Company: IBM, Armonk, NY, USA
Company Description: IBM is a values-based enterprise of individuals who create & apply technology to make the world work better. Today, more than 400,000 IBM employees around the world invent and integrate hardware, software and services to help forward-thinking enterprises, institutions and people succeed on a smarter planet.
Nomination Category: Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Product Development/Management Department or Team of the Year
 Nomination Title: The IBM Sales Cloud Team: Transforming IBM in 12 months
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the achievements of the nominated department or team since 1 January 2020, OR written answers to the questions for this category? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: Briefly describe the nominated department or team: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 188 words used.
The IBM Sales Cloud team (ISC team) is a cross functional team of experience owners, product owners, developers, organizational change managers, and enablement specialists created from multiple departments within IBM. The team’s purpose is to transform the seller experience for all sellers, sales managers, and sales executives at the largest 111-year old start-up, IBM.
While the ISC team transformed the work of over 26K employees, the team had fewer than 250 people (less than 1% of the impacted employees) from across IBM. The combined expertise about IBM processes, sales, seller needs, operations, Salesforce, design, and interfaces brought interesting perspectives and skills to this truly, multi-disciplinary team.
Leadership of the team focused heavily on meeting timelines and enforced a fail-fast, learn-fast mentality that gave the team room to be innovative and creative. This “start-up” mentality created an engaging virtual culture for a team that is globally distributed and could not meet in person due to the pandemic restrictions.
Even when virtually distributed, right people with diverse views achieve amazing results when given the freedom to innovate. That is exactly what the ISC team achieved within one year time period.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Outline the department's or team's achievements since the beginning of 2020 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
The ISC team transformed the seller experience for over 26K sellers and sales manager globally, during a pandemic when we implemented IBM Sales Cloud. Our lofty goals were:
- Streamline and unify sales processes within IBM creating a single source of truth about customer relationships for sellers and sales managers,
- Eliminate siloes and increase collaboration to reduce sales cycle time,
- Incorporate functions from 160+ systems and then sunset the legacy tools,
- Perform executive reviews live, on-platform instead of in spreadsheets and Powerpoints,
- Deliver an intuitive experience with just-in-time training to add seller value, AND
- Do it in 12 months!
The ISC team used IBM Garage combining agile methodology, design thinking, phased deployments, and data governance to infuse the team’s performance with purposeful agility. Each delivery provided minimal viable products with rapid iteration to achieve the aggressive, leadership-directed timelines. Architecture was in place within 90 days of signing the Salesforce contract and the Canadian pilot launched in February 2021. The rapid deployment had many challenges and continuously evolving scopes of work. Utilizing feedback from senior executives, our Global Chief Data Office, and various business units, we focused on configuration over customization, experimentation, value, and speed over perfection to address challenges and adapt to the business needs. Each iteration was designed to transform the sales processes across IBM and solicit feedback from our end users. While some feedback was critical, we quickly addressed concerns and improved the platform fundamentally shifting the IBM sales experience for sellers and sales managers globally in 12 months.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the department's or team's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 217 words used.
“IBM reimagined their entire sales process over the last year...” Keri Brooke, SVP, Marketing, Sales Cloud, Salesforce The ISC team achieved its initial goals:
- Global ISC deployment provided a single source of truth for 26K+ sellers and sales managers
- ISC users generated over 75K chatter feeds on 40K+ opportunities demonstrating collaboration across the organization
- Sales cycle reduced by 24% YTY (comparing 4Q2020 to 4Q2021)
- Retired 98 tools saving millions of dollars and on pace to sunset the remaining 62+ tools by 2023 year end
- Sales reviews are now conducted live and on platform at all levels of IBM
- Watson-enabled cognitive solutions reduced manual, repetitive tasks saving many man-hours
- Built an intuitive user interface with in-application accessible enablement and Watson AI powered insights
- Signed the Salesforce contract July 31, 2020 and completed our phased global deployment July 30, 2021.
“I don’t have to have all of our sellers go through a great deal of transformational training and enablement. You can come onto this platform and glean quite a bit of information just from the initial dashboards.” Jennifer Kady, IBM Global Markets Sales VP
Using IBM Garage methodology, the ISC team delivered a truly transformational experience to IBM in only 365 days. This achievement makes the IBM Sales Cloud team the Product Management Team of the Year.
- You have the option to answer this final question: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 220 words used.
Jessica Bergmann, VP of Customer 360 & Content Strategy Salesforce: Customer 360 Unites Your Teams with a Single Customer View:
https://www.salesforce.com/plus/experience/Dreamforce_2021/series/Customer_360/episode/episode-1
Keri Brooke, SVP, Marketing, Sales Cloud, Salesforce (at 14:09): "IBM reimagined their entire sales process over the last year and a half"... The New Sales Playbook to Accelerate Growth from Anywhere
https://www.salesforce.com/plus/experience/Dreamforce_2021/series/Sales/episode/episode-s1e2
Learn how IBM is innovating for the next 100 years of work with channel-based communication: How IBM’s collaborative communities build a more vibrant work culture
https://www.salesforce.com/resources/customer-stories/ibm-collaborative-communities-work-culture/
Increase sales velocity with a unified seller experience. How IBM’s collaborative communities build a more vibrant work culture
https://www.salesforce.com/resources/customer-stories/ibm-collaborative-communities-work-culture/#step3
Learn how one of the world's largest companies is using #Customer360 and @SlackHQ to build a more vibrant work culture and transform for the next 100 years of work
https://twitter.com/salesforce/status/1430560601378537476?s=20
Dreamforce 2021: Key Takeaways From the Biggest Salesforce Event
https://360degreecloud.com/dreamforce-2021-key-takeaways-biggest-salesforce-event/
- Dreamforce 2021 kicked off with the keynote speech by Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and Bret Taylor, COO of Salesforce. Day 1 of the event continued with Bret Taylor sharing client stories about how companies are using Salesforce to make a change. The story of IBM was spotlighted.
Hear from IBM to hear how 20K+ sellers have continued to #WorkFromAnywhere.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/taksina_dreamforce2021-workfromanywhere-df21-activity-6843609213642665984-bkg8
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