2018 marketing excellence awards - the winners · environment to enable interactivity. two garage...

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© 2018 ITSMA. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Capitalizing on Marketing’s New Tools and Technologies • Diamond Winner | HCL: HCL Innovation Garage VR ............................................................... 1 • Gold Winner | Avanade: Modernizing Martech ......................................................................... 3 • Gold Winner | Vodafone: Helping Business Succeed in a Digital World .............................. 5

Deepening Engagement with Account-Based Marketing • Diamond Winner | HP Inc.: Deepening Engagements and Accelerating Growth

among Cold, Dead, and Hostile Accounts ................................................................................. 7 • Gold Winner | Capgemini: Becoming a Trusted Digital Partner ............................................ 9 • Gold Winner | HCL: Treating the Best Customers in a More Personal Way ...................... 11

Driving Business with Thought Leadership • Diamond Winner | Cognizant: What To Do When Machines Do Everything? ................... 13 • Gold Winner | Vodafone: Gigabit Society Thought Leadership ........................................... 15

Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth • Diamond Winner | Microsoft: Enabling Sales with Account-Based Engagement ............. 17 • Gold Winner | Cisco: Cisco Launches Digital Seller of the Future Initiative to Retain

Customers for Life ....................................................................................................................... 19 • Gold Winner | IBM: IBM Engage! ............................................................................................... 21

Measuring and Communicating Marketing Performance • Diamond Winner | SPR: The Art and Science of Building an Integrated, Influential,

and Results-Driven Marketing Department at SPR ............................................................... 23 • Gold Winner | Tata Communications: Single View of the Customer .................................. 25

Strengthening Marketing’s Role in Customer Experience and Success • Diamond Winner | IBM: ExpertAdvice Program ..................................................................... 27 • Gold Winner | NTT DATA: The Collaboration Center ............................................................ 29 • Gold Winner | SAP: The Moments That Matter Initiative ..................................................... 31

Transforming Marketing: Talent, Organization, and Culture • Diamond Winner | Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI): No Marketer Left Behind .................. 33 • Gold Winner | Hexaware: Cost Center to Revenue Generation: Unifying the

Marketing Function for Success ............................................................................................... 35

Small and Medium Businesses • Diamond Winner | Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth | InfinityQS: Educating

and Qualifying Leads Online to Streamline Sales and Drive Revenue ............................... 37 • Gold Winner | Driving Business with Thought Leadership | Perficient Digital (formerly

Stone Temple): Top Agency Reputation with Original, Data-Driven Research Studies .......... 39 • Gold Winner | Deepening Engagement with Account-Based Marketing | Snowflake:

ABM Delivers 300% Growth Fueling Global Expansion and Category Disruption ........... 41

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© 2018 ITSMA. All rights reserved. 01

HCL | Diamond Winner Capitalizing on Marketing’s New Tools and Technologies

HCL Innovation Garage VR PROBLEM STATEMENTS

1) Customers who visited the Noida campus as part of the purchase cycle could not experience the Innovation Garage in Chennai due to their tight schedules. 2) Garage experts were spending upwards of 1,680 hours per person each year to execute domestic/international visits to present HCL capabilities. 3) Sales executives often used PPTs to give a walkthrough, leading to inconsistent/jargon-filled presentations. THE SOLUTION

Industry experts validated the use case of VR.

Target Audience: Geographic: Sixty-one percent of customers/buyers visit HCL’s office in Noida (60% US, 35% Europe, and 5% RoW), with 39% in other locations (North Carolina, Sunny Vale, Texas, London, Stockholm, Chennai, Bengaluru, Sydney and Singapore City). Demographic: C-level executives (15%), Director-level executives (40%), and SMEs (45%) with decision-making influence. Over 50% have non-technical backgrounds (marketing, finance, legal, etc.). Psychographic: Visitors are generally on a tight schedule, so 59% typically spend just one day per visit and are unable to fly to Chennai during the same trip. Analysis showed that over 70% of customers wanted PPT presentations to be shorter, in less technical language, and more interactive.

Asset Creation: Content Development: It took nine months of research, winning stakeholder confidence, getting budget, and selecting a vendor. A visit to the lab for RECCE influenced the decision to recreate part of it in a CG environment to enable interactivity. Two garage experts were chosen as presenters and VR script experts were hired to help prepare them. Technologies Used: Developers leveraged Utility Game Engine (UGE) to build interactivity and Computer Graphic Interface (CGI) for the environment. The Watson suite of AI functions helped developers design in-built analytics (for the HTC Vive version of the VR) and to identify the most and least engaging parts of the entire experience.

Optimization: The HTC Vive analysis and customer feedback are gathered to optimize the overall experience. Developed an App for easy access.

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Asset Promotion: Enablement/Launch: Created a storyline through teasers up to the launch. Invited employees to experience the VR at booths installed at various locations, and ran a contest through various channels to encourage bookings.

Below is the list of channels used for the campaigns and the performance criteria.

Channels Used: Web: Customer-facing employees were educated on the VR technology and Innovation Garage VR through a microsite, and their experiences were captured on camera to share with other employees. Intranet & Sales Portal: An intranet brought employees to the microsite, and banners were hosted on both channels with links back to the microsite. App: The android version of the VR has been made available to all customer-facing teams across HCL using a secure app. Video: Videos of people experiencing the VR were created and hosted on the microsite and shared through other channels. E-mail: The initial email campaign included teasers to help create a buzz. After the launch, an email from the CTO was sent to the entire organization to encourage participation. Subsequent emails focused on promoting the VR booths. Newsletter Inserts: Used to increase the outreach and predications. Contest: Over 1,000 people participated in the “Share your Innovation Garage VR Story” contest to win prizes. Every employee using the HCL network could scan the QR code to participate in the campaign and the contest. IGVR Experience Client Visit Request Form: Client-visit managers fill out feedback forms to help track visits and manage VR sessions. IGVR Experience Client Feedback Form: Feedback forms are sent to visitors to capture their VR experience reviews to help optimize the overall experience. Print: Posters and flyers were used to promote the VR booths installed at various campuses across the globe. All flyers and posters printed the QR code linked to the microsite. Events: VR booths were set up to educate people on the VR technology and Innovation Garage. Special workshops for marketing, pre-sales, alliances, and product management groups were also conducted. Dedicated VR Spaces: Ten key office locations and Customer Experience Centres have now been enabled with HTC Vive and VR headsets. For others, sales have been provided with an App to take customers through the VR using a headset. BUSINESS RESULTS

Acquisition: Supported 55+ visits/meetings, ensuring consistent walkthroughs and influenced deals. Engagement: Over 3,000 customer-facing employees have been educated on VR. 97% of customers who have gone through the VR tour have marked their experience as “Wow.” Thought Leadership: A one-time investment has taken the Innovation Garage to all other HCL locations across the globe. Cost saving: Helped the BU save significant travel costs as the Innovation Garage is executed in just 10-minutes with 3-minute interactivity embedded in the overall experience.

