TECH DINOSAURS

AS TRADITIONAL TECHNOLOGY GIANTS FACE A FUTURE OF SLOWING GROWTH RATES, INNOVATIVE LEADERS TURN TO CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP INTELLIGENCE AS THEIR DRIVER TO REAP VALUE TODAY WHILE EVOLVING FOR ONGOING SUCCESS.

TRADITIONAL TECH GIANTS AT A CROSSROADS

SETTING THE STAGE FOR TODAY’S GROWTH, TOMORROW’S TRANSFORMATION

SOLVING REVENUE LEAKAGE RIGHT NOW

POSITIONING FOR THE FUTURE

A MODERN MODEL FOR CONTINUED SUCCESS

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THE LANDSCAPETraditional tech giants at a crossroads

Having led and shaped the industry for

decades, many of today’s technology

giants now find themselves at a pivotal

crossroads as they evaluate options to

sustain and foster their success.

A recent article from McKinsey &

Company throws down the gauntlet for

these companies in its very title: “Grow

fast or die slow: Focusing on customer

success to drive growth.”1 The article

specifies that “while customer acquisition

is a clear part of revenue growth, a less

obvious but critically important driver is

customer success, as measured by high

retention rates.”

The leaders of tech businesses know

that 80 percent of next year’s revenue

will come from customers already in

the fold. And to make the most of these

opportunities, these organizations must

meet changing demand, and must

understand their customer relationships

inside and out to do so.

What’s more, Yale University’s Professor

Richard Foster reports that today’s

rate of change “is at a faster pace than

ever.”2 This fact is further emphasized by

the S&P 500 index’s indication that the

average lifespan of a company is just 15

years today, down dramatically from the

67-year average of the 1920s.

1http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/grow-fast-or-die-slow-focusing-on-customer-success-to-drive-growth 2http://www.bbc.com/news/business-16611040

THE LEADERS OF TECH BUSINESSES KNOW THAT 80 PERCENT OF NEXT YEAR’S REVENUE WILL COME FROM CUSTOMERS ALREADY IN THE FOLD. AND TO MAKE THE MOST OF THESE OPPORTUNITIES, THESE ORGANIZATIONS MUST MEET CHANGING DEMAND, AND MUST UNDERSTAND THEIR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS INSIDE AND OUT TO DO SO.

In the face of constant market pressures,

complex, business-to-business providers

of tech solutions aren’t strangers to

evolution. They entered the market

with a focus on software, expanded

to complement those offerings with

hardware and services, and today seek to

strategically bundle solutions that answer

business challenges. They’ve reacted

and responded to the shifting trends

of a dynamic sector, juggling frequent

product updates, managing an evolving

product mix, and assimilating complex

mergers and acquisitions. They’ve

shifted from field sales to inside sales

and channel partner sales, altered their

approach from on-premise installations

to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models,

and increased their emphasis on

delivering shareholder value.

But a substantial barrier to business

success lies in revenue leakage. Failure

to understand the details of numerous

complex accounts leads to missed

opportunity. Significant amounts of

earned revenue leak away, leaving

companies taking profitability hits today,

while watching business transformation

goals slip further out of sight.

Why is this happening, and what can

these organizations do to capture what

they’ve earned? Furthermore, how

can they channel resources into the

transformation they must undergo to

remain relevant and successful for the

long term? Technology innovators such

as Oracle and Microsoft have illustrated

the importance of navigating a shifting

industry, modernizing their sales models

and solution offerings to accommodate

the demands and expectations of a more

sophisticated customer.

The good news for these companies is

that they already possess the assets they

need to capitalize, grow and transform.

The answers are hidden in complex

customer contract information, and

they’re waiting to be revealed.

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IT’S A STAGGERING AMOUNT OF DATA TO MASTER—BUT MASTER IT, YOU MUST. THERE’S SUBSTANTIAL PRESSURE TO STRIVE FOR FUTURE SUCCESS, BUT YOU CAN’T TRANSFORM FOR TOMORROW IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY.

