Winner Summaries
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING
Diamond Winner
SAP North America: Transforming Marketing and Sales Engagement: Creating and Sustaining Relevance Through Account Based Marketing .........4
Gold Winner
Cisco Systems/Cisco Partner Consulting & Innovation Business Practices: Investing in Partners with Consulting and Data Analytics Yields
High Returns in Loyalty, Agility and Revenue ...................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Gold Winner
KPMG: Making Big Impressions at the United Nations .........................................................................................................................................................6
CAPITALIZING ON MARKETING’S NEW TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Diamond Winner
Cisco Systems: Data-Driven Automation Drives Incremental Service Revenue for Cisco .................................................................................................7
Gold Winner
Dell: Dell’s Integrated Marketing Technology Stack ............................................................................................................................................................8
DELIVERING AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Diamond Winner
HCL Technologies: The Relationship Beyond the Contract Campaign - Positioning HCLTECH’s Brand Promise through Integrated Marketing ..........9
Gold Winner
Cisco Systems: Cisco Services APAC Customer Lifecycle Marketing Engine: Innovation in Omnichannel Marketing ...................................................10
DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Diamond Winner
Cisco Systems: Cisco Internet of Everything Thought Leadership Platform: Visionary Insights Grounded in Real-World Business Outcomes ..........11
Gold Winner
Amdocs: Amdocs Sets the Agenda for Customer Experience in the Global Communications Market ...........................................................................12
Gold Winner
PwC: Driving Business with Thought Leadership ..............................................................................................................................................................13
ENABLING SALES AND SME CHANNELS FOR DEEPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Diamond Winner
SITA: STARS program ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................14
Gold Winner
Hewlett Packard Enterprises: What We Sell – Sales & Marketing Enablement Platform for Hewlett Packard Enterprise ............................................15
MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE
Diamond Winner
CSC: CSC Digital Marketing Dashboard ..............................................................................................................................................................................16
Gold Winner
Avanade: Avanade Global Marketing Effectiveness Program ...........................................................................................................................................17
Gold Winner
Avaya: Avaya CMO Funnel Dashboard ...............................................................................................................................................................................18
2015 FINALISTS All Categories.................................................................................................................................................................................................19
2
About the Marketing Excellence Awards
Launched in 1998, ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards (MEA) focus exclusively on the largest segment of the technology business: technology services
and solutions.
The awards program is based on a comprehensive and strategic approach to marketing, recognizing that business success today requires marketers to
move beyond the traditional realm of communications into such areas as developing new solutions, increasing sales effectiveness, and managing the
customer experience.
The program looks beyond flash and glitz to emphasize excellence in the three most critical aspects of success: innovation, execution, and business
results.
The Marketing Excellence Awards are open to all companies that market and sell technology-related services or solutions. Applications for awards are
due in June and the awards are announced at a special awards dinner during our Annual Marketing Conference in the fall.
MEA judging is based on a peer review process. The awards jury consists of members of ITSMA’s senior executive staff, ITSMA’s member advisory board,
and other senior marketing executives and experts. No judge reviews submissions for which there is a potential conflict of interest.
The MEA program includes two awards in each marketing category:
• Diamond Awards: Best in class for the industry, as measured by innovation, execution, and business results
• Gold Awards: Standout achievement in improving marketing performance, as measured by innovation, execution, and business results
Past award winners have included Accenture, Agilent Technologies (partnering with PARTNERS+simons), Alcatel-Lucent, Alfa Wassermann, AT&T, Avaya,
BMC Software, BT, CDW, Cisco, Cognizant, CompuCom, EMC, Fujitsu Services, GE Healthcare, HCL, HDS, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM Global Services,
IKON, Infosys, Iron Mountain, Microsoft Services, NCR Teradata, NetApp, Northrop Grumman, Oracle, Patni, SAP, Mahindra Satyam, Siemens, Sprint Nextel,
Tata Consultancy Services, TELUS, Unisys, Wipro, and Xerox Global Services among other top technology and professional services firms.
For more information on the MEA program, visit www.itsma.com/marketing-excellence-awards/.
3
SAP NORTH AMERICA
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING
DIAMOND AWARD
Transforming Marketing and Sales Engagement:
Creating and Sustaining Relevance Through Account Based Marketing
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
events. One of the most effective tactics known as Customer Co-Innovation Days brought a customized, on-site
event directly to the customer. The overall focus of these events was to inform customers about how they can
co-innovate with SAP.
SAP North America developed an account based marketing (ABM) program to focus and customize marketing
efforts for large, strategic customers. Like many mature B2B companies, SAP receives a very high percentage of
revenue from a small number of strategic accounts. With the top 10% of our accounts delivering up to 80% of revenue in North America, it became clear that field marketers needed to become true “business partners” to sales
and our customers in order to drive sustainable account growth, accelerate opportunities, and cultivate customer
relationships. SAP’s challenge was to consolidate and modify previously unfocused marketing efforts, create a
common methodology to our approach across regions, and maintain consistency by sharing best practices.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The ABM marketing strategy exceeded its goals across all key objectives. The indicators used to measure what has
been accomplished to date include pipeline touched, new pipeline created (value and number of opportunities),
as well as quality contacts created in new buying centers.
2014 results exceeded expectations and demonstrated that SAP’s ABM approach is having significant, incremental
impact:
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
SAP’s main objective was to add strategic value to our relationships with top accounts and to become true business partners to sales and to our customers. The team also focused on building future pipeline through marketing practices rather than focusing on near-term needs. The program was designed to deliver value to sales in
two primary ways: 1) by enabling customers to accelerate decision-making processes; and 2) expanding the SAP
presence within these large accounts.
»
»
»
»
Another ABM driver was the need to extend support to more of a sustainable, year-long program of activities
which demonstrated to customers and sales teams alike how marketing can support a partnership with SAP – not
just be viewed simply as a vendor. By utilizing the ABM marketing strategy, SAP could achieve its objective of
increasing the level and quality of customer engagement as well as ensuring a long-term value recognition and
growth from customers.
Marketing Pipeline Touched (MPT): $209M Touched, $27.6M has closed
Marketing Progressed Pipeline (MPP): $57M Progressed, $30.3M has closed
New Opportunities Created: 49 for $27M in new pipeline
1,200 New Line of Business (LOB) Contacts
As a result of ABM success, the program has expanded to include 55 accounts in 2015, with additional budget
and headcount allocated to the effort. SAP has also established a global ABM program office to leverage the
success of the North American region and syndicate it throughout other regional marketing teams. The 2015
ABM program has evolved from 1 dedicated person to 4 – as well as an extended team of 15, and ABM funding
has been increased by 50% over 2014. The results derived from the impressive effects of ABM marketing have
demonstrated to customers and sales how marketing can support account growth, accelerate opportunities, and
deliver customer value.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
SAP NA addressed this need through establishing a centralized Account Based Marketing (“ABM”) program office
and creation of a comprehensive ABM program in 2014. ABM marketing efforts utilized a strategic approach in
which highly targeted awareness and demand generation programs were executed for a specific customer. The
SAP team delivered formalized training programs for a core group of marketing professionals, studied external
best practices around ABM, worked closely with Sales colleagues on account selection and establishing rules of
engagement, and created a marketing Bill of Materials as well as an execution engine to deliver against those
tactics. Implementation of Account Planning sessions helped to identify new opportunities, as well as to ensure
sales and marketing alignment.
T
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
his is a very well thought out and comprehensive ABM program, including organization, planning, tactics, and measurement. SAP has used ABM as a novel way to improve recognition, build relationships,
and increase sales in a large organization. This entry demonstrated solid execution with clear objectives
and metrics, a program office including training and best practice assessment, strong links with account
teams, joint account planning, great marketing tactics, and impressive results in the first year.
