Sales and marketing improvements for top technology firm

Hambra Consulting’s client is a rapidly growing Technology Firm with a proprietary solution that solves desktop computing problems for large organizations. As they both created and expanded a new market, the firm encountered significant sales and marketing barriers and challenges. To help them better manage this key function, the firm purchased Siebel eBusiness Applications, however the return on this CRM software investment remained unjustified after two years of use.

The Challenge

The Technology Firm’s executives understood that when penetrating the market with an original technology, it is critical to understand which types of marketing programs are most successful. Their principal goal was to increase sales and marketing efficiency at all levels of the business and give the executive team insight into operational activities (i.e., which marketing programs were generating actual results and what information was needed to improve sales and marketing decision making).

A combination of technical issues within the Siebel Sales Force Automation (SFA) system and a lack of clear business process and sales methodologies raised perplexing questions around lengthened sales cycles, missed marketing opportunities, inaccurate forecasts, and inadequate product lead times. In addition, the firm’s sales executives were unable to assess the health of the pipeline and learn whether critical milestones were occurring within the sales cycle. Further, there was no method for the marketing team to distribute their leads to the field.

Reflecting the ongoing problems, the Technology Firm’s Chief Marketing Officer said, “We really weren’t convinced that Siebel was the right solution for us and were considering looking elsewhere.” However, before deciding to pull the plug, the firm’s executives decided to try one more time and committed additional resources to fixing the bugs.

Hambra’s Solution

Hambra Consulting was brought in by the firm to rework the Siebel solution over several short project lifecycles. Two phases were sketched out, spanning a very aggressive 2-month period. Immediate attention was placed on core SFA functionality that addressed end-user usability concerns and gave management the revenue forecasting information they needed. It was decided that the second phase would concentrate on marketing and prospecting functionality.
Hambra began Phase 1 by first addressing business process issues within the sales and marketing teams. It was imperative to understand each of the user communities affected, and the synergy that could be found within them. Hambra business analysts worked closely with executives, management, and front-line sales team to identify system and business process gaps and helped to map out a more streamlined business flow.

Both Hambra and the client understood that while front line sales is concerned with ease of use and a clear understanding of lead and opportunity management flows, management still needed to get the activity and forecast information out of the system.

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