THE CHALLENGESetting the stage for today’s growth, tomorrow’s transformation

You’ve been in this business a long time,

and as you’ve worked, your customer

relationships have grown, expanded and

become increasingly complex.

It’s a positive that you’ve become an

important strategic partner to your

customers, but it’s a negative—to you—

when crucial information becomes

so detailed, so intricate, so deep, that

you’re no longer using it thoroughly and

effectively to make business decisions

that directly impact your ability to grow

customer value—and the revenue that

yields. What’s more, taking control

over data today is crucial to generating

opportunity and success down the road.

Let’s think for a moment about

Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball: The

Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” in

which a budget-challenged Oakland

Athletics management team embraced

untraditional data—stats and numbers

collected by baseball enthusiasts,

software engineers, statisticians, lawyers

and physics professors—to discover

affordable baseball talent. The first-of-its-

kind approach led to the A’s amassing an

impressive winning record despite having

the lowest budget in the major league.

They clearly were onto something.

Are you? Consider:

y Do you know all the terms of all

your existing deals?

y Do you know each deal’s pricing,

and when it could—and

should—change?

y Do you recognize how you can

bundle products and services

to deliver comprehensive solutions

to your customers?

y Can you efficiently manage

M&A activity to recognize where

your customer bases overlap …

and where there are cross-sell

opportunities?

y Are you up to speed on upcoming

renewal dates?

y Can you quickly and easily spot

whitespace—and capitalize on it?

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you

couldn’t answer “yes” to all of these

questions. It’s all too common. But

unfortunately, it’s also a sign you’re not

securing revenue you’ve already earned.

The truth is, relationships are complex.

Contracts are unwieldy. Terms are unique,

dynamic and detailed. It’s a staggering

amount of data to master—but master

it, you must. There’s substantial pressure

to strive for future success, but you can’t

transform for tomorrow if you don’t

understand what’s happening today. If

you’re not thoroughly monetizing your

opportunities, you’re not capitalizing

on them. And they’re right there. You

created them. You just need to see them

through.

This industry’s growth rate has

slowed. But, large tech companies are

experiencing a higher engagement level

among their customers. These customers

seek to make more sophisticated, more

complete, more strategically oriented

purchases.

According to a recent article from

Harvard Business Review, “Products

continue to evolve long after entering

service. The relationship a firm has with

its products—and with its customers—is

becoming continuous and open-ended.”3

As such, you need to mine these

relationships to both secure the revenue

they can yield and to increase the

strategic value of each relationship.

Organizations that fail to recognize

and adapt to this dramatic shift are at

tremendous risk. In fact, the HBR writer

takes the bold stance that, “what is under

way is perhaps the most substantial

change in the manufacturing firm since

the Second Industrial Revolution, more

than a century ago.”3

It isn’t too late for tech leaders to

capitalize on this market shift. But before

they can shape a transformed future,

they must understand the revenue reality

their companies face today. Here’s where

to begin …

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3https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-smart-connect-ed-products-are-transforming-companies

SOLVING REVENUE LEAKAGE RIGHT NOWYour company is likely leaking revenue even as you read this sentence. It happens to everyone.

The question is how much and how fast? But, with awareness and the right approach, you can

effectively seal the gaps and redirect earned revenue straight to your bottom line.

Large, complex, B2B organizations like yours manage numerous complex customer

relationships. Relationship gaps that offer revenue-generating potential when recognized

and closed often occur in these areas:

When you know where to look, it’s easy

to see where earned revenue escapes.

But once you’ve spotted those leaks,

can you easily repair them to reap the

value you’re due? The answer is yes, and

not only can the right solution create

value right now, it can prepare your

organization to adapt for future success.

That solution is customer relationship

intelligence (CRI). It’s a smart strategic

approach to harnessing complex

customer data and combining it with

other critical data to fuel business

decision-making.