New tactics were implemented into the ABM program, such as employing a dedicated marketer, developing an
18-month plan, and securing a budget for customized activities. Other tactics included customized newsletters
and webcasts, dedicated enterprise social networking sites, account-specific digital marketing, and onsite 1:1
4
CISCO
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING
GOLD AWARD
Investing in Partners with Consulting and Data Analytics Yields High Returns in Loyalty, Agility and Revenue
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
» Business Strategy: Strategic planning session to define, document and communicate long- and short-term
objectives, initiatives and metrics
» Human Capital: Best practice sharing and training to help partners improve their human capital lifecycle competencies and productivity
» Service Adoption and Acceleration Workshop: Analysis and recommended action plan for creation or improvement of services-specific practice (Cisco and partner-branded services)
» Resource Optimization: Analysis and recommendations for custom integration of Cisco Advanced Services
capabilities into a partner’s go-to-market strategy
The Cisco Services Partner Consulting & Innovation (PC&I) Business Practice is a strategic business initiative
that combines account based marketing strategies with consultative solutions for our partner community. PC&I
invests in partners’ success by solving their most important business challenges and accelerating their ability to
increase revenue, improve efficiencies and mitigate risk in rapidly changing market conditions.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Because Cisco has spent decades building a powerful partner ecosystem, partners look to us for new ways to
enable them to make successful market transitions. This became the program objective for PC&I. To help partners
adopt new capabilities, increase profitability, and mitigate risk, in FY14 we launched the Partner Benchmarking Index (PBI) to provide an objective baseline of their existing capabilities. Recognized as one of Cisco’s most
strategic channel investments, the PBI leverages analytics to:
Phase 3: Standardizing Analytics and Processes via the Partner Benchmarking Index: Having amassed
significant data over hundreds of partner engagements, we produced a benchmarking model that delivers
unprecedented visibility and insights for improving efficiencies, making strategic investments and prioritizing
go-to-market decisions.
Phase 4: Scaling with Expanded Capabilities and Geographical Coverage: As we continuously increased and
refined our capabilities, skills and approach, we also expanded into additional geographic theaters. To further
accelerate partner business transformations, we built the Partner Opportunity & Capability Profile, which provides
the next step in data-driven blueprints for more informed improvement targets and stronger, in-depth business
cases for transformation.
» Quantify partners’ overall performance
» Identify partners’ strengths and gap areas
» Gain insight into market opportunities and prioritize investments
The PC&I Business Practice drives collaborative execution of recommendations from the PBI findings via a regular
and thorough cycle of partner and Cisco engagement and tracking. These interactions cement the relationship
with partners by improving transparency to our respective organizations, empowering collaborative working relationships, fostering teamwork and trust, and uncovering critical insights for strategic planning, resource allocation
and business model transformation.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The business results were convincing, demonstrating
that partners who engaged with the PC&I team show
greater loyalty to Cisco, with a stellar Walker study
loyalty score of 97%. In turn, PC&I-engaged partners
also command similarly strong customer loyalty. While
the average IT industry customer loyalty score with the
channel is 45%, the loyalty score for customers of Cisco
partners who engaged with the PC&I team is 93%. In
addition, PC&I-engaged partners achieved year-over-year
Cisco growth that was 50% higher, on average, than the
aggregate Cisco partner community for the past 5 years.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The four key phases of the initiative included:
Phase 1: Piloting the Partner Discovery Process: After completing a highly successful initial face-to-face
conference to mitigate issues with a specific partner, an expanded effort was launched, offering the same type of
engagement to a variety of partners to support their goals and provide fresh perspectives as their business and
market conditions changed.
Phase 2: Building Out PC&I Capabilities: Macro-level partner analysis provided insight into common critical
partner gaps and needs. Additional workshops were added and formalized including:
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
C
isco’s entry addresses a long-standing
challenge of driving maximum business out
of partnerships. One half is understanding the
partners better and the other is getting them to
address issues that prevent them from reaching
their top potential. This is a great example of a
standardized way to engage with partners one
at a time to build joint plans for business growth
and customer loyalty. It is real value-add ABM.
To our knowledge, there is no other practice like the
Cisco Partner Consulting & Innovation Business Practice. This strategic business initiative applies account based
marketing strategies and unique business analytics with consultative solutions in an
entirely new way. We focus on our partners to deepen relationships, transform partner
business models, and ultimately, accelerate our mutual profitability and growth.
» Partner Discovery: A holistic, business-centric engagement focused on benchmarking and improving all
functional business capabilities
» Unique Value Proposition: Marketing-centric workshop to help partners define and communicate key
strengths and unique differentiators
5
KPMG LLP
ACCELERATING GROWTH WITH ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING
GOLD AWARD
Making Big Impressions at the United Nations
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Third-party brand perception study confirms that the ABM campaign helped change perceptions of KPMG at
the UN:
In an effort to enhance KPMG’s global brand visibility and deepen relationships at the United Nations (UN), a U.S.
Platinum account for KPMG, an account-based marketing campaign strategy was launched in support of the UN’s
Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
» The Director of the UN Development Programme noted that KPMG is “an innovative interlocutor on a wide
range of development-related topics,” and credits the firm with providing ideas on sustainable development
and advocating for private sector-led, inclusive growth
» The head of the Business Partnerships Group of the UN Industrial Development Organization notes that
KPMG is a “leading professional firm in the area of global development” with the “capacity and know-how to
significantly contribute to pressing challenges around the Post-2015 agenda”
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Our ultimate goal was to proactively change the client’s perception of KPMG as merely one of many undifferentiated “professional service vendors” to one of KPMG as a trusted advisor with shared values and accountability in
shaping the client’s post-2015 global agenda.
Positive media sentiment from the campaign enhances KPMG’s overall brand equity
» Top KPMG executives are being covered across the media regarding their views on SDGs and how the private
sector can guide the investment decisions of the sector while solving economic, social, and environmental
challenges—thereby creating real, shared, tangible value
» KPMG’s views on the SDGs garnered positive coverage on social and digital platforms, especially after the
account’s active involvement in creating high touch event programs at the UN General Assembly and World
Economic Forum
» 37 UN-related events were identified and attended by the account team, 11 of which were hosted by KPMG,
yielding upwards of five million brand impressions in eight countries across 6 main industry verticals
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The UN Global Account Team accomplished a series of firsts by executing the SDG Industry Matrix campaign.
Not only was this their first actual ABM campaign but they also broke new ground within KPMG’s broader
marketing organization in the following ways:
» First account-based marketing campaign that combined a mix of digital and traditional media channels to
drive brand, relationships, and sales at KPMG
» Seamless coordination within KPMG’s marketing organization brought the best of the firm’s resources to the
account. By leveraging internal market research tools, as well as local, national, global, and offshore resources, the team was able to achieve a cost savings of approximately $225,000 USD in print production,
event marketing execution, market research and campaign management costs
» First integrated client-centric marketing plan with a global reach and scale of this magnitude and prominence—drawing in C-Suite executives and global leaders across eight countries
» First within KPMG’s Platinum marketing program to establish a global lead partner as a leading subject matter
expert in a major, global campaign initiative that was not focused on a service line
From a revenue growth perspective, the UN Global Account team expects the campaign to influence a 33% US
revenue increase by the end of FY15 and an increase in global revenue of 45% over the same time period given its
proven effectiveness in building the UN account team’s continued exposure and credibility across the UN system.
Analysis of the latest figures from the 2014 UN Annual Statistical Report published this past August show that
KPMG has ascended from 7th place provider to the 3rd largest services provider to the United Nations for applicable services, and 2nd within the Big 4 globally.
BUSINESS RESULTS
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
G
Lead Acquisition that accelerated the UN account team’s understanding of and connection to key buyers,
influencers, and coaches within the UN
iven the complexity of both the UN and KPMG itself globally, this was well
executed, driving impressive results and competitive advantage. With relatively
low penetration into the account, KPMG used ABM to change perception within the
UN from a good supplier to a partner that really understood their organizational
imperatives and was able to leverage their own wider business relationship to help
support the UN agenda. This submission shows a good understanding of a large
and dispersed client with many cultures and relationship/purchasing criteria. It
also demonstrates good coordination within KPMG’s organization.