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Avanade | Gold Winner Capitalizing on Marketing’s New Tools and Technologies

Modernizing Martech: How our Improvement Initiative Drives Better Experiences and Increases Effectiveness BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Much of the work we do at Avanade involves modernizing IT for our clients to make them fit for the digital world. We’ve applied the same approach to our marketing tools and technologies for the same reason. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE

Our martech modernization initiative is a holistic effort encompassing technology, analytics and people. The objective is to provide better experiences for our clients and our team, and to improve marketing effectiveness. PROGRAM EXECUTION

Execution focused on five elements:

1. Avanade.com: Our corporate website is a primary channel to reach clients, partners, influencers, recruits and our employees. It’s crucial that we offer the best experience possible. As part of the initiative, we addressed personalization, video integration, blog platform migration and translation automation.

2. Marketing automation platform: Marketo and Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM make up our integrated, multichannel execution and lead management platform. Improvements included a focus on integrating our tools to influence lead scoring and progression, and the addition of an all-in-one email template and central webinar integration.

3. Analytics and Insights for Marketing (AIM) platform: Our AIM platform enabled us to move away from manual tracking and reporting of data. This one-stop shop provides all our marketing data and analytics needs, including Microsoft Power BI-based dashboards, web analytics and social listening.

4. Agile marketing methodology and tools: As part of the initiative, we looked at how we work. That led us to fully adopt agile marketing and related tools such as Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services) and Kanban boards.

5. People and skills: New tools and technologies are critical to success, but they don’t work without people. And those people need to have the right capabilities for the evolving market. Which is why we made skills development part of the initiative.

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BUSINESS RESULTS Our modernization program has driven positive results, including improved website engagement with our target clients, a stronger and more accurate pipeline of qualified leads, increased blog subscriptions and internal efficiencies.

New web features increase engagement. The new personalization capability on our corporate website provides more relevant user experiences. And it gives us better insight into who our web visitors are and how they’re engaging with the site. For example, we’ve seen a significant improvement in click-throughs for visitors we target with industry-specific content. Content engagement is also strong, with a growing number of visitors actively interacting with pages, downloads, videos and contact forms. This has led to improved overall website conversion rates.

Modernization efforts increase internal efficiencies. For example, shifting to automated translations on our local websites has reduced the manual process of translation management and content loading by more than half. At the same time, marketers can now edit translations in the context of the site.

Agile approach increases speed and flexibility. We trained all our team members in agile marketing, and the majority have begun using it for a variety of activities, including content development, operations, campaigns and client evidence. Teams are seeing increased speed and flexibility as a result.

Three critical success factors

Our martech modernization initiative was a significant undertaking, cutting across external platforms and technologies, as well as internal tools, and involving our entire marketing organization. Three key factors have been critical to the program’s success:

Integration is imperative. From the beginning, we took a holistic approach to ensure that we could effectively connect systems to get the full benefit of our marketing tools and technologies.

People and capabilities count. Tools and technologies go hand in hand with people and capabilities. That’s why skills development, training and new methodologies were integral to the program.

Collaboration with IT is critical. The modernization program is underpinned by strong collaboration between marketing and our IT organization to make sure we’re getting the most out of our technology investment. “We saw an opportunity to use exciting new tools and technologies to digitally transform our marketing organization. But we knew we couldn’t do it alone. To be effective, marketing and IT needed to have shared business goals,” says Stella Goulet, Avanade’s CMO. “Improving the client and employee experiences is key to supporting Avanade’s broader business objectives and is an area where marketing and IT are equally vested. Our martech modernization initiative is a great example of effective collaboration at work.”

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Vodafone | Gold Winner Capitalizing on Marketing’s New Tools and Technologies

Helping Business Succeed in a Digital World BUSINESS CHALLENGE The challenge for Vodafone Global Enterprise was to develop an ecosystem that enabled us to span geographic borders, work in different languages, and support our company’s goals. We improved Vodafone’s B2B digital marketing integration based on available analytics from the original Digital Marketing Hub created to support MNC customers. PROGRAMME OBJECTIVE Integrating this digital ecosystem allowed us to fulfil the following objectives: Build our Reputation

• Build our reputation in those markets where we are not as well known (e.g. US and Asia) while changing or building our reputation in already established markets

• Flexibility to target the correct messages to different segments of business customers Increasing demand

• Increasing customer engagement and drive new contacts and leads within our target accounts both for multinationals customers, but also large corporates in individual countries

Alignment • Navigate between standardization and the need for each business unit to be agile • Provide a unified view of our customers/prospects and their Digital Body Language to Marketing

and Telesales PROGRAMME EXECUTION Some of the key steps Vodafone Global Enterprise had taken to develop the digital ecosystem are as followed: Improved Marketing and Sales asset sharing In December 2017, Vodafone Group Enterprise implemented Eloqua Engage as a replacement for ‘Forwarding tools’ landing pages for a more systematic and trackable sales enablement process. Since then, we have run several successful training sessions for sales users across multiple regions within the organisation. We have also implemented a registration process, where users need to provide their basic contact details as well as information to populate email signatures. The same form can also be used to request an update to details provided earlier. The users are then set up by our Eloqua administrators

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Eloqua and Salesforce (1SF) integration The foundation of our Eloqua and 1SF synchronization is the clean‐up and normalization programs called the Daisy Chain. Each of the steps within that solution updates the Contact record to ensure that only high quality records reach 1SF at the end of the Daisy Chain. This automated process ensured correct lead routing for 1SF integration and the access to include market relevant contacts in marketing campaigns.

Integration Using LookBook embedded experiences has allowed us to serve theme‐specific content to our website and landing page visitors, without navigating them away from the initial page they were viewing. LookBookHQ tracks visitor behaviour and is integrated with Eloqua, allowing us to trigger form submissions and follow up actions (e.g. increasing lead score, adding to campaigns) when the visitor activity threshold is passed.

Account Based Marketing initiatives One of the big initiatives Vodafone took in 2017 was to improve engagement within key target accounts. To facilitate that, we needed better insight into the activities employees of these companies perform on our website and campaign pages. With that in mind, we have implemented custom Adobe Analytics (Omniture) tracking on all Eloqua Landing Pages, aligning the tracking process with the Business website.

