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Infoblox Inc.

  

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Company: Infoblox Inc., Santa Clara, CA
Company Description: Infoblox is an industry leading developer of network infrastructure automation solutions. Infoblox’s unique technologies increase network availability and control, while automating time-consuming manual tasks. Infoblox solutions are used by over 4,500 organizations worldwide, including more than 200 of the Fortune 500. The company operates in more than 30 countries.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Process of the Year

Nomination Title: LINEARITY CHALLENGE SOLVED

    Tell the story about your organization's sales process implementation since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

        Like all businesses, achieving consistent revenue across the duration of a
quarter can be a challenge.  All too often, more than 70% of the
bookings/revenue for a given quarter is collected in the last 2 weeks of a
quarter.  This impeded visibility, causes undue stress, produces difficulty
for budgeting purposes and reporting earnings to the street. If linearity can
be achieved, whereby bookings/revenue are steadily streaming in throughout a
quarter can improve:

*     Sanity of Execs-especially VP of Sales, CEO and CFO
*     Cash flow
*     Predictability of the business
*     Confidence in quarterly results beyond forecast
*     Limit end of quarter deals
*     Order management – smoothing the workload, etc
*     Inventory management
*     Forecasting
*     Reduce DSO

        Infoblox addressed this linearity challenge by a unique adjustment to its
sales process: off-set quarters by geography.  In addition to tying spiffs to
specific rep linearity targets, Infoblox adjusted quarter-end dates for
various regions; instigated regular status communication by Sales Operations,
Sales Management and the CEO.

How it works:
*     Most of our sales regions are on a different quarter from the
corporate fiscal calendar.
*     NAM West/APAC/JAPAN end their quarter in the first month of each
fiscal quarter.
*     NAM NORTHEAST/NAM SOUTHEAST end their quarter in the second month of
each fiscal quarter and includes Federal-end of September
*     EMEA are on the corporate fiscal calendar-split July/Aug

        The result:  Prior to May of 2009, on average we booked 48% of our business by
the second month of the quarter; from May 2009 through July 2010, on average
we booked 64% of our business by the second month of the quarter, helping the
company achieve consistent revenue/bookings and plan accordingly to finish out
the quarter meeting revenue objectives.  The stress and workload of a quarter
end is spread out into 3 mini quarter ends; fewer errors are made and orders
are booked more quickly; and, commission expense becomes more predictable and
more evenly distributed during a quarter. There is some additional
administration required by Finance and Sales Operations and Management due to
tracking of the corporate fiscal calendar and the sales calendars, but it is
well worth the effort!

    List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

    Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated sales organization:

        Mark Smith, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations, is
responsible for managing the Sales, Channel and Customer Support organizations
at Infoblox.  Smith, formerly VP of Corporate Sales with Juniper Networks and
VP of Worldwide Sales with NetScreen Technologies (acquired by Juniper in
April 2004), brings to the company more than 20 years of sales experience. 
While at NetScreen, Smith was named one of VARBusiness’ Top 100 Execs and a
CRN Channel Chief and he played an instrumental role in the company’s success
by consistently delivering revenue growth.  He holds a B.A. in political
science from Wheaton College.