» Approximately 85 new relationships were created
» Eight new speaking engagements were identified and managed by KPMG marketing that credentialized the
UN Global Lead Partner as a leading subject matter expert in the Post-2015 global debate
» Using the MarketEdge relationship scoring methodology, the campaign led to a 40 percent increase in the
relationship scores of Post-2015 strategic contacts across the UN’s 10 largest entities
6
CISCO SYSTEMS
CAPITALIZING ON MARKETING’S NEW TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES
DIAMOND AWARD
Data-Driven Automation Drives Incremental Service Revenue for Cisco
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
AutoQuote leverages this same enriched data to fuel automated service renewal quotes, which are emailed out first
to partners and then to end customers, 90 days in advance of service expirations. The expiration date of the quote is
listed within the AutoQuote email and a built-in quote validation tool incorporates up-to-the-minute Cisco pricing and
partner-specific discount models to ensure quote accuracy. To support global sales, localized languages and currency
can be used.
The Cisco Global Customer Success (GCS) organization was formed to simplify and digitize an end-to-end customer
engagement model that supports customers for life. As part of this model, GCS established an initiative to develop a
data-driven, automated renewals engine that enables partners to address all service renewals, no matter how small.
Aimed at improving the efficiency and success of service sales renewals across the Americas, the initiative was formed
to transform the way Cisco helps customers achieve their business outcomes.
BUSINESS RESULTS
Based on Cisco research, customers with a service contract have a 33% higher retention rate. And to keep them on
contract, Cisco executives recognized that the business opportunity meant more than winning the initial service sale: it
required ongoing customer engagement over multiple cycles of the service renewal.
Using innovative data-driven processes and relying upon collaboration and automation, GCS has made nearly 96%
of the service renewal opportunity actionable across Cisco’s partner base. In addition, it doubled the annual percent
of available service renewals closed globally, delivered more than $3 billion in automated quote opportunities to the
worldwide market in FY14 and saved Cisco distribution partners thousands of hours of sales and administrative time.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Through the initiative, Cisco has successfully revolutionized its low-dollar, high-volume service renewals business with
an effective and efficient way to capture lost revenue. By digitizing the end-to-end customer engagement model for
partners, it has established the foundation for the future of the GCS organization, setting the stage for Cisco to:
To extend its business transformation goals across the partner experience, GCS needed enhanced big data, analytics,
and automation capabilities to power the initiative. It began by leveraging MaintenanceNet’s (now a part of Cisco)
data analytics and automation platform to improve the subscription and renewals experience for Cisco partners and
customers by streamlining tedious, time-consuming tasks in the quoting and ordering process.
» Expand its data-driven automation platform to address and manage the full customer lifecycle opportunity,
across all customer touch points spanning the attach, onboarding, adoption, expansion, renewal and technology refresh stages
» Extend automated, personalized notifications across all lifecycle motions to the customer (under the partner
brand) to improve the end-to-end customer experience
» Integrate a powerful commerce capability, using AutoQuote, to give customers the ability to transact instantly
and conveniently
Because Cisco partners were missing out on a substantial number of service sales opportunities each year, Cisco also
implemented MaintenanceNet’s AutoQuote campaign engine to help partners stop service revenue leakage and close
service deals faster and more cost effectively. While selling a service renewal may sound easy, partners often neglect
contract renewals because they’re difficult to track and manage, with hundreds or even thousands coming up for
renewal each month.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Using AutoQuote, Cisco transformed its service renewal business into an automated process that ran smoothly on
autopilot. The initiative allows sales representatives to see and take action on more sales opportunities, and also helps
Cisco and its partners better engage customers at specific touch points in the customer’s lifecycle by ensuring their
service contract needs are addressed on time, efficiently, and intelligently.
W
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
orking with partners is tough. Not only did Cisco deepen its relationships with channel partners
through this initiative, the company also delivered huge cost and time efficiencies while generating
financial wins. As well as being a success for Cisco the program also benefited Cisco partners. The increase
in renewal rates has been particularly noteworthy, from 17% in the Americas to approximately 55%.
The first step in the initiative was to tap into customers’ service contract data residing in ERP, pricing, point of sale, CRM,
entitlement, and other systems. Cisco then aggregated and enriched these disparate data sources to make the data
complete and actionable, providing a full 360-degree picture of services that had yet to be transacted and renewed. The
enriched data enabled partners to know precisely who to reach out to and when – with the right service renewal offer.
7
DELL
CAPITALIZING ON MARKETING’S NEW TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES
GOLD AWARD
Dell’s Integrated Marketing Technology Stack
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Oracle Eloqua and Captix
This integration created a real time automated sync between field event activities, Salesforce, and the Eloqua nurture program. Now, leads go to sales quicker while the contacts that are not ready to talk to sales are nurtured.
The customer journey has changed. The world is more digital than ever and contacts demand a personalized
experience. At the same time, Dell has thousands of products, services, and solutions. We needed some way to
reach our contacts with personalized, timely, and relevant content. The goal was to create an always-on digital
program to educate and enable throughout the buying cycle.
BUSINESS RESULTS
In the ad tech space, new metrics have been and continue to be redefined on the impact to business results.
In some cases, this is as straightforward as the immediate revenue uplift or the attributable revenue impact by
engaging more relevant customers. In others we look at simpler online engagement results like lead generation
or even the ability to drive stronger cookie matching within the digital space to drive more targeting messaging to
our customers. Within the coming year, we expect to see:
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
At the core, messaging and engagement had to be relevant and timely – focused on the customer’s needs, not
necessarily on the product or solution that Dell wanted to push. Considerable analysis was done, from understanding the opportunities and solutions to better engage with the customer to understanding various departmental needs including a “meeting of the minds” across Marketing and IT. We also conducted an ROI assessment
to understand what type of impact investing in marketing technology would have on the business.
» More efficient use of our digital spend (lower cost per acquisition (CPA))
» Higher return on our ad spend (ROAS)
» Higher value customer engagements that drive to the end of the funnel (larger attributional revenue/customer
spend – up to 8X)
Shifting to an advertising tech stack has enabled our Marketing teams—ranging from media to production—to
identify the right customers based on 1st and 3rd party data to effectively target them based on their needs and
interests while customizing that creative messaging real time.
These results are key and play a role in the future marketing strategies the business deploys.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
“Always-on” nurture emails are vastly more successful than Dell push marketing activities.
» 157% increase in open rates with an average 30.78% open rate
» 536% increase in click-through rates with an average 6.38% click-through rate
» In addition, as successive content engagement deepens, we’re seeing open rates of 40% and click-thru
rates of 7%.
» The integration of multiple audience sources has contributed to a 273% increase in audience over the
last year.
» Contact leads from the nurture program convert at a rate of 80% (pipeline opportunity to revenue). This
is a 129% lift over contacts that are not in the nurture program.
» Customers in the nurture program spend on average 3 times more per order than those who have not been
in the nurture program.
Dell Marketing and IT designed a multi-platform ecosystem to enhance our ability to scale, personalize, and react
to customer behavior. Our vision leverages the Oracle Eloqua, Oracle RTD, Oracle BlueKai, Adacado, Mediamath,
Shutterfly (CMS), and Captix.
AdTech Marketing
Moving towards programmatic media buying involved and continues to involve new collaboration – from global
engagements to local business engagement to having traditional partners/vendors extend outside of the current
ways of doing business to evolving their models to support that new vision. This has meant sometimes bringing in
3rd parties to facilitate that change conversation and redefine roles and responsibilities.
Oracle Eloqua and Content Management System (CMS)
Oracle Eloqua and the CMS are key enablers of powering a truly flexible marketing engine. This custom integration has on average 691 versions of emails encompassing 6 languages in 10 countries supporting over 2,000
unique customer experiences.