Operating model After on boarding the initial local markets to the initiative with help from external agencies, we moved the platform and demand management to a centralised position within the Vodafone Shared Services. This allowed us to vastly reduce the on boarding costs and have full visibility and control over the process.

Enterprise Social We launched the Enterprise Social platform in 2016 to track customer interactions with social posts shared by Vodafone employees, utilising the Dynamic Signal application. The app has been a huge success for VGE, with over 3k users since we launched the platform, 30 % Increase in clicks on content that employees have shared (1st 6mths vs 2nd 6mths) and a 43% Increase in reactions on posts employees share (likes, shares, comments) (1st 6mths vs 2nd 6mths). BUSINESS RESULTS

The business benefits of the Digital Marketing Hub for Enterprise include: • 250% increase in marketing generated revenue year on year between 2016 and 2017 • 70% software license cost saving for WCS and Eloqua per market compared to standalone

deployments • 40% cost reduction on developing marketing assets using the Vodafone Shared Services agency

supporting the ecosystem • 100% deployment cost reduction for local markets (100‐150k Euro initial cost saving) thanks to

new onboarding model. • Lead follow‐up time reduced by 75% in India using Eloqua and 1SF integration. • Reduced onboarding time for new markets to 6 weeks from initial 6‐12 months thanks to new

operating model

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HP Inc. | Diamond Winner Deepening Engagement with Account-Based Marketing

Deepening Engagements and Accelerating Growth among Cold, Dead, and Hostile Accounts BUSINESS CHALLENGE

In an effort to remain competitive in an evolving technology industry and drive long-term growth, Hewlett-Packard Company split into two separate entities in November 2015. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) would focus on cloud business solutions and enterprise hardware, such as compute, storage, and network infrastructure, while HP Inc. would narrow its focus on personal systems, printers, and related services. After the split, the newly formed HP Inc. faced a fundamental business challenge—how to remain competitive and achieve growth in a shrinking PC market. This hastened a refocusing and restructuring on both the sales and Commercial Marketing organizations. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE

Sales and Marketing needed to work together to execute a coordinated account-based marketing strategy, built on Marketing’s innovative new infrastructure, to target and engage large acquisition targets, including a group of notoriously elusive accounts known internally as the “Cold, Dead, and Hostile” (CDH) accounts.

The approach included: • In-depth analysis of the cold, dead, and hostile prospect set, including extensive customer decision

journey research • Strategic partnerships and investment in new technologies and data-gathering capabilities • Development of personalized campaigns and marketing activities for individual accounts • Creation of a range of customizable collateral and materials that Sales could use to address

specific account needs throughout the buying cycle • Measurement of engagement and response throughout the customer journey

PROGRAM EXECUTION

The company’s shift toward growth and acquiring new business precipitated a restructuring in Sales, not just of the physical workforce, but in the ideology and methods used to pursue targeted named acquisition accounts.

As Sales was restructuring, Marketing was simultaneously developing its broader ABM infrastructure. This included data-gathering capabilities that would allow for the conversion of data into actionable intelligence for marketing initiatives. By drawing insights directly from accurate data, Marketing’s new ABM approach would enable the targeting of potential customers, personalize and automate marketing experiences, and

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deliver data to gauge responses and interactions. From a CDH account perspective, the timing of this innovation could not have been more perfect.

Sales and Marketing then came together to execute a coordinated account-based marketing strategy, built on Marketing’s innovative new infrastructure, to target and engage this difficult account set. The approach included:

• In-depth analysis of the cold, dead, and hostile prospect set, including extensive customer decision journey research

• Strategic partnerships and investment in new technologies and data-gathering capabilities • Development of personalized campaigns and marketing activities for individual accounts • Creation of a range of customizable collateral and materials that Sales could use to address

specific account needs throughout the buying cycle • Measurement of engagement and response throughout the customer journey

The initiative was an overwhelming success that not only resulted in the penetration and conversion of CDH accounts, but also led to an ideological shift in how marketing would be done going forward and how success would be measured. Most importantly, the account-based marketing initiative focused and strengthened the relationship between Sales and Marketing and aligned them on one strategic approach. BUSINESS RESULTS

Over the past 18 months, this synchronized, multi-touch approach yielded the following results:

Targeting, personalization, and engagement • The vast majority of CDH accounts had previously not engaged on HP Inc.’s website. • Personalization and targeting of digital display advertising drove average engagement rates in

excess of 40 percent per campaign on hp.com. • Overall, Marketing engaged 77 percent of the CDH accounts in multi-touch campaigns.

Pipeline, wins, and revenue • This engagement with CDH accounts represented over a billion dollars in pipeline of net-new

opportunities. • During this timeframe, 12 percent of the CDH accounts converted into won business. • Of the accounts won, Marketing was significantly engaged with 70 percent of them. • All of this resulted in several hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from “new logos” within the

large corporate account segment. After successfully implementing the ABM approach, one of the first realizations was that no account is too far gone. But more than that, ABM’s success among CDH accounts has caused a sea change at HP Inc. It has sparked new conversations about how marketing should be done in the future, how the Marketing organization should measure success, and how to integrate the platform in new ways across the enterprise to include more rostered accounts.

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Capgemini | Gold Winner Deepening Engagement with Account-Based Marketing

Becoming a Trusted Digital Partner Capgemini has a long history in Account Based Marketing. So, for our strategic global accounts we have an ABM program with dedicated ABM lead in place. This case describes one of those strategic accounts. HOW DID IT START

The customer came to us through an acquisition that Capgemini made in 2015. The account was big, and the Client leadership was apprehensive about adapting to the Capgemini way of working and culture, which was unknown to them. OUR CHALLENGE

The challenge for our account team was to position Capgemini as a company which understood the clients’ various business lines and could also deliver innovative digital solutions that would add value to their business. In short, if we wanted to retain the Client, we had to reinforce our credibility and we had to do it fast.

We defined our challenges as follows:

1. We had to seamlessly integrate Capgemini and the acquired organization and to increase the customer’s comfort levels with Capgemini’s abilities and work culture

2. We had to win the trust of the newly acquired organization for Capgemini as a brand capable of delivering innovative solutions to transform the Digital landscape of the Client.

