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Triage Sales Tech Stress and Eliminate It

Triage Sales Tech Stress and Eliminate It

Triage Sales Tech Stress and Eliminate it

Insight, impact, growth: three times Vendor Neutral triaged organizations’ sales tech stress, and eliminated it.

Cloud adoption grew by a massive 25% during 2021: around 70% of all organizations now say they host more than half of their workload in the cloud. 

But procurement policies, strategy and organization-wide communication around cloud services have, in our experience, rarely kept pace with the race to acquire SaaS tech. 

In our last blog we highlighted three red flags signaling unhealthy SaaS adoption: 

  • Siloed working / adoption
  • Too much tech
  • Lack of strategy around implementation 

If the above feel like familiar concerns, they are for us too…and problems we often diagnose when we begin a relationship with new clients. 

Let’s take a look at real-world examples of when our consultants have gone into an organization, triaged the tech and – using the insight of the audit and their expertise – helped eliminate the problem. 

For clients including Mastercard, Kimberly Clark Professional, Mittera Group, Daikin, TechSoft 3D, Juniper Networks, we deliver insight, impact, growth.

 Read on to learn how…

Challenge 1: Siloed Working

A highly profitable and ambitious global enterprise client operates with over 150 business units. Its pacy evolution meant that despite having motivated and profitable teams, unifying SaaS across the company was always going to be challenging. 

Our consultancy team’s role has evolved with the company’s growth during a four year relationship – which has now neutralized this decentralized approach in the creation of a core innovation group working globally. 

Centralizing the business units’ ambitions and visions around sales tech acquisition has not only led us co-creating the organization’s play-book around sales tech acquisition and adoption, but has re-framed sales reps’ relationship with the tech. Enabling their creativity and productivity, rather than choking it up in unending and ineffective administrative tasks and, crucially, aligning acquisition of tech to a longer term, organization-wide strategic goal has been transformational. 

The evidence for the impact of these interventions? 

Instant impact from smooth tech adoption… the implementation of one new piece of sales tech, which gained incredible buy-in from the whole rep team, saw one team member leverage the tech to directly land a $6M deal. 

Insight creates Impact. Inspiring stuff.

Challenge 2: Too Much Tech

sales tech overspend leads to 32 percent cloud waste

Organizations are aware. They’ve a lot of SaaS. Probably too much, or much of it poorly optimized. 

Wasted cloud spend is a major issue and becomes more critical as cloud costs continue to rise. Respondents to this 2021 survey self-estimated that their organizations waste 32 percent of cloud spend, which is up from 30 percent last year: and we’d argue that many organizations tend to underestimate their amount of waste. 

Optimizing the existing use of the cloud is the top initiative reported among organizations – yet, oftentimes, this is a challenging task to enact internally. 

One of our key services is to come in and work with an organization to conduct such an audit: with the experience to know what we’re looking for and the objectivity to work for all stakeholders to their collective benefit.

Working with an ambitious early-adopter of SaaS, we found significant overlaps in SaaS features and capabilities – predictable when software develops and business units eagerly embrace new thinking, whilst retaining the habitual processes they’re used to. 

In this case, over 200 pieces of tech / SaaS / apps were used across multiple business units. 

Not a problem if they’re used productively – but we should all worry about waste: not only impacting on profit margins, but in the unnecessary tech adding to sales folk stress and the unseen and unused software churning away on data processing centers adding to the organization’s carbon footprint – and ultimately damaging the industry’s efforts towards sustainability. 

On paper, we figured overlaps and duplications in their tech stack meant they could cut their annual tech spend by four fifths.

There are of course frequently valid strategic or preferential reasons for some tech selection – it’s never just about the numbers – but it’s a salient lesson: knowing what you’ve got and why you’ve got it is the precision and clarity every organization needs as it matures and grows.

Looking to invest in new sales technology – try our sales technology selector tool

"Working with an ambitious early-adopter of SaaS, we found significant overlaps in SaaS features and capabilities - predictable when software develops and business units eagerly embrace new thinking, whilst retaining the habitual processes they’re used to. "

Challenge 3: It’s not SaaS, it’s strategy

An amazing 95% of employees stated they did not understand their organization’s strategy, according to research outlined by Harvard Business Review . 

Consider how this lack of alignment filters down to SaaS selection, procurement, utilization. We frequently are asked to support midsize to enterprise level clients in selecting a CRM, for example. Or a piece of software to perform function X, Y or Z…

Yet, when we get in there, audit the internal landscape and evaluate what is really needed: the solution we suggest implementing is rarely SaaS. It’s a cohesive and coherent strategy. 

Such was the case with a third client, whose long sales cycle (of around 18-24 months) called for a CRM. Or so they thought. 

We were pleased to save them time, effort and money with the evaluation that they needed to fix in a more resilient process before they tried to fix their tech. Supporting their realization that process was paramount to their progress readied the ground to select and fully utilize the right CRM, aligned to all stakeholders.

To make sure you have a clear road-map for sales technology selection – download our buyers roadmap here.

Awareness + Action = Absolutely Necessary

It’s clear: to remain competitive, to grow, to be efficient and profitable, organizations need to take control of their tech, their cloud usage, their SaaS, their apps – whipping them into the shape they need to best serve their goals. 

Moreover, the siloed working, short-termism and disjointed strategic momentum won’t cut it in our ever-evolving digital world. 

We’ve a host of resources to support your learning around effective digital development and transformation. Our Sales Technology Clarity Canvas is used with our clients to gain clarity for process, tech fit, and gaps within their organization. 

When strategizing, don’t lose sight of the overall goal: a fully integrated system where your people align to your processes and your processes align to your technological solutions. 

For bespoke advice on auditing your tech stack, and creating this strategic alignment, book a call with our team. 

Let us give you the insight you need to create the impact you crave.

Book in your 15 minute discovery call here

July 29, 2022 Dan Cilley
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