D
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
ell’s entry is a great example of marketing working with IT and other crossfunctional groups to integrate multiple marketing systems to drive cost
efficiencies in marketing spend and customer engagement. This was a very
complex process that required significant collaboration between Marketing and
IT, as well as reigning in the individual marketing teams. The approach to designing a multi-platform ecosystem built on top of their core system represents
a good vision that has been implemented at scale with some admirable results.
Oracle Eloqua and Oracle RTD
The logic in Oracle RTD enables real time decisions with our Eloqua nurture programs. Multiple variables are used
to provide a recommendation of the right topic and the right phase of the customer buying cycle. This information is then sent to Eloqua so the correct email can be sent to the customer.
8
HCL TECHNOLOGIES
DELIVERING AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
DIAMOND AWARD
The Relationship Beyond the Contract Campaign
Positioning HCLTECH’s Brand Promise through Integrated Marketing
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
ing but strengthening the brand promise through programs and artifacts. Here are some of the sub-initiatives
as a part of the campaign:
Through possibly the worst recession that this generation has witnessed, HCL Technologies delivered an extended period of tremendous growth, as measured by business indicators and customer satisfaction, thanks to
aggressive sales and effective delivery capabilities. However, marketing faced three challenges:
1. The Spirit of RBtC Video: 105 second film that used a father-son relationship over a 20 year period, to
creatively showcase our simple message
2. The LinkedIn-HCL Collaboration App: HCL collaborated with LinkedIn to create a first of its kind in the
world application using LinkedIn’s powerful API framework
» Various lines of business within the company were marketing their services independently and with only a
suggestive alignment with the core company messaging
» We needed thought leadership. As HCL took on the role of a more seasoned participant in the IT services
market, our customers and prospects wanted to know if we had a vision for IT Services that extended past the
technology of the season.
» It is HCL’s business strategy to increase our customer base in the top Global 2000 companies. While we had
been increasing our customer base overall, the number of G2000 customers was still low. Within this elite
group of IT service buyers, we won more than 50% of the deals we participated in, but were invited only to less
than 10% of deals to begin with. For the campaign, this was an awareness problem that required immediate
intervention.
3. The RBtC Coffee Table Book: it showcased 10 iconic relationships from around the world- relationships
that we as a brand could aspire to have with our customers.
4. Digital Outreach and Thought Leadership: CEO’s blog on LinkedIN Influencer platform led to organic
media mentions across a variety of top media outlets.
BUSINESS RESULTS
1. The Integrated Digital Campaign has an exposure of 100 million impressions from G2000 organizations and
the online community.
2. G2000 organizations visits to HCLTECH’s website jumped from 300 organizations in June 2014 to 1,300 in June
2015, a 400% jump as a result of the campaign.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The objectives of the program were the following:
3. The fastest film in the history of IT industry to reach
2 million views on You Tube. 50% of views come
from the U.S. and Europe.
1. Align all the lines of business under a unified messaging architecture
2. Ensure that messages directly resonated with HCL’s core beliefs
4. A first-in-class digital app created in collaboration
with LinkedIn, with more than 10,000 usages of the
app across the G2000 community.
3. Express how the relevance of our brand promise directly translated into the robustness of our business model
as our vision for the future of IT Services
PROGRAM EXECUTION
5. 25,000 followers added on HCLTECH social media
destinations since Dec 2013, an 83% increase in the
last 12 months.
To crack the integrated communications strategy for an omnichannel customer experience, HCL initiated a global
unified messaging campaign called Relationship beyond the Contract (RBtC).
6. RBtC leveraged in 130 large deal pursuits with a
total pipeline value of over 4.5 billion USD. RBtC-led
business campaigns generated a pipeline of $500
million.
At the heart of the campaign was a 105-second film that used a father-son relationship over a 20 year period to
creatively showcase our simple message – that every relationship has an underlying contract. However, the true
joy and memorability of that relationship emerge in moments when the parties go beyond the contract. This was
HCL’s way of placing our faith and future in the power of our relationships with our customers and not only on the
contract signed with them. This film received smiles and emotional responses from customers, prospects, and
employees but, more importantly, became a vehicle to drive multiple communications across various stakeholders leveraging digital, collaterals, website and various other channels.
7. HCLTECH brand favorability increased by 9% to 29%
as measured by a LinkedIn Study.
With its core message of Relationship beyond the Contract (RBtC), the campaign has focused not just on chang-
9
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
W
hat came through in this entry was the
pride HCL has in the overall program. This
is a great overall case study in developing and
executing a B2B brand message that is much
more than just a high-level rally cry. There’s a
lot of innovation in here, for example the use
of LinkedIn as both a platform and leveraging
LinkedIn executives as sponsors. HCL included
and involved employees as a channel to ensure
message consistency. This is a good example
of an internal/external, online/offline multichannel campaign that links into operational
activities.
CISCO
DELIVERING AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
GOLD AWARD
Cisco Services APAC Customer Lifecycle Marketing Engine:
Innovation in Omnichannel Marketing
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
As omnichannel success requires personalization, we translate data and cross-channel interactions into a unique
experience for customers. To achieve this, we have built the Lifecycle Engine on two integrated platforms:
In the dynamic, rapidly expanding economies that make up Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China (APJC), Cisco
recognizes that much of the economic acceleration and transformation that will occur will be made possible
through rapid and pervasive adoption of technology as a scaling engine. The APJC Customer Lifecycle Engine was
created with these changes in mind, offering an omnichannel experience for customers to realize the full potential
of technologies purchased and to maximize lifetime value with them.
Designed to drive Cisco annuity services renewals and next generation services expansion across APJC, it enables
the right engagements at the right time – all focused on customers’ unique needs. It builds trust and deepens
relationships by taking customers on a journey that anticipates what they are interested in, where they are in the
technology lifecycle, and where they want to go.
1)
The Digital Customer Engagement Platform delivers customer-focused content, engages customers
with social and interactive features, tracks and analyzes customer behavioral data and feeds insights
to sellers.
2)
The Account Based Marketing Platform maps this behavioral data with installed base and other
sources of data to predict where the customer is in the journey. It equips sellers with all the
information they need to take customers on a seven-step customer journey across multiple digital
and human touch points.
BUSINESS RESULTS
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The Customer Lifecycle Engine enables a one-to-one brand experience with Cisco far beyond our previous efforts.
It maps marketing and sales efforts specifically and uniquely to each customer to maximize opportunity. In only
two quarters of full operation, we have built large-scale engagement and sales impact, including:
The APJC Customer Lifecycle Engine contributes to Cisco’s strategic goals in forging greater knowledge of and
relationships with customers in this vast and important region. It has afforded Cisco a new, innovative way of
working across borders and across cultures. The initiative takes into account shifts in IT demand as well as shifts
in selling practices, along with an understanding of customer and market needs in a region of the world in which
many unique IT challenges and complexities exist.
» Touching customers in 15 countries, 631 customer organizations and 1,203 individuals across Asia Pacific and
Japan with compelling content and multi-touch customized journeys
» Consistently increasing numbers of subscribers by 20-25% quarter over quarter: 25% of total subscribers are
partners, 75% are customers, 10% are C-Level and above and 28% are directors and senior managers and
above
» Incremental impact in pipeline creation estimated at an average of 22.5% after engaging with customers
through the experience
Most importantly, the Customer Lifecycle Engine is earning Cisco deeper relationships and greater trust with our
APJC customers, allowing us to cultivate the coveted role of “trusted business advisor,” which is priceless.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Using a data-driven approach, the Lifecycle Engine turns massive amounts of information into actionable insights
for those who sell Cisco products along with those who buy them. The Lifecycle Engine:
» Provides coverage of a wide range of offerings from Cisco’s large and complex portfolio of services
» Unlocks business value from large data sets of structured and unstructured customer data
» Provides a balanced marketing mix of digital content, virtual and face-to-face events to engage with business,
finance and IT buyers the way they desire
» Treats customers with personalized and relevant insights using automated email campaigns, social communities, digital content and high-touch human interaction
» Serves timely thought leadership content and sales collateral and tracks insights on usage
» Provides access to subject matter experts (SMEs) in a variety of communications modes, and enables sales
teams to act as SMEs
» Expands the customer journey to nurture relationships beyond the initial sale
» Delivers insights into a multi-cultural, multi-language world, with content in four languages – English, Chinese,
Japanese and Korean – and deep analysis into demographics and patterns to offer a unique user experience
I
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
t’s refreshing to see Cisco take a lifetime value view of its customers, and to see the use of analytics with
automation to scale engagement. This entry does a great job of sharing a real omnichannel experience
spanning digital and offline across the customer journey. The very strong focus on customer needs is
evident throughout the submission has clearly helped Cisco build the initiative on excellent insight.
