Accenture: Manage mySales solution digitizes the sales process

Opportunity In a world that is more connected, more automated and more interactive—and moving at an unprecedented pace, Accenture is driving differentiation for sustainable growth. To this end, Accenture is investing in a growth strategy to build an enhanced portfolio of five distinct businesses—Strategy, Consulting, Digital, Technology, and Operations—to be the market leader in each. Accenture’s internal IT organization, in turn, is helping Accenture become a more digital business.

The ability to efficiently and effectively execute sales activities to support Accenture’s growth aspirations is a crucial objective across Accenture. The existing environment consisted of both on- and offline tools and an end-to-end toolset was lacking. Additionally, one of the primary tools, Accenture’s opportunity management solution, was ready to be re-platformed. The business needed one solution to manage sales—from first client contact to signed contract—to enable client account teams to collaborate. These teams needed a solution that provided the rigor and analytical insights to help them move from sales administration to sales enablement.

Solution Accenture’s Global Sales and Pricing Excellence organization developed the overall vision for a new solution and collaborated with Accenture’s internal IT organization to support the change required to make it happen. Together, the business and IT jointly defined the business case and actualized it by a shared business architecture team and an internal IT development and deployment team.

Both internal IT and the Global Sales and Pricing Excellence organization set out to digitize how Accenture sells by enabling the end-to-end sales process and improving efficiency through automation. “The key to digitalization was bringing Accenture’s sales processes online to create the ‘intelligent connection points’ that connect our global account teams to the right people, the right assets, and the right insights to be more effective in their sales pursuits,” says Mike Maresca, IT Managing Director of Team Technology.

Phase 1 For the first phase, the joint team deployed Manage mySales, a customer relationship management (CRM) solution providing the core capabilities of account, contact, opportunity,

and activity management, leveraging standard capabilities of Salesforce.com with custom enhancements made based on account team feedback. An equally important aspect of this foundational work was re-platforming the opportunity management solution. Underpinning all activities were three guiding principles:

• Focusonwhatmatters most to Accenture account and sales teams.

• Enable“one-stopshop”forsales.

• Usebest-in-class capabilities.

Implementation of the “base” Manage mySales solution involved integrating sales data across numerous applications to streamline, simplify, and integrate the sales management processes. A new infrastructure was also leveraged, enabling the solution to be managed entirely in the cloud and be used anywhere, anytime on mobile devices. Manage mySales was deployed globally over five months, in three waves, across all Accenture geographies. Upon go-live, the previous opportunity management tool was retired.

“To enable a large number of users to quickly become familiar with the new Manage mySales solution,” says Sean Freeburger, Manage mySales IT Program Lead, “we developed extensive training in various forms—from one-on-one to group sessions by team to online self-study with video demos.” The project team also conducted webcasts and used Skype for Business video during training. They embedded links in Manage mySales to training, job aids, and videos to provide the user with direct access to just-in-time learning. Accenture’s internal social media tools were leveraged along with in-application social media to provide learning tips. Additionally, live learning boards were used that grouped training by audience group to offer specialized learning. Initial feedback from users was extremely positive.

During the base solution deployment there were no significant business operations or management issues because the team stayed focused on five key areas, which included strong leadership

Accenture’s internal IT organization is charged with driving the company’s digital agenda. Building on the legacy of a notable IT transformation, the organization is focused on three key roles: aligning IT with business priorities, enabling a digital Accenture and driving down the cost of IT. Accenture must put in place the technologies that provide its more than 375,000 employees with access to the information and capabilities to be a high-performance business.

governance, strategic business and IT partnership, partnership with the cloud provider, continuous innovation for rapid releases, and a dedicated engagement model for client account teams. After the first wave, lessons learned were incorporated into other waves. For example, the training delivery approach was adjusted to focus more on applying business process scenarios rather than solely on the Manage mySales technical capabilities as deployment progressed.

Phase 2 Building upon the foundational components enabled in Phase 1, the team strove to improve overall operational efficiency in Phase 2 by optimizing business processes, integrating applications, and providing core analytics to enable real-time insights.

Optimizing business processes. The team extended the CRM platform by building an application within Manage mySales using the platform-as-a-service capability. This application, New Business Management (NBM), renders opportunity management information in an easily digestible, organized user interface. New Business Management transforms a previously manual, offline aggregation of content required for opportunity review to a fully digitized and integrated experience. In addition,

Sales Campaign Management was enabled through a series of pilots to support the growth of sales pipeline through objective-based, time-bound, measured initiatives. This capability provides an integrated view of the different actions performed when setting and executing a campaign, as well as the chance to track and measure the results.

