap early benefits from cloud-based solutions. Agile methods are based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solu- tions evolve through collaboration between cross-functional teams.

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It promotes adaptive planning and evolutionary development and delivery, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change.

When done right, agile development helps to manage a well- defined scope, and uses highly engaged business users to define use cases and test them in the application, aligning all capabilities to the achievement of desired business outcomes. But if the business can’t devote the time and energy, or the approach is applied to architectures that can’t be developed in an agile manner, another approach is better.

The waterfall method is how most companies have historically done systems development.

It is a more sequential process for software development that aligns to rigorous IT governance processes, but typically isn’t a par- ticularly flexible or fast approach. Traditionally, a waterfall project is executed in meaningful “chunks” over the course of 8 to 12 weeks. New capabilities are delivered in each chunk, business resources are engaged throughout, and integration with other systems happens after pro- cesses are tested and validated. However, when the waterfall method is not done right, projects go on for months or quarters before being deployed, requirements are “thrown over the wall” and interpreted by systems resources and “injected” back to the business at a point that it is too costly to change the solution if it is not right.

There are projects where an agile approach is appropriate and projects where a waterfall, or even a blended approach is best. What is most important is to use the right approach for the project, neither staying tied to the “old world” of waterfall development nor moving wholesale into agile methodologies.

Determining the Right Approach

There is no “silver bullet” for how to implement more nimble tech- nologies; rather, there are different ways to deploy technology, each suitable for different environments. Thus for each new solution they deploy, companies must think about the right development method as discussed earlier (agile, waterfall, or some blend of the two), and also give careful consideration to the implementation approach and level of integration required. Cloud-based agile processes and systems must be

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designed and developed the right way or they can result in an inflexi- bility that prevents the experimentation and speed they offer.

From Accenture’s experience, there are two dimensions to con- sider when determining the right approach for a project (Figure 17.1). The first is “business penetration,” an assessment of how much sales, channel partners, and other customer-facing entities and activities need to change. Is the solution intended to experiment with changing a few activities or to standardize a change across the organization? Is change limited to a specific business line, region, or productor does it permeate across the enterprise?

The second dimension to consider is “process intensity,” an assessment of how much business processes are impacted by the new application. Changes to sales-related processes and technologies result in either embedded or disposable technology tools. Embedded tools require significant investment, become core to the way the organization sells, and are difficult to remove. Disposable technologies are those that enable the organization to experiment and quickly move on when a new, better technology becomes available.

By bringing these two dimensions together, companies have a framework for assessing the right approach for each cloud-based SaaS

Plug-and-Play

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FIGURE 17.1 Framework for Determining the Technology Implementation Approach

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technology project. We label those with high business penetration but low process change as “plug-and-play.” Those with both low pene- tration and process change are well positioned for nonintegrated or minimally integrated trials. Projects that have limited business pene- tration but are embedded in the organization require a proof of value. And those where the stakes are high in terms of business penetration and integration into the process of the organization are transformative in nature and require an iterative approach.

The following is a summary of the key elements of each approach.

Trial

Trial is an implementation method used when the tool is not inte- grated and is highly disposable.If the trial does not result in the desired outcomes, the company does not proceed with an integrated installa- tion or does a retrial of the solution. Typically, companies that prove the trial then move to a more integrated (plug-and-play or iterative transformation) approach.

A trial is appropriate when there is minimal or inconsistent busi- ness penetration throughout the organization. Typically it is a sales function where the specific sales methodology and the enabling tools are being tested.

It is also appropriate when less rigorous processes are needed; for example, if there are opportunities to “test” aspects of a methodol- ogy, solve a specific problem in the organization, or for specific gaps in sales skills.

For example, as we mentioned earlier, a company may want to experiment with transferring responsibility for maintaining customer information to the customer through the use of social media. They may believe that they can turn to LinkedIn to get information on an individ- ual customer that will be more complete and current than a traditional database such as Dun & Bradstreet.