10
CISCO
DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
DIAMOND AWARD
Cisco Internet of Everything Thought Leadership Platform:
Visionary Insights Grounded in Real-World Business Outcomes
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In May 2013, we introduced our IoE Value Index (for private sector only), which analyzed the IoE readiness of
industries and countries in 2013. We followed this with the release of the IoE $4.6 Trillion Value at Stake Report for
the Public Sector in January 2014.
As Cisco evolves from trusted network advisor to trusted business advisor, our target audience has expanded from
IT and industry influencers to include C-suite and line-of-business executives. Accordingly, Cisco must meet their
demands for thought leadership (TL) that merges cutting-edge, business-relevant market discussions and the
convergence of IoE-related technologies.
Phase 3 - The HOW
Now we were ready to introduce roadmaps for how customers could capture IoE value with practical examples
and recommendations. To enable sustained market conversations, we forged a platform-based approach focusing on either 1) vertical industry lens or 2) business-driven technology lens.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The main goal was to codify Cisco thought leadership. Cisco has proved its ability to catch market transitions
and become a market-leading vendor in a short period of time. Throughout these transitions, we have exerted
tremendous thought leadership, but have never codified, defined and packaged it in a programmatic companywide fashion. We needed to establish a unified, long-term thought leadership agenda for the entire organization.
We promoted TL to the field via internal webinars, events, and created the first internal “TL Sales Companions”
for the field.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Each Platform Is Fully Loaded and “Packaged”: We start with primary research yielding both qualitative and
quantitative insights: in-depth interviews with executives and thought leaders from multiple countries; economic
analysis and modeling to quantify the business case; video interviews with industry thought leaders that speak to
the executive audience directly and provide an expert, non-Cisco voice.
In FY15 (August 2014 – July 2015), we delivered five TL platforms: Public Sector, Financial Services, Retail, Oil and
Gas, and IoT/Data Analytics.
We embarked on a long-term, orchestrated thought leadership journey, taking a phased approach to executing
and building momentum:
» Phase 1: THE WHAT – Identified the Internet of Everything (IoE) as a major market transition and defined it for
the industry
» Phase 2: THE WHY – Discovered significant economic value being created by IoE
BUSINESS RESULTS
» #1 in Share of Voice worldwide; our 38% share is 2X that of the closest competition
» High sentiment: 85% positive, 14% neutral and 1% negative
» 258 million impressions and 901,000 engagements
» 57.4% sales conversion of sales qualified leads delivered
» Phase 3: THE HOW – Introduced roadmaps – how to capture IoE value
Phase 1: The WHAT
Cisco defined the “Internet of Everything” as the networked connection of people, process, data, and things, thus
differentiating our approach to this market transition from other technology companies and research/analyst firms.
» Customer-validated business outcomes: 47 case studies complete and 196 in pipeline
We leveraged a network of subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop hypotheses quantifying the IoE opportunity.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
We then engaged world-class economist – Erik Brynjolfsson – and his team at the MIT Center for Digital Business
to help us define and design a new approach combining economic analysis and primary market research.
T
he real strength in the submission was the development of a programmatic
approach delivering a structured framework and repeatable methodology,
providing a sound basis for the future as well as delivering results today. Cisco not
only conducted primary research, using blue chip third parties to add further weight,
but also had the vision to see this issue coming three years ago and stick with it.
Companies so often get internally bored with a TL issue and forget how long it takes
for the market to process and act on what they are hearing. It feels as though IoE
has become a deliberate ‘purpose’ of the organization.
In December 2012, our IoE Point of View positioning paper opened a provocative view to the exponential growth
of the Internet and tantalized audiences to pay close attention and learn more.
Phase 2: The WHY
Well-Orchestrated Releases Build Momentum: A month after releasing the initial IoE PoV, we followed with the
release of the IoE $14.4 Trillion Value at Stake Report for the Private Sector. This paper was presented to a select
audience at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland by Cisco CEO John Chambers.
11
AMDOCS
DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
GOLD AWARD
Amdocs Sets the Agenda for Customer Experience in the Global Communications Market
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Audience segmentation: Reaching parts of the customer organization others can’t
A parallel phase of work focused on deciding the key buying persona(s) to be targeted by our Customer Experience Spotlight program. Amdocs had already good connections with CIOs and COOs. Based on this input, we
decided to orientate the Customer Experience Spotlight program towards the CMO persona.
Turning over $3.6 billion in 2014 and employing more than 24,000 professionals worldwide, Amdocs is a leading
provider of customer experience solutions, services and software serving the top 250 service providers globally.
Our customers face increasingly brutal competition – from each other and from over-the-top (OTT) companies,
such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Crucially, through ease of use and excellent design, the OTT entrants into the communications market have made customer experience the new battleground for this industry.
Marketing mix decision: Making it Personal and Fun
Given our chosen topic, we agreed in August 2014 on one simple guiding principle: the Customer Experience
Spotlight would be a memorable experience for the CMOs we had decided to target. In addition to the traditional
thought leadership deliverables, we focused on two high-touch and engaging delivery mechanisms:
While an undisputed technical leader, Amdocs realized it was lagging behind some of its competitors in terms
of thought leadership. Only a small minority of customers saw the company as a “trusted advisor”. Some of our
competitors were gaining mindshare, while Amdocs was flat-lining.
» A user-friendly online tool akin to a virtual TV game show
» A series of dedicated face-to-face workshops with our top CMO targets.
Against this fiercely competitive backdrop, the Executive Management team of Amdocs saw an opportunity to use
customer experience as the theme to re-set perception, open new discussions, capture new revenue and drive
business wins with our customers, while leap-frogging the competition.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The program over-achieved against its targets.
As part of a broader repositioning exercise, which culminated in the launch of The New World of Customer
ExperienceTM as the company’s new corporate messaging in February 2015, the Amdocs Market Insight and
Strategy (MIS) team planned, designed, and executed a hard-hitting thought leadership program: The Customer
Experience Spotlight.
Brand awareness
The Customer Experience Spotlight was mentioned
in 81 publications in three months (vs. a target of 50).
Our gamification video was the 6th most viewed on
the Amdocs website (vs. top 10), and our press release
reached 3rd most viewed article. Internally, the MIS briefing webinar was the 9th most downloaded asset on the
company’s internal learning platform.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The objectives of the Customer Experience Spotlight were to:
» Facilitate conversations between Amdocs and the critical buying centers in our current and prospective service provider customers
» Accelerate the velocity of the sales pipeline
» Raise the awareness of Amdocs as the leader in customer experience solutions
Business conversations
Against a target of 12 strategy workshops, the Customer
Experience Spotlight was shared with 15 customers on
a 1-1 basis in just three months, across 11 countries.
Eight of these customers are included in the Amdocs
ABM program. With an average of 15 customer attendees
at each workshop, many at the VP or C-level, the MIS
team achieved extraordinary intimacy with key decision
makers, and beat the target of 125 individuals.
