answer questions such as “What is According to Heather Whitman, “in the cycle time of your process?” the 10 months since implementing “How many leads went through the the Visio 2010 solution, we’ve been process last month?” “What was the able to recover 20,000 leads that we attrition rate last year?” “Which wouldn’t have been able to campaigns were successful this recognize before. In addition to quarter?” recovering those leads, our sales teams have been able to convert In the past, many leads would approximately $6 million dollars in disappear into “black holes” in the pipeline revenue from those leads sales and marketing pipeline, where that we were able to recover.” no one would know what happened to them because they were very With its Visio 2010 solution in place, difficult to effectively track across so U.S. SMS&P now has an actionable many disparate data sources. With system level view of Sales and their newly developed holistic Marketing pipeline, and the ability to pipeline view, U.S. SMS&P can now quickly track every marketing lead allow managers at all levels of the through its lifecycle. Rather than dig organization to have a full through countless pivot reports to understanding of the lead find leads, the Visio 2010 dashboard management process and provide gives instant status on health of the them with a better way to manage business and daily operations. their business. “So now not only do Furthermore, the Sales and we have a map of our process, but Marketing Operations Team is able we can measure how that process is to significantly reduce the time and performing from the actual data effort associated with managing within our databases,” said Nohl. one-off support calls with users, reducing the number of calls from “We chose to use Visio 2010 because 10-20 per month to almost zero. it allows us to pull in data from “Visio 2010 gives us the ability to multiple databases, multiple tools, demonstrate the process in a visual and multiple sources into one way, and it allows our business graphical view,” explains Whitman. leaders to drill into that data to make “That allows our business leaders to decisions around marketing, sales make effective decisions and capacity, scaling our partner improve the experience our resources, and further provides customers and partners have when marketing with better ‘closed-loop’ they work with Microsoft.” data so we can continue to improve that experience for our customers,” Benefits says Whitman.
answer questions such as “What is the cycle time of your process?” “How many leads went through the process last month?” “What was the attrition rate last year?” “Which campaigns were successful this quarter?” In the past, many leads would disappear into “black holes” in the sales and marketing pipeline, where no one would know what happened to them because they were very difficult to effectively track across so many disparate data sources. With their newly developed holistic pipeline view, U.S. SMS&P can now allow managers at all levels of the organization to have a full understanding of the lead management process and provide them with a better way to manage their business. “So now not only do we have a map of our process, but we can measure how that process is performing from the actual data within our databases,” said Nohl. “We chose to use Visio 2010 because it allows us to pull in data from multiple databases, multiple tools, and multiple sources into one graphical view,” explains Whitman. “That allows our business leaders to make effective decisions and improve the experience our customers and partners have when they work with Microsoft.” Benefits According to Heather Whitman, “in the 10 months since implementing the Visio 2010 solution, we’ve been able to recover 20,000 leads that we wouldn’t have been able to recognize before. In addition to recovering those leads, our sales teams have been able to convert approximately $6 million dollars in pipeline revenue from those leads that we were able to recover.” With its Visio 2010 solution in place, U.S. SMS&P now has an actionable system level view of Sales and Marketing pipeline, and the ability to quickly track every marketing lead through its lifecycle. Rather than dig through countless pivot reports to find leads, the Visio 2010 dashboard gives instant status on health of the business and daily operations. Furthermore, the Sales and Marketing Operations Team is able to significantly reduce the time and effort associated with managing one-off support calls with users, reducing the number of calls from 10-20 per month to almost zero. “Visio 2010 gives us the ability to demonstrate the process in a visual way, and it allows our business leaders to drill into that data to make decisions around marketing, sales capacity, scaling our partner resources, and further provides marketing with better ‘closed-loop’ data so we can continue to improve that experience for our customers,” says Whitman.