Plug-and-Play

A plug-and-play approach is appropriate when there is high penetra- tion of the solution throughout the organization such as a solution that

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is core to the sales function. Projects in this quadrant offer the oppor- tunity to standardize a process across lines of business and regions of the world, recognizing that regulations can affect how a process is exe- cuted in certain countries and industries. A good example of a project in this quadrant is contact management, which is an important process no matter how big the company.

Typically, a company doesn’t need a true business case to make such investments. They are known to improve core processes that are critical to effective selling. Furthermore, these new tools usually require integration with other applications (e.g., contact management requires minimal to no duplicate records in the database).

When implemented and integrated correctly, a plug-and-play tool becomes highly embedded and hard to eliminate. Returning to the contact management example, companies will typically implement a process such as contact management on more robust tools and implement more robust data synchronization processes, making it difficult to dispose of the contact management solution over time.

Proof of Value

A good proof-of-value project is one in which there is minimal or inconsistent business penetration throughout the organization, such as a new sales approach or tool to support entering a new market. There are potential opportunities to standardize business practices; however, practices can vary by line of business or geography. For example, when testing a new sales process or entering a new market, a company usually must have technology that will allow an organi- zation to “ebb and flow.” Typically, a company would do a pilot to determine what business practices can be standardized prior to full deployment.

As the name suggests, there are opportunities to test aspects of the processes and the technology, validating the test against a clear set of business metrics that determine success or failure. Value must be realized in a meaningful amount of time (typically one quarter) and it should be a solid mix of technology, people, and process all marching toward a common strategy. Typically, companies that take a proof- of-value approach do so because there is a strong business case that

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can be demonstrated. They then move to plug-and-play or iterative transformation to deploy the proven solution more broadly.

Ideally, the test can be done in a stand-alone technical environ- ment. However, it is important to execute the test in such a way that it can be validated that the lack of integration with other solutions was not the cause of success or failure.

Iterative Transformation

Iterative transformation is appropriate when there is high penetration of the system throughout the organization and significant opportunity to standardize processes worldwide. In most instances there is no busi- ness case tied to this approach. Typically, companies that go through an iterative transformation do so because there is a known strong busi- ness case, or the application has already been trialed in a proof-of-value effort. This is a transformational program that is targeting a very clear problem or opportunity that will generate revenue or reduce costs. These programs take significant time and energy, and because of the investment and business penetration, are critical to do well.

Typically a transformative system would require integration with other applications over time. Initially, it may be in a stand-alone environment but becomes more integrated as the solution transforms the business, making it difficult to “unwind” from the organization once implemented.

A good example of an iterative transformation is an application core to the sales function, such as opportunity and pipeline manage- ment. Many companies will enable a stand-alone tool (sometimes integrated with a product catalog) to institute strong pipeline man- agement rigor. As the pipeline becomes more accurate, they integrate it with revenue systems to show booked business versus sold business, resulting in a pipeline that provides a strong indicator of sales that can indicate realized revenue.

These four quadrants define a helpful model for thinking through the approach for any given project. In practice, there are two additional considerations to its use. When looking across a portfolio of projects, a company may have projects under development in each quadrant at the same time. For example, a company may be driving an agile

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transformation process while, at the same time, rolling out plug-and- play changes to the existing deployed pool and trialing new application exchange components. Additionally, a project may be in one quadrant at one point in time and then at a different stage, move to another, such as moving from trial to plug-and-play.

The point is, all four approaches are valid depending on the situa- tion. Where companies go wrong is when they don’t think through the approach or choose the wrong approach for their project. For example, many companies default to a trial approach because it doesn’t require a business case, when, in reality, the tool must be more integrated into the business to add value. By not thinking through one’s approach, a company runs the risk of integrating too much too soon, resulting in a less agile organization. We have also seen companies commit too quickly to a cloud license that, unfortunately, locks them into a solu- tion that they cannot easily dispose of, leaving them no choice but to “just try to make it work.”