Working with a minimal budget, this innovative program over-achieved its targets, contributing directly to engagement with new buying groups.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The execution of the Customer Experience Spotlight thought leadership campaign comprised five distinct phases
starting in May 2014 and running over a year.
Choice of methodology and hero message: the Global Customer Experience Index
The MIS team worked with the Amdocs PR and AR departments to define the messaging platforms with most
appeal to media and analysts. We decided to focus our thought leadership on generating a Global Customer
Experience Index. Having defined what we wanted to say, we also fine-tuned our quantitative research approach
so that it would deliver the proof points required.
12
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
T
his is a great campaign addressing a very
important topic with clearly defined objectives. Amdocs took the time to work across
functions to isolate the target audience and
create messaging/content that would work for
not just that target, but also analysts and other
audiences. The initiative draws on some good
basic practice, supplemented with innovative
ideas such as the Quiz Show and gamefication
for getting the message through to the audience. It is customer focused throughout and
demonstrates considerable tailoring to meet
the needs of individual customers. Another
strength is that this has been incorporated into
the new hire induction.
PWC
DRIVING BUSINESS WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
GOLD AWARD
Driving Business with Thought Leadership
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
BUSINESS RESULTS
In the midst of compliance turmoil and confusion over the Volcker Rule, PwC aimed to position its services as
a trusted advisor with the right solution for any Financial Services company facing its implications. The PwC
Financial Services Regulatory team set out to develop a complete set of offerings based on The Volcker Rule and
turned to the Financial Services Marketing team to help them develop the market for this solution.
With a comprehensive and collaborative strategy for the Volcker rule, Our marketing strategy served us well,
placing us atop all other Big Four firms and we now serve a whopping 13 of the largest 30 global SIFIs.
Beyond driving thought leadership publications resulting in first-to-market wins, we also had thousands of
content downloads.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
Thought leadership publications
First take
A closer look
Regulatory briefs
Total
Recognizing the emerging opportunity, the PwC Financial Services Marketing team moved quickly behind the
scenes to mobilize and develop a holistic approach. Thought leadership content was structured pre-emptively,
adapted quickly based on possible outcomes and covered widely by the media. Spokespeople were adequately
prepped. For roundtable events, valuable, thought-provoking agendas were assembled and subject matter
experts were brought in. Representatives from almost all impacted banks attended.
# of publications
3
3
8
14
# of downloads
2,000
3,000
8,000
13,000
By hosting numerous events, we capitalized on gaining insider intelligence into our clients’ current status
with implementing the Volcker Rule.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Events
Roundtables
Webcasts
Total
» Collaboration amongst teams was prioritized from the start. Thought leaders and practitioners interpreted
the rule’s effects on the financial industry while also predicting its evolution. Simultaneously, the business
development team drew from these interpretations to focus on how to best provide client solutions. All the
while, the marketing team acted as a conduit amongst people and teams, facilitating invaluable dialogue and
identifying key opportunities.
» Events were planned to encourage a sense of alliance and information-sharing amongst key clients. The
agendas for these roundtables were thoughtfully constructed with the intention of driving discussion while
also getting a sense of where clients stood in understanding the Volcker rule and being prepared to adapt to it.
» Thought leadership publications soared in popularity with over 13,000 downloads of regulatory focused
thought leadership from the PwC regulatory site alone. A dedicated team of both subject matter experts and
industry generalists made for a comprehensive understanding of the Volcker Rule. We remained dedicated to
our branding methodology labelling publications as First Take, A Closer Look or Regulatory Brief. Our publications were thus quick to market and, most importantly, were intellectually accessible and practical. People
could easily digest them, unlike many competitors’ jargon-heavy publications.
S
# of events
8
1
9
# of attendees
300
700
1,000
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
peed and agility were the defining—and distinctive—features of this campaign. The FS marketing
team at PwC took the lead in a collaborative effort to help interpret and communicate the company’s
views on what impact the Volcker Rule would have on large banks. This submission demonstrated a
clear view of the business need and the customer need, a good plan, excellent collaboration internally,
and great results. The team worked closely with customers to consider their needs and how best to
respond, then used this intelligence to target messages and engagement efficiently and effectively. The
‘intense and systematic’ collaboration throughout the initiative shines through and clearly underpinned
the great results achieved.
» Dedicated Volcker webpage – Considering the volume and value of thought leadership produced, we
created a webpage dedicated specifically to the Volcker Rule content. Our Thought leadership dominated
Google search results. When searching for “Volcker Rule” PwC ranked #1, far and away, in comparison to other
Big Four firms.
» Public relations prospects were capitalized on. We gained widespread and positive media coverage.
13
SITA
ENABLING SALES AND SME CHANNELS FOR DEEPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
DIAMOND AWARD
STARS program
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2013 we realized that SITA’s ambitious 3-year business plan and 2020 vision called for a significant step up
in our sales capability to drive growth. While overall we were consistently achieving our sales objectives and
retaining most of our contracts, we were facing a challenge winning the level of new business required. In
addition, while our customer relationships were good (NPS & brand scores) they were not all at CXO level, which
constrained our ability to position our offering and solution capabilities.
Meanwhile, with a continual progression in passenger numbers and air transport becoming a profitable industry,
competition was becoming increasingly aggressive.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
To drive the growth required, Marketing & Sales Operations led the development of a strategic sales transformation plan to improve SITA’s commercial effectiveness, requiring $20m+ of funding over three years.
The plan, approved at CEO level, was to:
BUSINESS RESULTS
» Help our sales and extended sales organization up-skill in an increasingly competitive market and growing
portfolio of SITA solutions
» Increase sales effectiveness through integration of a large number of stakeholders and SMEs at all levels of the
program
» Build sales confidence, increase portfolio learning, improve coverage model—in turn accelerating SITA’s
growth
Although each program has a different maturity level, we overachieved on all indicators in 2014 and are on track
to impact key performance metrics in 2015.
Contracts worth US$220m have been closed as a direct influence of this program, significant pipeline progression
in nearly all deal categories from Q1 2014-Q1 2015 and a win rate increased of +8%, showing an improved capacity to win business.
Above all those tangible results, the most striking one is that the shift has started to happen. There is clear, positive uptake in all Geographies; the sales organization sees the value in addressing their needs. 12 months into the
program, 100% of our stakeholders agree it is necessary to change and 87% believe STARS is driving that change.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
Our target audience represented about 10% of SITA’s total workforce - 450 staff - dispersed across the 170 countries. To ensure buy-in, to support the change management effort and provide clarity, a structured program with
clear brand identity and engagement was rolled out over 24 months under the umbrella name STARS.
“[I] fully agree STARS is starting to have an impact. And it is a journey,” GEO President MEIA.
Highlights include:
S
» Aggressive hiring plan: sales workforce to be increased by 23%
» Trained 487 people in 7 newly-created training modules and online sales guides with 65% certified YTD
» 93% of the field engaged in our first ever worldwide Gamification to encourage proactive acquisition of
portfolio knowledge
» 2 editions of President’s Club run in Bahamas and Mauritius with our CEO, driving right behaviors from
our top sales performers
» 1600 users on Salesforce, our new sales platform, fully deployed in September 2014 with user adoption
and satisfaction above industry benchmarks
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
ITA’s program demonstrates ambition, execution, and results. This is an innovative and thoroughly impressive initiative to address a sales and growth challenge. It is a sweeping transformation of the sales
approach and the way that marketing supports it. The STARS program is a comprehensive investment in
sales training, sales tools, and coaching—driven by marketing—that has generated sales endorsement,
financial returns, and the praise of executive management.
14
HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE
ENABLING SALES AND SME CHANNELS FOR DEEPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
GOLD AWARD
What We Sell – Sales & Marketing Enablement Platform for Hewlett Packard Enterprise
» Created a governance process and data architecture using information from multiple rounds of surveys, interviews, and user testing with card sorting & wireframes. The program team incorporated this approach into a
continuous improvement process.
