Company: Splunk, San Francisco, CA
Company Description: Splunk is a technology company that provides the leading unified security and observability platform. It helps organizations use data at any scale to become more secure and resilient so they can innovate with speed and agility.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Virtual Technology Sales Enablement and Pre-sales Team of the Year
 Nomination Title: Splunk Show Team
- Briefly describe the nominated team: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 198 words used.
Meet Splunk’s internal start-up, the Splunk Show team! Their entrepreneurial mindset made Splunk’s new demo environment, Splunk Show, a powerful tool for Sales Engineers(SEs) and partners. Jon Porter led the effort and recognized that the old system lacked feature parity and much-needed cloud capabilities. Moreover, demo setup and configuration were very time-consuming for SEs.
Jon envisioned a centralized, scalable, cost-efficient, and easy-to-use demo system. He and lead developer Steven Hanna created a platform to store use case content and enable provisioning, giving SEs greater flexibility and eliminating the manual effort that plagued the old environment.
This paved the way for Thomas Desio, senior site reliability engineer (SRE), to enable demo instance customization and automation. With help from SRE Spencer Eslocker, they continue to maintain and support the AWS infrastructure. Bianka Rodriguez, operations and help desk analyst created a demo onboarding and product launch workflow to drive efficiency. And data engineer Jason Zhang centralized and standardized demo builds and processes, gathering requirements from the business while forging relationships with the content owners. On the backend, full-stack developer Samuel Haws worked closely with front-end developer Rachel Joyce on advanced search capabilities making over 100 demos easier to find and implement.
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2020 of the nominated team, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- Outline the team's achievements since July 1 2020 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 215 words used.
The crowning achievement for the Splunk Show team is in the beauty of what they built in a mere three months. This was especially impressive because the old system took three years to build.
Several highlights of Splunk Show are worth noting.
- The system represents a more comprehensive product portfolio with demos available for all of Splunk’s offerings.
- Splunk Show is owned and maintained within Global Technical Sales, which frees up the engineering teams to focus on new products and features.
- The centralized content management system has helped to standardize demos and workshops and allow new content to be added faster.
- Integration with Salesforce provides valuable telemetry, enabling more informed decisions about the impact of demos across the field.
- The ability to replicate customer environments and support unique configurations provides SEs with a competitive advantage over limited trial demos.
- The infrastructure customization, like the ability to pause a demo, brings significant cost savings and lifecycle management benefits.
- Metrics can help rightsize demos for the content.
- Demos can be spun up at the click of a button and take 15 minutes versus the 4-6 hours required in the previous system.
- Over 100 demo and workshop options have been categorized and are easily searchable so an SE can choose the ones that best fit the customer’s needs.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 40 words used.
The testimonial video speaks to the team's innovative spirit and how Splunk Show has made an SE's life easier.
The Splunk Show Overview presentation contains metrics that show the significant impact Splunk Show has had over the prior demo environment.
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
We are submitting the Splunk Show team for the Virtual Technology Sales Enablement and Pre-sales Team of the Year. The team members include:
- Jon Porter - Program Lead
- Steven Hanna - Lead Dev
- Thomas Desio - Senior SRE
- Bianka Rodriguez - Operations and Help Desk Analyst
- Jason Zhang - Data Engineer
- Samuel Haws - Full Stack Dev
- Rachel Joyce - Front End Dev
- Spencer Eslocker - SRE
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the team's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 225 words used.
Scalability: The previous demo framework operated in a local data center, leveraging shared virtual machines, introducing many scalability issues and limiting the number of demos that could be stored. Splunk Show runs within AWS and orchestrates the entire demo lifecycle in an automated way. Users can request as many demos as they need, and within minutes, the environment is available. Additionally, users can specify how long they need an instance online, with options to extend or terminate early if needed.
Customization: While pre-loaded content solved numerous initial use cases, many demos require customization to meet specific customer needs. Enabling options to support this was critical in keeping the efficiency optimal. It also fosters continuous innovation and feedback to the product organization.
Cost-savings: With over 900 technical sellers, demos can add up quickly. Splunk Show leverages telemetry to know that the demos are right-sized for the content and is capable of running demos on a schedule, shutting them down in the off-hours and days, and limiting runtimes for non-sales use cases. The results have reduced the overall operating cost of Splunk Show by 50% despite doubling the usage from the previous demo platform.
Insights: Connecting Salesforce to Splunk Show allows demo activity events to show up on the SFDC records. This benefits many teams within Splunk and helps us understand how we’re demoing products to customers.
| Attachments/Videos/Links: |
|---|
|
