Modernizing Operations to Drive Profitability
Swiftly bringing profitable deals to market is a vital differentiator in the race for market leadership in cloud services. Prime 8 Consulting is moving the needle for a global tech company’s flagship cloud product — scaling operations, skyrocketing profitability, and delivering value in transformative ways.
The Challenge: Decoding the Underperformance and Rebuilding
Three years ago, a leading global cloud services provider implemented two programs to manage the sales cycle for its cloud platform. The AAP program managed pre-sale deals, and the AAAP program supported post-sales funding.
It became apparent over time that the pre-sale program was not delivering the ROI expected. Although the program was delivering hundreds of deals to the market, much more needed to be done to capitalize on the software’s real potential.
The software company decided that one, end-to-end sales cycle management program would be more effective and efficient, effectively combining the two programs. The challenge for Prime 8 was to:
Determine why the pre-sale program had failed to meet its objectives
Increase the velocity and number of deals exponentially
Maximize profitability of the new end-to-end program
Enhance the speed of execution
Ensure top-notch customer satisfaction
Ensure smart resource allocation
Identify the optimal areas of focus for the program
To meet these challenges would require a transformative approach, rebuilding the program from the ground up. Prime 8 was tasked with providing world-class field and partner support to assess sales engagements, manage investment fundings to drive adoption and deployment of analytics and AI opportunities, and build end-to-end resources to help partners and sales teams accelerate software deployment.
The Solution: A Paradigm Shift for Improved ROI
The first order of business for the Prime 8 team of consultants was to ascertain why the pre-sale program had failed. We leaned into the data, analyzing the operational metrics meticulously to gain an in-depth understanding of the program’s performance.
Right away, the Prime 8 team identified significant factors impacting ROI. We realized that offering assessments without a pilot run of the platform was not an effective strategy from an ROI standpoint. We focused on offering customers the pilot rather than simply an assessment, and we began to see better results.
The Prime 8 team’s data analysis also revealed that, though small and medium-sized corporate businesses (SMCs) were an essential part of the software company’s portfolio, SMCs did not progress into post-sales as consistently as Strategic and Major clients. This led to a sharper focus on Strategic and Major clients, ultimately contributing to a higher ROI.
Next, we turned our attention to relationship-building. We built strong relationships with field representatives and product marketing managers. This move fostered a feedback-rich environment, enabling us to address concerns promptly, enhancing service quality and establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with these crucial stakeholders. Armed with this valuable continuous feedback, Prime 8 was able to create processes that resonated with the needs of the field.
Data became our best friend. Continuous analysis of what was working and what was not helped us to implement the key agile principle of “failing fast” and iterate on operational processes until we achieved the efficiency and effectiveness we wanted to see.
Combing through the data, we realized that Prime 8 could create a self-auditing process to enable continuous improvement, another agile principle. As masters of the program budget, the Prime 8 team designed an innovative spend analysis methodology, which demonstrated efficient use of funds to the finance department and ensured that operations were aligned and funds were used appropriately and effectively.
When the software company’s management saw the results of the auditing process, they mandated that all of corporate finance was required to perform audits from that point forward — all based on the model that Prime 8 built.
Here are some specifics of the solution we architected:
Program Management
Developed new program features and offers
Created SharePoint sites for better program coordination
Used PowerApps to automate internal processes
Used Microsoft Visio for technology roadmapping
Created program decks, monthly newsletters, and white-glove customer service emails
Field and Partner Go-to-Market Efforts
Managed seller outreach and weekly emails to upsell Pre-sales to Post-sales
Used Microsoft Teams for training and collaboration with the field
Maintained the AAAP Site, including updates of SharePoint for maintenance and changes
Managed account mapping, propensity reporting, and email tracking
Business Management
Deployed and monitored bi-annual program CSAT studies to the client’s field staff
Conducted weekly, monthly, and quarterly business reviews and audits
The Results: Maximized ROI and Sky-Rocketing Customer Satisfaction
By approaching the challenges with an agile, multifaceted strategy, the Prime 8 team transformed the existing sales programs into a powerhouse for the software company’s cloud business.
Deal volume and velocity has grown from just a few hundred deals to over one thousand deals per year, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the software company’s bottom line. For every dollar spent in the program budget, almost $5 in revenue is generated.
The Prime 8 data strategy has also yielded remarkable dividends, with Strategic and Major clients providing an actual ROI that was five points higher than forecasted. Customer satisfaction scores soared too, with nearly 100% of sampled customers reporting they were satisfied or very satisfied with the services provided.
The operational excellence that the Prime 8 team built into the program has made it possible to:
Accelerate internal processes
Deliver projects faster than competitors
Manage funds and requests more efficiently
Ensure seamless execution
Secure a competitive advantage for the software company’s program in the marketplace
Amazingly, Prime 8 and the internal program team accomplished all this with a team half the size of its largest competitor.
Can Prime 8’s Approach Work for You?
Prime 8’s transformative leadership, use of agile principles, reliance on data to iterate on successes, and relentless pursuit of excellence in execution are the defining factors for the program’s continued success.
Prime 8 is well-versed in creating and implementing solutions tailored to the needs of our clients. Do you need an resilient, agile approach to your next project? We can help. Reach out to begin a discussion about your unique needs.
