The four ways digital and analytics drive successful change

Digital and analytics can radically accelerate—and improve the chances of delivering—successful change. But undisciplined investment can be counterproductive and expensive. In our experience working with companies that have successfully boosted the ROI of their sales investments, these four actions make a meaningful difference:

[Here is the first of four ways.]

1. Provide insights that sales reps need

A wealth of sales insights are discoverable today through advanced analytics, but they often don’t translate into sustainable revenue for a few reasons: the front line does not trust the data, the insights are overly complex, or reps simply feel that their own experience and expertise are being ignored. Successful change programs rely on a deep understanding of the needs of the salespeople and a willingness to work back from there to deliver insights that actually help reps sell better. The best sales organizations use data to understand the effect of all the steps in sales, from what matters most in driving a sales opportunity forward to where reps struggle or miss opportunities. They then package those insights and send them to sales reps. Actively involving sales reps in the process greatly increases the chances of providing relevant and easy-to-use solutions.

Car manufacturers offer an excellent example of how to manage frontline needs. Their dealer networks are often quite autonomous (stocking and product-configuration decisions are made by individual dealers). This means, for example, that having 2,000 dealers in a given market equates to 2,000 separate decisions on what stock to take. Traditionally, there has been little attempt to use data from the entire dealer network to optimize those decisions. As part of a shift to optimize and upgrade the stock at its dealerships, one manufacturer aggregated data on specific car configurations (engine type, trim, color, etc.) purchased across the network. It then calculated the optimum mix of stock based on a combination of profitability and customer appeal, which could be updated in real time as sales were made.

The insights were played back to each dealer, to speed up the process and make them better informed, with specific recommendations on which cars to order. What was fascinating was the degree of uptake of the new system. The adoption rate within nine months was 80 percent, a striking contrast to a previous effort where the adoption rate was below 10 percent. Cars spent far less time in the showroom before being bought, heterogeneity of vehicles increased (which helped with residual values), and the contribution margin grew by more than 10 percent.

What changed? The first time around, the company had been clear on what the outcome needed to be, but it hadn’t taken the individual dealers’ perspective into account. The dealers resisted what felt like a top-down idea imposed on them, because they didn’t really understand the benefits, and implementation was difficult. This time, the digital tools that delivered the insights were built hand-in-hand with the dealers from the outset, to understand what functionality and information was most helpful for them. The manufacturer also used an agile approach to development, refining the tool quickly based on real dealer feedback. The dealers were engaged in the process, understood what the company was trying to achieve, and recognized it would make their lives easier. As uptake was so high, the impact for the company was also high.

When done well, this approach can also empower the sales force. As part of a sales transformation focusing on pricing and growth, a chemicals company used analytical tools that gave the field sales force transparency on the overall business, which encouraged and enabled them to create their own strategies and implementation plans. They could create their own projects on the platform, which of course could be tracked by managers, and the impact was impressive: within just a few weeks of implementation, churn was down and pricing was up, and within a year, it contributed an additional $50 million to EBITDA. The magic was the combination of getting insights to the front line in a simple, easy-to-digest way while allowing reps the freedom to explore some of the underlying input, which let them develop their own ideas.