STRUCTURED APPROACH

At Capgemini, we have a structured approach to ABM. For the large and strategic accounts, we have a one-to-one ABM program in place. For these programs, a dedicated ABM Lead is assigned together with all the necessary support. The ABM Lead runs the overall program by leveraging the entire marketing ecosystem within the organization. We also used this approach for this specific account:

1. We initiated a customer survey to understand the pulse of the Client 2. We Came up with key areas of focus based on the findings of the survey and in combination with

the account strategy 3. We formulated the ABM strategy with key tactics to drive business results and framed KPIs to

measure the impact of our program

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4. Executed the ABM program 5. Assessed results against the set KPIs

OBJECTIVES

We focused on repositioning Capgemini with this key customer as the trusted Partner in their Digital transformation roadmap. With that in mind we embarked on the ABM journey with very clear objectives:

• Earn the status of preferred digital partner Capgemini had to gain a foothold in the Client’s strategic initiatives, drive important business goals, deliver measurable results and evolve to becoming a preferred digital partner for the client.

• (re)Position Capgemini as an innovative self-starter

Apart from showcasing and proving Capgemini’s capabilities, we wanted them to see and believe that we not only understood their business and their challenges, but also had the capability to help transform them.

INNOVATION

Innovation is a key driver at Capgemini. We have harnessed innovation in our way of working and in our solutions. For this client we used an innovation-led approach to help the Client develop and deliver disruptive innovations, and to scale them faster. We incorporated new ideas to address the clients’ pain areas and this has helped us to strengthen our relationship even further. THE RESULTS

The results of this program speak for itself • We retained the account and gained the status of a Digital Preferred Partner. • We are involved with multiple of the Client’s Digital Transformation efforts and we have

demonstrated tangible business value. • Supported deals and helped create larger funnel • Established new contacts (increase by 30%) and our efforts have opened doors to various new

opportunities

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HCL | Gold Winner Deepening Engagement with Account-Based Marketing

Treating the Best Customers in a More Personal Way BUSINESS CHALLENGE

From demand generation to sales strategy, disruption is occurring within technology markets and companies typically in the B2B space are racing to reinvent themselves. Thus among the TSPs (Technology Service Providers), account-based marketing (ABM) has been the fastest-growing go-to-market topic. As per market research 84% of marketers find ABM an important and reaping approach which gives significant benefits in expanding and retaining existing client relationships. As per Gartner, by 2019 around 75% of B2B Technology Service Providers with more than $10 million in revenue will adopt ABM as their primary strategy, up from 25% in 2017.

In 2017, HCL realized that as users adapt to new go-to-market techniques, the time has come to do away with many of the sales, marketing and product management practices that it has relied on for the past few years. It was observed that instead of a very siloed demand generation technique, a more targeted and well-coordinated approach that conveyed ongoing, personalized outreach to specific accounts can drive more wins, shorten the sales cycles and help in closing larger deals. Adopting ABM for HCL would flip its traditional funnel upside down, going narrow at the top of the funnel instead of wide. HCL realized that Marketing to existing accounts to encourage cross-selling and up-selling would pave the way for a more value-driven approach and help in striking the right partnership with the largest accounts. Thus ABM would be a more holistic approach to marketing and be beyond just lead generation.

PROGRAM OBJECTIVE

Like most mature companies in the B2B space, HCL was growing manifolds with the Y-O-Y growth in terms of bookings and revenues shooting up, but to continue the momentum and adapt to needs of the changing market there were quite a few challenges which demanded immediate attention. The key areas that were signaling the pressing need for an ABM marketing strategy were:

1. Improve contribution from target accounts in overall HCL’s revenues as the no. of website visits and revenue from those were almost stagnant for past few years.

2. Eradicate the scatter-shot approach to reach any or every prospect without proper alignment with marketing team.

3. Increase lead to opportunity conversion rates and increase the revenue by stitching a story and represent across all touchpoints.

4. Improvement in HCL’s win rate over past few years as the quarterly win-loss trends suggested that HCL wins are less thereby leading to reduction in overall win rate.

5. Increase website engagement in terms of avg. time spent and form submissions as the website analytics revealed that the average time spent is almost half as compared to that of HCL competition.

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PROGRAM EXECUTION

The marketing team in joint collaboration with sales team, identified key strategic accounts and defined a set of objectives to enable digital campaigns on channels which have a higher rate of conversion from the prospect. The second task was to understand the journey of the connected consumer who today are consuming more content across more devices than ever before in our history. At the same time, it was important to act on the explosion of data flowing through devices which could be overwhelming but also a tremendous opportunity to target and understand the impact of digital experiences.

By utilizing a more integrated and strategic approach ABM program was highly targeted and awareness and demand generation programs were executed for specific accounts. Tailored audience on LinkedIn was used to ensure targeted reach out to HCL prospects that are active on the LinkedIn channel. This new audience, captured via digital promotions was grouped in a new remarketing list & was retargeted with brand and business specific promotions for lead nurturing program. An Omni channel nurturing was also rolled out so that contacts could get a consistent set of messages across all channels that helped them in progressing through their path of buying. Retargeting also helped enable cross-selling of second business proposition to the same audience who were earlier exposed to the first proposition.

The switch to the multi-touch attribution model also helped in measuring impact of all activities and then acting upon those results. BUSINESS RESULTS

An ABM approach yielded great results for HCL Technologies. Some of the remarkable achievements: • In an analysis done on deals that utilized ABM marketing campaigns v/s the ones that didn’t utilize

one revealed that HCL’s win rate increases by 52% while using an ABM approach. • Increase in total pipeline after ABM program launched: 1.8X more pipeline than last 2 quarters. • Pipeline to spend ratio for ABM programs: 26X • Lift in opportunity creation rates when ABM display campaigns were added: 50-200% • Generated 7500+ insightful reports using various tools and platforms like Google Analytics and

Reporting Suite which gave sales insights of visitors from respective target accounts. • Generated $150 Mn from AIQ/BIQ reporting system • Generated 145% higher funnel through target accounts when compared to previous FY • The engagement rate on social platforms from target accounts rose by 68% • Marketing qualified leads from marketing campaigns almost doubled • Marketing qualified leads from Global G2000 increased by 200% & that from new accounts

increased by 214% • The deal value from marketing campaigns increased by 120%. • Increase in SQLs and the impact on TCV from target accounts by 443% and the probability of deal

wins improved by 56% and increase in marketing qualified leads from paid campaigns improved by 122%.