What We Sell is the single destination for enterprise services sales teams within Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
for what to sell and how to sell it. A cloud-based, mobile-enabled platform provides instant access for services
Sales and Account Executives (AEs) to the latest collateral, targeted messaging, ROI examples, and supporting
tools, all carefully curated to maximize the value of each client and prospect interaction.
» Gathered requirements to design and test the website and content processes, launch the program, and implement ongoing improvements based on feedback.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Prior to What We Sell, fragmented, scattered, and non-standard sales materials frustrated sales teams. They were
spending too much time searching for what they needed and often had to edit and repackage what they found,
making it difficult to respond quickly to client requests.
» Organized work efforts based on areas of expertise, including content strategy, user experience, technical development, web design, database/content management, mobility design, and stakeholder communications &
training.
After conducting 500+ surveys and interviews with Sales and AEs and reviewing performance analytics from Salesforce.com data, the What We Sell program team concluded that the average Sales person was spending at least
20% of their time searching for and packaging sales content for client meetings.
BUSINESS RESULTS
When Sales spends time hunting for information, that is time not being spent winning the client. If Sales can’t tell
a compelling services story and showcase actual client results, it’s challenging to grow the business.
enablement & supporting functions. What We Sell is a cost-effective, enterprise-scale platform that enables:
The development of the What We Sell platform has radically improved the efficiency and effectiveness of sales
» Consolidated and consistent content that adheres to strict quality standards managed through governance
processes supported by automated workflow
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
The business had a clear objective: provide Sales with a single, trusted source of quality content and make it
accessible anywhere.
» Instant access to relevant and valuable information securely hosted in HP Helion Cloud
» User-friendly, mobile-enabled interface for Sales with universal search and embedded automation to find all
content in one destination
The What We Sell program team knew that a technology solution alone would not solve all the issues – it would
require a combination of content quality, scalable technology and stakeholder relationships to provide sales and
marketing enablement.
» Customization for an enterprise business
» Collaborative go-to-market relationships across business functions
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The What We Sell program team used a systematic approach to manage the initiative: define requirements for the
project, measure the current state and establish baselines, analyze and identify root causes of frustrations, set key
improvement metrics, and design and deploy the new solution: What We Sell.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
A
lthough building a mobile app to enable sales is not unique, this was an innovative approach in
combination with a sweeping set of changes in collateral and sales support. In particular, the elements
to aid in customer engagement—the microsite wizard and campaign opt-in tool—were particularly distinctive. The depth of analysis (500+ interviews) and strong focus on understanding the needs of sales set this
submission apart.
Focusing on the program objective, the What We Sell program team:
» Surveyed and interviewed 500+ sales, AEs, and sales support employees to measure the current state and understand the root causes of problems. The survey data, combined with Web best practices and user-centered
design, guided the What We Sell program implementation plan.
15
CSC
MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE
DIAMOND AWARD
CSC Digital Marketing Dashboard
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Users can drill into leads, Web, brand, content, social media, campaigns and more. All are linked back to CSC’s
core KPIs, which are prioritized around leads resulting in cash.
Does marketing work? That’s a question CSC can now answer with its Digital Marketing Dashboard.
The data presented in the dashboard helps initiate daily conversations across the CSC marketing organization.
For example, the dashboard’s content-scoring model shows higher performing content on the CSC homepage;
this lets content managers see which campaigns are contributing to KPIs, and which need improvement.
Recent technological advances, including Web analytics and automation, promised to transform marketing.
But the result was a virtual explosion in the number of new marketing tools available, many of which required
significant operating resources. These tools can also leave reporting gaps.
CSC realized it would need an expansive, integrated suite of digital marketing tools. The company set out to
create just that.
CSC also designed and built a custom real-time personalization enablement system. Called Isana, it gathers input
from various sources in a weighted fashion. Isana uses factors such as recentness and frequency to compute
scores along various dimensions at both the individual and account level.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
BUSINESS RESULTS
CSC sells to large commercial entities and public sector organizations worldwide. Buying cycles typically last from
nine to 18 months. To report on its marketing campaigns, CSC had many systems producing many reports. But
the company realized that real value would have to come from integrating the data these systems produce, then
delivering analytics and knowledge in a simple, organized way.
CSC’s Digital Marketing Dashboard is now available to all CSC employees who request it. For marketing associates, Dashboard has become their go-to place for measuring success. Dashboard lets them view all marketing
KPIs, whether from web analytics, social and campaign trends, or a complete leads-to-cash audit trail from every
lead ever contributed by marketing.
To do this, CSC created its first Digital Marketing Dashboard. This involved leveraging several tools, including
Demandbase B2B Marketing Cloud, Salesforce, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Eloqua. Yet the goals were simple:
Dashboard also helps CSC’s marketing team to work more closely with sales. Marketing often uses Dashboard to
share account-based analytics with strategic-account sales teams, and it collaborates daily with inside sales to
closely track leads through the funnel.
» Provide a high-level summary of charts and key marketing metrics
» Create a simple user interface and at-a-glance reporting so the tool is used daily
Finally, the Digital Marketing Dashboard lets CSC closely track success metrics and ROMI for every marketing
campaign. That includes small, regional campaigns as well as large, global integrated campaigns that have contributed a marketing-sourced pipeline as high as $25 million and marketing-assisted pipeline as high as $2 billion.
» Accurately attribute marketing sources
» Remove the walls separating Marketing from Sales
Chris Marin, CSC’s head of digital marketing platform & analytics and also the person credited with bringing the
dashboard initiative to life, says: “The fact that we can say, ‘Here is where marketing actually contributes to the
bottom line,’ is powerful.”
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The CSC team saw it would need to centralize all core sales and marketing KPIs. This information was available
on a shared spreadsheet with several worksheets. One sheet corresponded to the overview tab, showing the core
KPIs for digital marketing as a whole. Beneath those were the various groups, such as Web, social and content.
The team could go into the spreadsheet and add whatever KPIs they thought made sense for the various groups.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
C
SC’s submission is a fantastic example of marketing automation at its best. This is a highly complex
project to integrate multiple platforms and improve the effectiveness of marketing throughout the
buyer journey. The marketing link back to business impact with proven results is particularly impressive.
Among the quantitative assessment of business impact, CSC showed a $1 billion pipeline contribution
from one campaign alone.
CSC determined the dashboard would need no more than 10 reports per area. So the company defined the key
areas that needed reporting, and it limited reports to pieces that would link to the core KPIs. Then CSC started
pulling the data and making the transformation.
Today, the dashboard enables CSC executive’s to see how marketing is doing, and to define the company’s core
marketing KPIs. The dashboard shows the number of marketing leads generated, the TCV from closed deals, and
the pipeline created with open deals—all resulting from marketing actions.
16
AVANADE
MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE
GOLD AWARD
Avanade Global Marketing Effectiveness Program
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
2. Capabilities focused on execution, including solutions and industry marketing, go-to-market model with
global programs and campaigns, virtual centers of excellence, alliance marketing, and digital marketing.
Imagine wanting to improve client impact and demonstrate marketing’s contribution to the business but lacking
some of the necessary people, processes, and tools. That was Avanade’s situation three years ago. So we looked
at internal and external factors and at our marketing organization and determined that we needed to transform.
Digital marketing was identified as a key improvement area. Activities included the development of a digital
marketing strategy, marketing automation, website modernization, and expansion of our social media strategy
and activities.
Internally, marketing and sales were not well enough aligned. Marketing was assigning inconsistent quality leads
to sales, and those leads that were of a good quality were not being progressed by sales through the pipeline. It
was impossible to tie sales and pipeline growth to marketing activities, leaving us unable to measure ROI.
3. People and Organization focused on getting the right people with the right skills on board. We strengthened
skill sets, added and reorganized several corporate marketing functions, built out field marketing with focused
training and formalized the marketing career model.
