IBM - Sales Performance Management Solution - New
Company: IBM, Armonk, NY
Company Description: IBM is a values-based enterprise of individuals who create & apply technology to make the world work better. Today, more than 400,000 IBM employees around the world invent and integrate hardware, software and services to help forward-thinking enterprises, institutions and people succeed on a smarter planet.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Performance Management Solution - New
Nomination Title: PERFORM Pipeline Assessment – Novel Method To Track Pipeline Value And Manage Sales
Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, explaining the features, functions, benefits, and results to date of the nominated new or new-version product or service, OR a written essay of up to 650 words describing the same? (Choose one): An essay/case study of up to 650 words
Summary:
Implementing cognition throughout business processes, IBM created a sales pipeline valuation method called PERFORM Pipeline Assessment (PPA). The method can be applied at any point in time and for any business scope. With the change in sales pipeline worth being a direct reflection of the amount and effectiveness of the sales effort, PPA solves a number of Sales Management challenges. Since its roll-out PPA has contributed to at least $326M growth in revenue.
Business Problem(s):
Sale Management challenges:
Revenue Projections.
-Tied to Market/Brand matrix, unavailable to compare with other dimensions, e.g. industry, channel, client set
-Static, responsive to sales actions only on the margin
-Difficult to connect the dots as there was sophisticated math and non-pipeline data sources involved
Amount of Sales Pipeline by Sales Stage paired with historical multipliers
-Ignores specific data: size, age, time stuck in a sales stage, client or sales team info.
-Unable to incorporate unstructured data present in opportunity records
-Over-relying on historical data
Sales “roadmaps”
-Does not include information already in opportunity records
-Subjective
Solution:
IBM’s Chief Analytics Office developed an opportunity-level insight called PERFORM Win Probability (PWP). PWP – at any point in time – can capture all recorded properties of a given sales opportunity and their evolution over time to compute a likelihood for the opportunity to become a win by the end of a specified quarter. PERFORM Pipeline Assessment (PPA) is sum-product of opportunity sizes and respective PWPs for a given scope. As constructed, PPA is essentially a pipeline valuation method.
A key property of pipeline value (or, equivalently, pipeline worth) is that it would increase in direct proportion to the amount and effectiveness of the sales effort put into it. So, a change in PPA being a direct measurement of change in pipeline worth is also a direct measurement of the sales effort! See: https: //ibm.box.com/s/aze9r5zon7s03ie0bq5a11e5mocgirfy
PPA transforms Sales Management, addressing many of its challenges:
-First and foremost, PPA provides clarity how the work of sales team translates into pipeline worth increase all the way to cumulative sales wins by given quarter’s end.
-PPA encodes more information about more of the pipeline – not just the changes in the discrete sales stages, not just the total amount of Wins or “roadmap” opportunities that Sales Managers observe via respective “tracks.” PPA lets Sales Managers see the “entire depth of the ocean”, not just the “surface”.
-Unlike revenue projections, which may indicate, for example, a 10% gap to objective week-after-week, PPA correctly presents the challenge in terms of required rate of growth in pipeline worth, which will be twice as large with 6 weeks to go vs. 12 weeks before quarter end with the same 10% gap to the objective.
-PPA plotted over weeks is effectively an Agile burn-up chart. PPA enables transformation of the weekly sales cadence meetings into Agile sprints and retrospectives – what do we learn from the progress made this week? What should we stop/keep/start doing?
-PPA tool implements an ability to extrapolate PPA track into the future delivering an integrated forecasting capability deeply rooted in the current pipeline.
-PPA is built at sales opportunity level and can be aggregated in any and every way. It supports all dimensions of the business and is resilient to organizational changes.
-Last, but not least PPA is delivered through an API. Consumed in other processes, applications, and dashboards, it enables cross-enterprise consistency and a much more efficient management system.
Business Results:
Since rollout, PPA contributed to 50pts of pipeline progression acceleration in areas of full deployment and $326M transactional revenue. Moreover, Sales Managers’ survey finds PPA being used in over 80% of decisions and being 3x more relevant to achieving Sales Management objectives than previously used metrics. PPA delivery through API has afforded substantial efficiency, flexibility and timeliness in generating and distributing pipeline insights while ensuring consistency across the entire enterprise.