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Cognizant | Diamond Winner Driving Business with Thought Leadership

Cognizant Answers the Question...What To Do When Machines Do Everything? BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Prior to the publication of business guidebook What To Do When Machines Do Everything, an air of fear and pessimism was pervasive across industries and in the general media about robots and massive job loss. With the adoption of AI and digital technologies that were already changing the way we work and live, business leaders were skeptical about digital transformation and concerned about the challenges of impending disruption. No one was offering solutions, and no framework existed for navigating the unprecedented pace of change. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE

Through What To Do When Machines Do Everything With, Cognizant executives set out to offer pragmatic guidance and to change the narrative around digital transformation to one of hope. Coming from Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work and collaborating with marketing leaders across the company, this unique thought leadership and innovative promotion was an opportunity to help shape, define and make the IT Services market by:

• Owning the conversation around the Future of Work and becoming the go-to expert for the analyst and media communities

• Using a high-value asset for engaging clients at the most senior levels and inspiring client/prospect confidence in Cognizant as a source for becoming digital

• Engaging clients for near-term projects, consulting engagements & building a pipeline of work for 3-5 years as the digital industrial revolution unfolds

PROGRAM EXECUTION

The robust, 360° marketing plan for What To Do When Machines Do Everything leveraged related assets (book, video, blogs, interviews, webinar) and incorporated vehicles like dedicated advertising, author-driven social media, influencer marketing, in-store book placements and a heavy speaking tour to meet its goals.

• Amazon Campaign—reviewer & endorsement programs; 1st full-blown ad campaign for the Center for the Future of Work thought leadership; advertising drove to Amazon

• Sales Enablement—“Book-a-Meeting” program distributed 4.5K customized, specially-packaged books requesting engagement; Cognizant associate messaging webinars; new hire presentations

• Earned Speaking Engagements—invitations to over 75 events; from keynotes to panel discussions to book signings; from client expos and industry shows like ITSMA’s Marketing Vision

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and MONEY 20/20 to broad-reaching, high-profile conferences like the World Economic Forum and South by Southwest

• Traditional and Non-Traditional Adverting—print, digital & social media platforms; Bloomberg custom email campaign; top-tier media placement; premium book placement at Barnes & Noble, Hudson Booksellers

• PR—A full year+ of dedicated agency support produced steady, substantial coverage – 80+ solid hits including top-tier outlets such as Fortune & Financial Times; a strong influencer campaign got books into powerful hands

• Social Media—book campaign with employee amplification; calculated blend of organic and paid • Web—multiple online touchpoints: dedicated landing page on Cognizant.com, Center for the

Future of Work website; pages tout awards, media hits and endorsements, as well as supplemental content like videos and webinars; corporate homepage promo

BUSINESS RESULTS

A number of impressive metrics reveal the remarkable success of the What To Do When Machines Do Everything marketing campaign:

1. Driving business • Helped to build $730M of pipeline potential • Assisted in securing at least $90M of won revenue • Influenced 50+ new accounts

2. Increased brand awareness – from advertising, retailer programs and viral campaigns like these: • Author Twitter program garnered 216K+ impressions, 580 new followers & 534 retweets • Targeted Facebook campaign drove 2M+ impressions, 20K clicks to the Amazon page • Pega Future of Work Twitter Chat trended with 38M potential impressions & 1,136 tweets • 22K YouTube video views: book trailer, interviews with media & WEF, NASSCOM book launch

3. Media & influencer validation a) Coverage from more than 80 third party media outlets and book reviewers b) Half a dozen business book awards and accolades c) Social Media influencer campaign yielded 150 connections

4. Unprecedented book sales – Targeted ad campaigns led to an amazing 81% increase in Amazon sales Cognizant authors and the marketing machine behind them successfully managed to insert a sense of hope and guidance into a once bleak mindset about the new digital age, quite literally shifting the conversation. By all measures, the integrated marketing campaign around Machines has been and continues to be effective and impressive, paving the way for follow-up thought leadership initiatives (i.e. 21 Jobs of the Future, 21 More Jobs of the Future) to sustain momentum. This is truly a milestone for Cognizant in terms of branding and thought leadership publishing.

http://fortune.com/2017/01/19/data-sheet-davos-common-threads/

https://www.ft.com/content/f4251416-2a76-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c

http://www.cognizant.com/when-machines-do-everything

https://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/book/machines

https://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/book/machines

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ChatFOW&lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXEz_OocsNw&t=64s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4VhcsoVSl8&t=122s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Bxp2fQmpE&t=24s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-xuPNxcmNk&t=41s

https://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/whitepaper/21-jobs-of-the-future-a-guide-to-getting-and-staying-employed-over-the-next-10-years

https://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/whitepaper/21-jobs-of-the-future-a-guide-to-getting-and-staying-employed-over-the-next-10-years

https://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/whitepaper/21-more-jobs-of-the-future-a-guide-to-getting-and-staying-employed-through-2029

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Vodafone | Gold Winner Driving Business with Thought Leadership

“Gigabit Society” BUSINESS CHALLENGE Vodafone is helping businesses around the world with digital transformation—from managed mobility, fixed and converged networking, to cloud, security, and Internet of Things services. However, awareness of Vodafone’s capabilities remained low amongst business decision makers. Customers were fearful of change and overwhelmed by where and how to apply new technologies. Our challenge was to gain mindshare and build trusted advisor relationships across both IT and business decision makers. At the same time, we needed to transform and scale our engagement with customers globally. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Our objective was to build Vodafone’s reputation as a strategic business partner and a global, leading provider of end-to-end communications solutions for the digital world. We set out to share our unique vision and expertise in next-generation communications services, and to change the conversation with customers—from tariffs and costs to new business possibilities. PROGRAM EXECUTION We developed a global platform for connection and conversation built around our vision of a “Gigabit Society”. Vodafone leaders articulate how business and society will transform in the digital world, where

• Data and intelligence is available everywhere. • Machine intelligence augments human capability. • Data is protected and strong ethics govern corporate and technical policy • People come together for both business growth and social good.

The program encompasses (1) thought leadership, research, and article development (2) digital and in-person communications and Gigabit Society events with customers, influencers and futurologist, and (3) deep engagement and relationship building with customers. To build mindshare and shift perceptions, we researched and developed 6 new persona profiles outlining the needs, motivations, and channels of communication of business and technical decision makers. We invited customers, influencers and futurists to join the conversation with Vodafone and partner to build a better future together through sharing of best practices. We created a global community of leaders of transformation—helping their organisations to get ready for a Gigabit Society.

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The platform includes:

• Policy White Paper “Creating the Gigabit Society”, in collaboration with Arthur D. Little, offering guidance to government and industry leaders in Germany on industry evolution and scenarios with Gigabit infrastructures.

• Gigabit Thinking: We capture thought leadership topics from Vodafone business leaders, employees and other thought leaders in the community.

• Gigabit Society Page: Our web page to download whitepapers and access key topics. • Gigabit Society Series: A digital video series and social media program featuring Vodafone

leaders, futurists and customers. Our first video “Welcome to the Gigabit Society” shows a glimpse of the future where technology and 1Gbps network speeds enable amazing new scenarios for living and working.