In fact, forward-thinking companies

have done precisely this, in efforts that

yield dramatic results. For example, one

leading provider of cloud infrastructure

and hosted IT solutions sought to change

the way it served enterprise customers.

The organization envisioned transitioning

from a traditional product emphasis

to a true solution sale. The shift was

handicapped by missing, incomplete

or inaccurate customer information

scattered across legacy systems and

acquired businesses. Sales teams spent

too much time searching for data and

too little engaged with customers, which

negatively impacted customer retention

and impeded organizational growth.

Organizational leaders recognized that

comprehensive customer information

held the key to successful solution sales.

The company embraced customer

relationship intelligence to digitize data

assets and deliver crucial customer

detail to its sales teams. It collected

and analyzed more than 250,000

customer contracts, consolidating

them into a comprehensive, up-to-

date repository integrated with its

Salesforce implementation for seamless

incorporation into the daily workflows of

more than 3,500 sales professionals.

Teams now enjoy immediate access to

contract expiration dates, products,

credits, a family tree of associated

amendments and exhibits, and billing

information. Focus has shifted from the

tedious data hunt to strategic, proactive

customer engagement.

12 mo. 18 mo.EXPIRED DISCOUNT

PRICE INCREASES You’re perfectly entitled to implement price increases based on CPI, performance and usage. But do you know when to do it, and are you applying the increases when you should? When contracts say one thing—if you can find the specifics at all—and your CRM system says another, which information should you believe? The uncertainty leads to inaction, and that leads to lost dollars.

PURCHASE COMMITMENTS Your customers often commit to specific purchase

volumes or values. But are they making good? When it’s

not easy to check agreements regularly, it’s not easy to

collect the payments due.

DISCOUNT EXPIRATIONSOffering discounts is an excellent way to entice new customers. But once you’ve secured that relationship, are you tracking the duration of the discount to adjust pricing when the reduction expires? If not, you’re losing money, big time.

LICENSE + SUPPORT RENEWALSRenewals represent recurring opportunity. But when renewal terms are buried in contracts, you’ll miss collection windows without even realizing it. And what if your customers have increased users or taken advantage of more support? Failure to recognize and capitalize on these terms means failure to pick up money simply sitting on the table.

COST PASS-THROUGHS + CHARGEBACKSRecognizing when you have the right to share your costs with your customers—and following through on those opportunities—can make a dramatic impact to your bottom line.

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According to the company’s vice

president of sales effectiveness, this

initiative “is helping us improve the

retention of at-risk revenue by 4.5

percent and increase active selling time

for our sales team by 15 percent. That

is an extraordinary return on a modest

investment.”

POSITIONING FOR FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONGrowth is challenging for large tech

companies today. Transformation—

reinvention—is critical to continued

success. Such organizations must

redefine their go-to-market approach.

Gone are the days of standalone software

sales. Today’s customer seeks software,

hardware and service solutions, including

SaaS. To fuel this transformation,

companies must glean as much value out

of each customer relationship as they

possibly can.

Tech companies must ask:

y Are we fully monetizing what we

have sold?

y Are we strategically applying

knowledge to grow our

relationships?

y Are we seamlessly assimilating

M&A activity?

When you can emphatically answer “yes”

to these questions, you will be well on

your way to the next-generation model.

You will have recouped leaking revenue

and set a stage for transformation.

Pramata customers know that customer

relationship intelligence provides the

solution to managing massive volumes of

data in such a way as to transform it into

a tremendously valuable asset.

Consider the concrete and quantifiable

changes this client anticipates after

applying our technology to better

understanding customer relationships:

y This $10 billion technology

customer credited our solution with

the potential to achieve greater

than $200 million in revenue impact

and $24 million in efficiency gains.

