CRM Analytics Adoption Issues at the Executive Level and a Lack of Data-Driven Insights and Actions for Sales
Initially, Service Corporation International (SCI) had challenges with the adoption of their CRM Analytics dashboards beyond their directors and above due to a backlog of complex features — including a complicated security model — that their analytics team did not have the expertise or capacity to manage.
Additionally, SCI’s sales enablement team was looking to understand how to leverage descriptive analytics, AI, and machine learning for data-driven recommendations to optimize sales activities and guide business decisions that would result in improved sales conversion rates. First and foremost, they wanted to introduce recommended sales activity and target metrics into their monthly activity planning process. SCI also wanted a consistent method for counselors and managers to evaluate their progress against their monthly goals and to determine which leads or accounts to prioritize each day based on the lead or associated opportunity’s likelihood to convert to a sale.
Optimized Dataflows, Extended Dashboard Functionality, and a Data-Driven Solution
We established an Elevate team (Elevate being Atrium’s managed services offering) to work through SCI’s CRM Analytics backlog items over the course of several releases. SCI’s dataflows were optimized to support dashboard extensions and improvements. Executive dashboard functionality was extended and data visualizations were broadened, supporting sales manager stakeholders.
Many new requirements have surfaced throughout our engagement, and Atrium continues to partner closely with SCI’s analytics team to address requests as they are prioritized and to provide general thought leadership as the analytics team members ramp up their capabilities on the platform.
Intelligent Experience Workshops for Sales Stakeholders
In order to drive out a vision for how data can be leveraged to achieve SCI’s sales objectives, Atrium hosted a series of Intelligent Experience Workshops with a variety of sales stakeholders. We identified and aligned on business objectives, defined and prioritized persona-based pain points and use cases, and established a vision for a data-driven solution.
A Comprehensive Solution Customized to Suit SCI’s Needs
We developed a comprehensive solution by leveraging Lightning Web Components (LWC), custom Apex batch processes, CRM Analytics, and Einstein Discovery.
LWC: Built a Monthly Action Plan (MAP) for counselors and managers to set their daily activity and board volume goals.
Apex Batch Process: Used to generate recommendations based on past performance and to calculate daily activity updates.
CRM Analytics was used to:
- Embed a dashboard on counselors’ Homepages to display their daily and monthly progress toward goals as well as activities required for the day to achieve their monthly goals
- Embed a dashboard on the Account Page to highlight account-specific metrics
- Build dashboards and leaderboards for the counselors and managers to track additional sales performance and quality of sale metrics
Einstein Discovery models were implemented for:
- Likelihood for a Lead to Convert
- Likelihood for an Account to Convert
- Account Rating
- Predicted Forecast
Improved Understanding of Sales and Channel Targets, Recommended Actions, and Performance at All Levels
The CRM Analytics enhancements were met with great success. Right away, SCI experienced improved performance and functionality of existing dashboards to support prioritized backlogs, which positioned them to roll out to Sales Directors and Managers. They now have improved understanding of sales and channel performance on all levels.
The Intelligent Experience workshops were instrumental in gaining executive-level alignment on the objectives of an intelligent sales solution, expected benefits, and highest priorities. The Intelligent Sales Experience (ISX) program brought improved sales efficiencies, contributed to higher conversion rates, optimized performance management, and laid the foundation for guided actions.
After working with the Atrium team, SCI’s sales counselors and sales managers can more easily determine what sales targets they want to achieve each month and evaluate the resulting required activities, appointments, sales, and average sale amount before committing their monthly targets. When they log into their Homepage, they are presented with their required activities each day, their progress toward achieving those targets, and their actual vs. target board volume (quota). They can review a list of recommended leads and accounts presented based on their relative likelihood to convert scores and can easily select and add them to a “Today’s Task List.” Throughout the month, managers can more intelligently evaluate their forecasts down to an account level, and counselors and managers can track their individual performance as well as how they compare to their peers up to the global level.