Integrating applications. As part of the opportunity approval process, applications across the Accenture enterprise are required to support decision making. Through the New Business Management initiative, disparate applications were integrated to provide a comprehensive view of an opportunity and enable online, real-time approval decisions. Melissa Pinch, Global Sales Enablement Lead, shares, “The digitization of the content required to enable the new business management process provides a benefit to Accenture teams by significantly reducing the effort required to prepare the content for a meeting, while ensuring our leadership executives have real-time, integrated information from the source systems, so they are making the most educated and fact-based decisions.”

Core analytics. Analytics were further enriched through the implementation of Salesforce.com’s new cloud-based platform, Wave, in two ways. First, in the New Business Management application, Accenture users can now

compare their opportunity to a peer group of opportunities to understand how it compares against key metrics. Second, users can tap into new account dashboards to instantly view key Pipeline and Win Rate metrics such as: what happened, what changed period on period, and what is projected in the future.

Lastly, the team enabled a crowdsourcing space where Accenture users can post and track enhancement ideas to improve Manage mySales, as well as share and vote on ideas posted by others. To date, nearly 50 of these “ideas” have been implemented.

Phase 3 Moving out of Phase 2 into the third year of the journey, the team plans to optimize the user experience and deploy more insights to drive value-based outcomes. This will be accomplished by:

• Upgrading to the new Salesforce Lightning architecture to provide an entirely new user interface and enhance the user experience.

• ExpandingWaveAnalytics,includingimplementing predictive analytics and pricing intelligence to support sales management.

• Embeddingprocess,bestpractices,and “just-in-time” training content to support users as they navigate the application.

Over three years, the new Manage mySales platform will digitally enable end-to-end sales and CRM processes, and support Accenture’s evolving business strategy

Current State FY16 FY17

Future State

Enable digitally connected High Performance Selling Framework

Support CRM approach with disconnected online and offline tools

FY15 Base

• Enhance experience • Enable campaigns • Core analytics

Business Value

Achieve competitive advantage through proactive selling and operational efficiency

Enable portfolio optimization with intelligence and analytics

• Insights/predictive analytics • “Fit for purpose” • Application integration

Enable and integrate core sales capabilities

• Digitize processes • Enable CRM • Re-platform Opportunity

Management

Three-year Vision

Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.

Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Results For the first time across Accenture, Manage mySales delivers all sales needs via a single platform that every client-facing Accenture employee can use anywhere, anytime. It provides a “one-stop shop” solution across all of Accenture globally for building and managing key client relationships, one place where individuals can go to get a 360-degree view of their accounts, and one platform for growing Accenture’s sales pipeline, qualifying opportunities, and developing best-in-class strategies.

“The new business management capability in Manage mySales is changing the way we qualify and approve opportunities,” says Jo Deblaere, Accenture Chief Operating Officer. “By bringing everyone onto a common, integrated platform, we will not only drive efficiencies in the process but also further standardize the way our deal teams develop winnable, profitable sales strategies.”

Manage mySales is aligned with Accenture’s top business priority of growing the business by providing client account teams with new, more robust and digitalized CRM capabilities. These capabilities include faster and streamlined opportunity forms, online qualification and win strategy tools, automated new business meeting materials, and enhanced intelligence via account management. Moreover, this solution, accessible on mobile or tablet, is much more interactive and more effective in achieving the sales required to support Accenture’s growth and digital agenda by capturing what individuals used to do offline and putting it into one online digital platform—transforming how Accenture manages client relationships.

As of July 2015, near the end of Phase 1, approximately 25,000 individuals in 50 countries were using Manage mySales, with the solution in use by 6,800 client account teams.

The completion of Phase 2 saw a 250 percent increase in user engagement across Accenture, reflecting greater collaboration, visibility, and people engaging with Manage mySales. Sales opportunities, in turn, are undertaken more efficiently and effectively. Positive internal metrics reflect the power behind this solution, which will continue to be optimized and digitized over time.

“What is most exciting about the deployment of Manage mySales,” notes Sara Porter, Director, Global Sales Effectiveness, “is the industrialization and end-to-end enablement of our Accenture Selling Methodology. Before Manage mySales, sales teams relied on paper-based templates that were disconnected and inconsistently used. Now, by integrating our best practices directly into the sales application, they are more effectively adopted by teams and reinforced by leadership. And, as an outcome, we are able to demonstrate with analytics that the utilization of this process drives positive outcomes, driving the next generation of Sales Effectiveness required to compete in an increasingly challenging marketplace.”

About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network—Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With more than 375,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.