Components of these customer-

vetted estimates included:

» Drive efficient renewals and

reduce churn for more than $54

million in incremental revenue

» Manage renewals team

efficiency for nearly $1 million in

recovered productivity

» Increase win rate with more

accurate quotes for new deals

for $6 million

» Improve sales team productivity

for almost $10 million in value

Here, this organization applied customer

relationship intelligence to better

understand customer accounts, but soon

recognized its potential to make dramatic

operational improvements in a number of

important areas. Customer relationship

intelligence became the linchpin of a

broader digital transformation initiative.

This is representative of the scale of

transformation Pramata solutions

make possible. With value emerging in

as little as 30 days from the moment

you say go, this technology is key to

stopping revenue leaks now and building

actionable insight that informs strategic

growth.

And it’s not just what we do, but also

the way we do it. In the words of a

satisfied client, “It was clear there was a

real commitment to understanding and

hitting our business objectives. That’s

been a differentiator here. They make it a

collaborative conversation and

bring a lot more value to what we’re able

to achieve.”

ACCORDING TO A RECENT ARTICLE FROM HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW, “PRODUCTS CONTINUE TO EVOLVE LONG AFTER ENTERING SERVICE. THE RELATIONSHIP A FIRM HAS WITH ITS PRODUCTS—AND WITH ITS CUSTOMERS—IS BECOMING CONTINUOUS AND OPEN-ENDED.”

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Pramata Customer Relationship Intelligence™ empowers large B2B

companies with complete, actionable insights about their most valuable

customer relationships to drive significant revenue growth potential and

stronger compliance efforts.

www.pramata.com

© 2017 Pramata Corporation. All rights reserved.

Our innovative CRI approach bridges

the information gaps inside your current

technology infrastructure. We synthesize

critical data from multiple sources and

deliver a simplified, accurate view to

everyone involved in the customer

relationship.

While most of our clients realize they’re

leaking some revenue, most don’t know

how much or how quickly. When we’ve

helped them to apply CRI to their sales

effectiveness and business performance

strategies, we’ve often helped them

discover an annual recurring revenue

gain of more than $12 million, just by

examining one big source of leakage

across their most valuable customer

relationships.

From sales to delivery, operations to

retention, there are numerous points

from which revenue leakage adds up to

meaningful totals. CRI mines the valuable

hidden data within your customer

contracts, synthesizes that data with

relevant information from your billing

systems and CRM applications and

delivers it in the most meaningful context

for your finance, sales and legal teams.

Mine, synthesize, deliver, repeat. It’s a

cycle that helps companies meet both

today’s and tomorrow’s objectives.

With this complete digital view of

actionable customer insight, it becomes

routine to capitalize on pricing increases,

discount expirations, cost pass-throughs

and many more untapped opportunities

within your most valuable customer

relationships. And when regularly,

consistently, easily capturing earned

revenue becomes the norm, companies

bolster their foundations now to cultivate

success moving forward.

AND IT’S NOT JUST WHAT WE DO, BUT ALSO THE WAY WE DO IT. IN THE WORDS OF A SATISFIED CLIENT, “IT WAS CLEAR THERE WAS A REAL COMMITMENT TO UNDERSTANDING AND HITTING OUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVES. THAT’S BEEN A DIFFERENTIATOR HERE. THEY MAKE IT A COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATION AND BRING A LOT MORE VALUE TO WHAT WE’RE ABLE TO ACHIEVE.”

4http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/grow-fast-or-die-slow-fo-cusing-on-customer-success-to-drive-growth

A MODERN MODEL FOR CONTINUED SUCCESSThe McKinsey article calls for

organizations to “think about the

full customer journey and tailor your

approach,” and to “use analytics to

gain an advantage.”4

The Pramata approach is designed

specifically to answer directives

like these. You need a technology

solution to help you review the areas

of your customer lifecycle to identify

opportunities to grow revenue

immediately while laying the groundwork

for future value.

We can help companies leverage the

asset that is their current customer

base to drive current growth and future

transformation. Pramata helps companies

like yours transform complicated

customer agreement information into

accessible, digital intelligence your

sales teams can use to strengthen

relationships, increase revenue and

reduce operational risks.