• Gigabit Society Summits: We have run Gigabit Society Summits in UK, South Africa, Australia, New York, Singapore, Milan and Madrid attracting 100+ attendees each. Vodafone leaders and futurologists take customers on a journey of what the future holds.

• Customer Advisory Board: Exclusive events for customers providing a forum for intimate discussion and exchange of strategic challenges and opportunities. We share research on global trends and insights how technology and connectivity developments are impacting enterprise and creating opportunities in 3 areas: Connecting customers, Connecting business operations and assets, and Connecting employees.

• Gigabit Society Innovation Workshops: A series of half day workshops with business leadership teams to define their future in a Gigabit Society. We ran 106 Innovation Workshops with over 600 attendees over the last year. 55 customers targeted for the coming months.

BUSINESS RESULTS

Gigabit Society broke new ground. It became the first comprehensive program thought leadership platform adopted across functions. It was also the first global event program, the first digital platform for thought leadership, and the first global program for innovation workshops and a community volunteers. We are co-creating innovation on the front line with our customers and bringing these to life through deployed solutions.

As a result of the program, we have seen a transformation in our customer engagement as well as a strong impact on business results:

• +35% quarter-on-quarter click rate growth with solid momentum • 63,900 unique visitors to the Gigabit Society blog • 30k+ new contacts acquired • 1073 attendees of Gigabit Society events including 106 Innovation Workshops • €458M increase in pipeline, of which €165M from Innovation Workshops

Our platform is helping Vodafone to shift its position from pure network provider to thought leader and strategic partner for end-to-end, communications solutions that delivers powerful business outcomes.

http://vge-mktg.vodafone.com/GigabitSociety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m1mIhpcEbc

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Microsoft | Diamond Winner Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth

Enabling Sales with Account-Based Engagement BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Digital Transformation is a great opportunity for enterprises to change the way they are serving their customers, managing their operations, creating new products or services and empowering employees. Customers perceived Microsoft through a legacy lens of being a product centric company and were not looking at Microsoft as their partner for transformation. With Microsoft products moving to the cloud, implementations are easier, but adoption and consumption are becoming critical with subscription models. To become the trusted partner that will drive their program of change, Microsoft Services needed to change the way to engage with its customers and position a different value proposition that is based on business outcomes to be relevant to the business. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES

In order to become that trusted partner for Digital Transformation, Microsoft Services leveraged Account-Based Marketing and expanded the program to Account-Based Engagement and orchestrated their sales motion across marketing, sales, digital advisors and delivery to transform the customer experience as Digital Transformation all along the sales cycle.

Account-Based Engagement program main objectives were to:

• Help account teams engage decision makers with a differentiated approach. • Increase share of wallet by driving more impactful projects to the business and ultimately larger deals. • Position Microsoft as a key partner to transform the business. • Provide value to the customer with relevant business outcomes based on industry and horizontal solutions. • Personalize approach by aligning marketing and sales addressing customer pain points. • Ease discoverability of content by communicating recommendations of assets, collateral, and

resources. PROGRAM EXECUTION

The Microsoft Services Account-Based Engagement program has been designed to address its customer strategic priorities focusing on Digital Transformation initiatives. It integrates a consultative approach with marketing, sales and consulting activities to drive efficient, consistent BDM engagement. This Digital Transformation sales engagement model provides guidance in terms of execution, tools and assets available to our account teams to drive customer engagement. We scoped the Account-Based Engagement program by defining our clusters of customers by industry.

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We could then execute the Account-Based Engagement program by following these steps:

1. Planning Account-Based Engagement, we orchestrated account planning sessions to define customer priorities and a vision statement that are shared among the team. Our team provided customer specific information about company, market position, potential opportunities. Once priorities were identified through ideation, we helped identifying the right contacts leveraging LinkedIn Sales Navigator and defined the action plan.

2. Create Awareness, Build Perception and Win Mindshare in the market through Media and Press, by using thought leadership content and marketing assets to position Microsoft as a leader in Digital Transformation. We reached out to customers leveraging solutions such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, InMail, and Point Drive.

3. Acquire and engage BDMs and ITDMs, we helped account team reaching out to new contacts by creating a platform for social selling, so they could engage directly with BDMs and ITDMs with specific conversations aligned to their customer priorities. We trained account team in using social and the go-to-market.

4. Lead Customer Engagement, account team could now qualify leads by sharing and validating with the customer their vision for transformation partnership and the priorities identified during account planning. We provided a set of assets and conversations to be personalized to initiate the conversation with the customer. As a next logical step, we introduced an ideation workshop to further evaluate the opportunity and qualify the opportunity. We provide a visual record of the ideation session to the customer so they could foresee the potential outcomes. An important part of Digital Transformation is the journey and the projects that we helped the account team to document a “Book of Dream” that is listing the priorities, the potential projects, the benefits and potential outcomes that can be shared digitally with customers.

5. Lead Opportunity Optimization with consultative approach that is supported by digital tools to help account team in partnership with the customer to assess their current digital maturity vs. where their desired state. Together with the Book of Dream these are strong elements to drive business outcomes conversation that will help demonstrate value and importance of project. To accelerate sales motion, we have created an engine to reach out to our sellers and promote activities, content based on leads or opportunities they have in their pipeline.

BUSINESS RESULTS

The Account-Based Engagement program has been successful across all the objectives and helped our account teams to drive business outcome conversations. This program is impacting the perception of Microsoft as a credible partner for Digital Transformation. It helped increase our share of wallet by driving deals that are significantly larger and is now representing half of Microsoft Services revenue. Account-Based Engagement has demonstrated a higher win rate (30 points higher) and assets are now widely available to drive Digital Transformation in all accounts.