Answering the following key questions increases the chances that the company takes the right approach for what it is trying to accomplish:

• How well defined, standardized, and adopted are our processes? • How important is the need for having data from other systems to

enable the processes? Can we enable the processes without access to large amounts of data?

• How confident are we that we think that the processes will help us achieve our business outcomes?

• How urgent is the need to enable the processes? Do we have time to hone them?

Many companies struggle with finding the optimum balance between business and IT for any given project. For example, they may be weighted so much on the application-centric areas for trial and plug-and-play that they are short-changing the process needs. Other companies spend endless time on process change and lose the ability to drive viral adoption or learn important feedback from the field.

All of the considerations of development method, implementa- tion, and integration approach and balance between IT and business

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process can best be handled through a governance model that enables the company to cut through the issues and balance all of the competing needs.

Getting It Right: Critical Success Factors

There are certain factors that will increase the likelihood a company’s investment in agile technology will produce positive business bene- fits. For any technology project to be successful, it should be led as a joint effort between the chief sales officer and the CIO, with everyone engaged and aligned to one common vision.

Governance is needed during the initial implementation of CRM and sales solutions. However, implementation is just the beginning. Governance postimplementation is even more critical as the orga- nization continues to refine, optimize, and adapt the solution over time. After all, running and optimizing the infrastructure is different from deploying the infrastructure. This rigorous governance approach includes release management and standardized processes to implement the capabilities outlined in the program road map. Without clear, collaborative, rigorous governance after the solution is in production, there can be significant impacts, including a solution that does not evolve and support the organization effectively or a solution that includes “everything but the kitchen sink”—in other words, way too complex to use and manage.

Within the ongoing governance structure staffing, clearly estab- lished business and IT roles and responsibilities are critical;this includes effectively communicating business and IT resource time and effort required to implementrequestedchanges. Active participationinmean- ingful, regular meetings between business and IT resources is also crit- ical to resolving issues and making decisions efficiently. Such a staffing approach improves transparency and collaboration across business and IT resources by establishing the rules of engagement for the program. Joint planning between business and IT resources ensures that business processes and enabling technologies are tightly integrated.

Finally, cloud-based projects encounter the same risks as more traditional IT projects that can span years to develop and implement.

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But a primary benefit of cloud technologies is the pace at which they can be delivered. Just as in multiyear projects, companies must put sig- nificant discipline and rigor around the critical project success factors (such as strong governance and sponsorship, clearly defined scope, and roles and responsibilities) to deliver on the promise of pace that cloud offers and reap the agility it can provide (Figure 17.2).

Success Factor

Clearly Defined Scope

Consistent Solution across LOBs and/or Geographies

Complete “To Be” Vision

Well-Defined Near, Mid-, and Long-Term Data Architecture

Disciplined Environment Management

Committed Sponsorship

Well-Defined Governance

Clear Delivery Roles and Responsibilities

Full Accountability within the Business

Ability to Course Correct

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FIGURE 17.2 IT Project Critical Success Factors Apply to Cloud-Based Solutions, Too

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New Rules for Tools and IT Infrastructure 333

Conclusion

Cloud-based and agile tools can give companies the affordable means to be more collaborative, rapid, rigorous, and outcome-based in their decision making. However, the implementation approaches are non- trivial with several options available. That is why it’s important to get the right balance from multiple dimensions and, hence, why a strong governance approach across business and IT is critical. If not designed, developed, and governed effectively, the result will likely be inflexible sales processes and systems that prevent companies from achieving the pace, agility, and financial benefits promised.

Agile tools, processes, and systems can have significant impact for the organization as stand-alone tools or single projects. But this evolution is not about any single project. It is about changing the insti- tutional way that business and IT work together and are organized, and about changing the fabric of how decisions get made and work gets done. Getting it right can have significant rewards.

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