Externally, our market was increasingly competitive. IT buyers and the buying process were changing, leading us
to examine how we addressed the marketplace. We saw that our marketing activities were ineffective, with belowindustry response rates.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
4. Tools and Processes included implementing new tools and processes to realize results. An experienced
marketing technologist was brought in to lead digital channels and platforms and implement a marketing
automation system. This enabled us to create a closed-loop lead management system to properly route,
assign, progress and track leads through the integrated sales and marketing funnel.
We knew we needed to create a more strategic, complete marketing function.
BUSINESS RESULTS
In 2013 Avanade launched a three-year Global Marketing Effectiveness Program to:
The Global Marketing Effectiveness Program has significantly strengthened our measurement and reporting
capability.We deployed a performance measurement framework, with multiple scorecards and globally standardized KPIs. The framework enables more realistic, rigorous target setting.
»
»
»
»
Better understand clients and the market
Increase our relevance to clients
Increase marketing’s value to the business
Campaigns are brought to market faster, more consistently and with better results. On a more qualitative – but
important – note, our campaigns enable us to broaden the conversation with clients beyond IT to business issues.
Improve closeness with sales
Most significantly, we now use the right data to tell a more powerful story and gain insight into what’s working
and what needs attention. And we can now demonstrate marketing’s value to the business with measures such
as sales and pipeline influenced. At the same time, marketing gained a seat at the executive table, helping to
position us as more strategic in the company.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
A marketing operations leader was brought in to run the effectiveness program and develop the operations
function. Early partnerships with our CIO and IT department, sales and sales enablement, and service lines were
essential to the program. The program was organized in four workstreams. A formal plan incorporated milestones
for each workstream.
What a difference three years make. Avanade’s Global Marketing Effectiveness Program will end shortly. But with
the right people, processes and tools in place, we will continue to develop as a world-class marketing organization with the ability to connect better with our clients and demonstrate our impact on business results.
We identified three success factors:
1. The program should focus on helping marketing become more strategic and aligned with business objectives.
2. It had to cut across the entire marketing organization – corporate, areas, regions.
A
3. We needed to increase our digital marketing capabilities and presence.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
vanade’s submission presented a comprehensive marketing transformation
story, not just a measurement one. It’s almost the creation of an overarching
“marketing genome.” The emphasis on change management was key to success.
The entry demonstrated a well defined methodology for process improvements
and strong knowledge of interdependencies across marketing and the rest of the
organization.
1. Planning, Budgeting, Measurement and Reporting driven centrally and focused on measuring marketing’s
performance and impact on the business through:
» Standardized central planning and budgeting to align marketing and business objectives
» Marketing measurement framework
» Standard KPIs, scorecards and reporting
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AVAYA
MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING MARKETING PERFORMANCE
GOLD AWARD
Avaya CMO Funnel Dashboard
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
With the framework completed, the team moved on to the creation of the actual dashboard that would be used
to capture, calculate and report all of these results. With no available budget, Avaya utilized advanced functionality and features to build a dynamic dashboard in Excel. The team started by building a data map and establishing
the necessary formulas and functions that would be needed to provide the various views. The actual dashboard
was then built based on that blueprint and was tested extensively to verify functionality. Once the dashboard was
complete, the team gathered and added the data, and was immediately able to begin reporting results.
Marketing performance reporting had long been a pain point for the marketing organization and executive leadership team at Avaya. The marketing team was reporting far too many meaningless metrics, many of which were focused on activities rather than outcomes, or were strictly quantitative with no emphasis on quality. Likewise, the
team was unable to provide a view of how marketing was impacting the customer journey or buying cycle, and
could show no logical link to business outcomes. The group was also hampered with inconsistencies in tracking
metrics between various functions and across regions. It was obvious that a new measurement framework was a
priority, which meant a new solution needed to be delivered in a very short timeframe, despite limited resources,
limited data, and no available budget.
BUSINESS RESULTS
Avaya’s CMO Funnel Dashboard launched in January 2015, complete with Q1 results and analysis. The insights
provided by the dashboard so far have already driven the following business results:
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
» The team was immediately able to identify a need to shift marketing resources between functions in order to
focus on capturing higher value targets. These changes led to an increase of 26% in the average deal size of
wins in just four months.
Avaya’s CMO Funnel Dashboard and overall measurement framework project kicked off with three key objectives.
The first objective was to develop a consistent and unbiased model to measure performance in driving high level
business goals across every stage of the marketing funnel. Second, the team wanted to utilize data visualization
techniques to better demonstrate results to all stakeholders, from the marketing functional teams, all the way
up to the Board of Directors. Lastly, it was important to ensure marketing was focused on generating meaningful
metrics, with an emphasis on providing actionable insights and promoting data-driven decision making at every
level.
» The dashboard also enabled the team to recognize a downward trend in the lead to opportunity conversion
rate, which dictated a move to improve the quality of leads at the top of the funnel. As a result of those
actions, the opportunity to win conversion rate recovered, which drove an increase in marketing sourced
bookings, in the range of 8-12% in Q215.
Avaya’s new measurement framework embodies more than a standard measurement program, it represents a
completely new way of measuring and reporting marketing performance at Avaya. Moreover, it establishes
a completely new way of aggregating and reporting performance across the entire marketing funnel.
PROGRAM EXECUTION
The most challenging aspect of the program was the design of the overall measurement model and methodology
that would be used to aggregate the various data elements within the framework. The framework design was
focused on providing an overall score that would demonstrate performance at each phase of the funnel, so this
step included categorizing all of the metrics by funnel area and identifying any gaps that needed to be addressed.
THE JUDGES’ TAKE
T
his is a well thought-through plan with tangible benefits and impact to the organization. Avaya
generated quantifiable business benefits with buy-in from key stakeholders. The submission details a
good process for identifying business goals and delivering against them without unnecessary technology
convolutions. In the current technology frenzy, it’s nice to see such an effective but lean job.
After testing various methodologies, the optimal framework was finalized. This solution consisted of two key
performance indicators. The Avaya Benchmark Score ranks marketing performance on a scale of 1-5. The scale is
based on industry standards from a ranking of 1 for the worst performers to 5 for best-in-class performance. The
Avaya Performance Index measures the change in year-over-year performance from a baseline index of 100 points.
The score and index are both based on a weighted, aggregate calculation of relevant disparate elements that
together provide a single cohesive representation of performance across each area of the marketing funnel.
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FINALISTS
2015 MARKETING EXCELLENCE AWARDS
ITSMA’s 18th annual Marketing Excellence Awards program honors the marketing programs, campaigns, and
new initiatives that have achieved excellence worldwide. The awards put special emphasis on the four most
critical aspects of marketing success: planning, execution, innovation, and measurable business impact.
“I continue to be blown away by the quality of the submissions that we receive and the results that these
marketers are delivering for their companies. The competition for our program is tough, but this year’s
finalists really stepped up” said Dave Munn, President and CEO of ITSMA.
The 2015 ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards categories and finalists:
Accelerating Growth with Account Based Marketing:
Cisco, HCL, HP, KPMG, SAP
Capitalizing on Marketing’s New Tools and Technologies:
Avanade, Cisco, Dell, HCL, IBM
Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience:
Avanade, Avaya, Cisco, HCL, Misys
Driving Business with Thought Leadership:
Amdocs, Capgemini, Cisco, Optum, PwC
Enabling Sales and SME Channels for Deeper Customer Engagement:
Amdocs, Cisco, HP, SITA, Unisys
Measuring and Communicating Marketing Performance:
Avanade, Avaya, CSC
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www.itsma.com/2015-mea-winners/
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions. As a membership
organization, we work with the world’s leading technology and professional services firms to
generate new business, strengthen customer loyalty, and increase brand differentiation.
Learn more at www.itsma.com.
1.888.ITSMA92 (Outside the U.S. +1-781-862-8500)
91 Hartwell Avenue | Lexington, Massachusetts 02421 | USA