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Cisco | Gold Winner Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth

Cisco Launches Digital Seller of the Future Initiative to Retain Customers for Life BUSINESS CHALLENGE We are now living in the era of the completely connected customer – a time in which total digitization of our culture has taken hold. This is revolutionizing the way businesses need to engage with their customers, sell to them and above all, retain them. To transform for the rapid pace of digitization in the B2B technology market, in 2017 Cisco launched the Digital Seller initiative, a company-wide, global effort aimed at empowering Cisco’s virtual sellers to retain customers for life. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Cisco is focused on moving customers to choose its products, use them, love them and make Cisco their preferred and most trusted brand. With that in mind, this initiative is designed to empower Cisco virtual sellers to give customers what they want: less friction and digital frustration, more immediacy and personalization, fewer hassles and more options for self-help to take control of their own buying journey. To do that, Cisco built a strong technology foundation including a massive digital framework; new digital sales processes, tools and platforms; and groundbreaking analytics and data science to optimize the way sellers communicate with customers. Recognizing that people hold the ultimate power, the initiative was also fueled by a movement within Cisco to build the sales team of the digital future. PROGRAM EXECUTION Through this initiative, Cisco enabled its virtual sales teams to overcome the challenges and legacy practices of the traditional sales model, which required that sellers dedicate up to 70% of their time to non-sales tasks. It includes these three areas of focus:

1. Innovation: To give Cisco sellers more time to do what they do best—sell, Cisco used machine learning, predictive insights, prescriptive actions and data science models. It also developed and deployed a Data Science Recommendation Engine to empower Cisco sellers to predict the actions that customers should take next. This combination of technology represents a groundbreaking step forward in digital selling and allows Cisco sellers to anticipate customers’ needs, communicate

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with them in real time, optimize value delivery and nurture product and service adoption and consumption.

2. Sales-Specific Platforms and Tools: Next, Cisco set a course for identifying intelligent and easy-

to-use platforms, scaling customer and partner engagement practices, and implementing sales training and support. The goal was to create a sustainable infrastructure focused on streamlining and simplifying buyer and seller workflows through the introduction and adoption of state-of-the-art digital tools.

3. Transforming the Sales Culture: Recognizing that the human element is the most important

differentiator in the digital economy, Cisco established a Digital Advisory Board and Digital Selling Days events to transform its sales culture. With a mission to design the next generation of Cisco tools for sellers and by sellers, the Digital Advisory Board is made up of over 150 sales leaders representing 146 countries globally. These individuals commit to piloting, testing and providing feedback on new digital selling tools and data science models and meet regularly to define and drive the roadmap for future capabilities.

The Digital Selling Days events take place across all Cisco global regions and have reached thousands of sellers and customer success managers. The focus is expanding Cisco sales teams’ knowledge about the importance of digital sales transformation as well as the tools, platforms, techniques and data science models that will help them become the best digital B2B sales force in the world. One example of the success of these events was a 3000% increase in usage of digital selling tools.

BUSINESS RESULTS Cisco is setting the pace for change in today’s technology-driven culture by applying B2C selling motions to a B2B business at scale and doing so successfully. Blazing a trail for customer health and retention, Cisco built a customer-obsessed sales culture designed to outpace the demands of today’s increasingly digital society. In one year’s time it demonstrated agility at a level never seen before for a company its size. By positioning Cisco virtual sellers all around the globe to compete more effectively in the digital age, Cisco has been able to advance its mission to fuel higher levels of customer retention and, ultimately, to create customers for life.

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IBM | Gold Winner Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth

IBM Engage!

A digital collaboration platform that helps account teams build new, client-relevant opportunities and prepare for client engagement BUSINESS CHALLENGE IBM’s Global Markets Sales Enablement & Innovation team had a challenge: scale our ITSMA MEA-winning face-to-face (F2F) enablement methods to a broader audience in a cost-effective manner. Our F2F enablement methods continue to be highly impactful; however, they are resource intensive and constrained by location and time. Sales teams desired access to the most relevant content and the ability to collaborate on new client ideas on a regular and just-in-time basis, at speed and at scale. For example, beginning of each quarter, prior to a client meeting, or in response to market trends and strategic priorities. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE Create a digital AI-based platform to scale client-centric, business development enablement at significantly reduced cost. Provide the ability for account teams to mobilize quickly and more regularly regardless of being co-located or waiting for a F2F event. And, codify the work that sellers and sales teams already do to provide future insights and enhanced enablement. Imagine sales teams having the ability to collaborate, discover content that sparks new ideas, access subject matter experts (SMEs) and build the most compelling opportunities to engage client buyers—all in a digital environment. Imagine a digital tool having the power to continuously learn from what is input to provide sellers with more relevant content and enablement in the future. Imagine IBM Engage!, a digital collaboration platform that helps IBM’s sales teams build new, client-relevant opportunities and prepare for client engagement. PROGRAM EXECUTION Account teams are able to launch a digital workspace in IBM Engage! where all team members are served up multi-media content to quickly gain insights and spark new ideas for their specific client. Teammates are able to digitally collaborate in the location and time zone most convenient for them. They can share their ideas, build on each other’s ideas, then vote on and prioritize the most relevant and feasible ideas to address their client’s unique business challenges. They are pointed to the relevant IBM solutions and offerings to enable these ideas. The tool also guides the team to digitally build out their prioritized ideas

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with a compelling, client-relevant value proposition which can be downloaded in different formats and shared with client buyers; additionally opportunities can be launched directly to IBM’s CRM system. IBM Engage! is an easy to use tool that includes a dashboard and four key steps:

• Understand: Surfaces insights to determine a client's most pressing challenges and needs. • Ideate: Grounded in a shared understanding of the client goals and needs, team members explore

new ideas and possibilities that would be enabled by IBM’s strategic capabilities. • Prioritize: The team digitally collaborates to rank ideas by feasibility and importance to the client. • Build: The best ideas are built into Opportunity Briefs describing the new capabilities and benefits

of the idea for the client. BUSINESS RESULTS IBM Engage! inspires sellers to be client-centric while focusing on business development. It enables account teams to envision and build out new opportunities to address their client’s most pressing business challenges and align IBM solutions and offerings to help clients achieve their goals. The tool’s key differentiator is the ability for sales teams and SMEs to collaborate digitally at any time and location most convenient to them. Now, the work that account teams do can be codified; therefore, the more teams use Engage! the more valuable it becomes as IBM Watson is able to create insights and recommendations. IBM Engage! provides sellers and account teams the ability to:

• Turn insights into real opportunities • Consistently generate high quality, client-relevant opportunities to ensure an ongoing,

robust pipeline • Quickly mobilize around new initiatives or market trends • Increase productivity in envisioning, developing and managing new client opportunities

IBM Engage! provides a cost-efficient, scalable medium for account teams to brainstorm new ideas, all while capturing the thinking for later iteration and use. With a digital ideation platform now in place, the Sales Enablement & Innovation team has the flexibility to engage any number of account teams digitally to drive enablement around new IBM initiatives or when there are shifts in the market environment or business priorities. In addition, the Sales Enablement and Innovation team can leverage analytics from the IBM Engage! tool to learn where to focus enablement efforts. IBM Engage! is transforming sales enablement and the way IBM sellers and account teams develop new opportunities for deeper client engagement and to accelerate growth.

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SPR | Diamond Winner Measuring and Communicating Marketing Performance

The Art and Science of Building an Integrated, Influential, and Results-Driven Marketing Department at SPR BUSINESS CHALLENGE SPR, a digital technology consultancy, acquired and merged three organizations in 2015 to form its current company. The employee and customer experiences of the three companies were distinctly different, with no strategic marketing department supporting the merger. This created an opportunity for SPR to unfreeze old processes and change the internal perceptions of its marketing efforts, then share the goals and successes of that initiative across the company. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE SPR’s marketing department spent three years creating new best practices, unifying the company to speak with one voice, and strengthening the brand with a seamless employee and customer experience. To build its reputation as an innovative and client-focused technology consulting organization, SPR created internal confidence in the marketing department by scrutinizing the quality of its assets and services, pivoting the message to address a changing technology buyer, and reinforcing that message to the internal team. PROGRAM EXECUTION SPR built up its marketing department and began actively participating in interactions across the business, including those with clients, prospects and employees. Marketing efforts, once overlooked or performed ad hoc, became a formalized part of the sales and client engagement process. With sales, SPR marketers now spearhead proposal development, participate in sales calls, work with the sales team and technologists on marketing materials, and build on-message proposals that are tracked through a proposal analytics dashboard communicated to executives every month. With practice leadership, SPR marketers work alongside technologists to generate thought leadership content. Marketing helps write compelling case stories focused on business results rather than technology, and helps translate the newest technology offerings into clear business language. Marketing sends a weekly email of newly published SPR articles to executive leadership.

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For executive leadership, SPR marketers create an annual marketing plan that includes strategies, tactics and measures for success based on corporate objectives. Marketers also directly influence the development of SPR’s 5-year strategic plan by researching market trends and doing a competitive analysis, helping shape the future of the organization. SPR leadership formally reviews the plan twice a year (the marketing team reviews monthly) to validate or alter the direction based on results. With customers, marketers lead discussions during high-touch client events; develop customer presentations to communicate value of technology solutions; and showcase how many client deliverables are supported each month with senior leadership. For SPR employees, SPR marketers shape the onboarding process, educating new employees on topics like how to talk about the organization and how SPR lives its values. Marketing disseminates key messaging via the company intranet and prepares monthly communications packages that managers then share to their direct reports so information is effectively delivered from leadership to employers. Direct feedback is that managers are “relieved,” “excited,” and “thankful” for the consistent information to discuss with their teams. BUSINESS RESULTS SPR’s main barometer of success is Marketing Influence, instead of solely considering numbers such as tracking leads, website traffic, and email opens. This shift in focus aligns with the goal of influencing a greater part of the customer journey. The Marketing Influence metrics show how SPR’s marketing department is now a key collaborator and influencer across the entire process.

• In five months, SPR touched 325 people at 26 accounts. These interactions accounted for $8.64M in revenue of the total $25M (34.6%) revenue to date. Marketing has interacted with 50% of the active accounts at SPR, helping to make for a more consistent brand experience.

• Of trackable content, marketing influenced $1M in revenue, meaning the buyer of SPR services actively engaged with marketing efforts such as emails, events, website.

• Marketers directly worked on 50 customer proposals in that time period and won 14 so far, equating to $1.8M. There is an additional $2.41M in revenue in the pipeline for 20 proposals that still have open opportunities associated with them. These proposals are for complex projects (not staffing engagements), projects that historically SPR had a harder time winning.

• Marketing worked on 10 customer-facing deliverables alongside our technology consultants.

• Of those who attended customer loyalty dinners, 5 accounts have open opportunities equating to $1.4M in revenue.

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Tata Communications | Gold Winner Measuring and Communicating Marketing Performance

Single View of the Customer BUSINESS CHALLENGE Over the past few years, Tata Communications has been transforming rapidly because of the changing business environment. From a predominantly network services portfolio, we today serve Enterprises with a wider range of services around connectivity, cloud and collaboration along with some specific industry solutions like Media and Financial services. Due to this evolution, we needed to engage a wider set of buying centres within the customer organisations with a broad range of propositions. This demanded a change in the scale and sophistication of our marketing engagement. We needed to accurately track the customer journey across the lifecycle and identify our engagement gaps. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE Our clients and prospects live a connected, multichannel life with seamless transitions between digital and non-digital touchpoints. The same customer we met at an event could simultaneously be checking competitors’ websites for a better price or product feature. Besides, customers expect to have a constant brand experience across all channels and touchpoints. They also want to be recognised as unique and high priority—gaining from all the benefits that entails. At Tata Communications, our endeavour has been to create a consistent brand experience and engagement across online and offline channels. A key enabling factor to achieve this was a robust “Single view of the Customer”. PROGRAM EXECUTION The execution and implementation of the project (platform) was tied to the success of the use cases identified, integration of varied sources of engagement data and building a coherent interpretation for them and rigorous UAT conducted with a cross functional team of Sales, Marketing and other functional reps. SVC toolkit leveraged a custom built data model, definitions and rule set to create a unified, consistent view of customers and prospects by integrating customer and engagement data lying across multiple internal and external platforms.

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The integrated data is interpreted and visualised to measure engagement with individual customer contacts, organisations or a cluster and helps identify the opportunities in our customer journey. The visualisations also help us correlate customer success with engagement tactics giving a view on the programs and engagement models that help us generate positive business outcomes. A joint team of Marketing, Sales and IT stakeholders evaluated multiple third party platforms and decided on leveraging Microsoft BI for the “Single View of Customer” platform. BUSINESS RESULTS Marketing measurement, attribution and data driven decision making are key to a successful B2B marketing function. By building an integrated SVC toolkit as a home-grown platform, we could overcome technology, resource and skills challenges and still give a performance boost to our programs. The data and analytics powered approach has significantly enhanced our function’s contribution (150% YoY increase) and stakeholder trust.

• Enhanced marketing effectiveness—SVC allows us to measure and report correlation between sales success in accounts with marketing engagement and has helped broaden marketing outcomes from just pure acquired leads to customer influence and deal acceleration.

• More transparency and trust with stakeholders—SVC allows marketing to give every

stakeholder a customised and granular view of how marketing programs are impacting their business. The confidence on Marketing team’s focus on business outcomes and its ability to adopt a quantitative, data driven approach has built trust and respect.

• Better business—SVC also allows for better planning and customer experience management by

tracking the customer journey and identifying opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling.

• Compliance—SVC helps Tata Communications to be better equipped to respond to several international regulations governing customer data.

• Better customer satisfaction—SVC helps us engage meaningfully with our customers and

prospects with the right content, tactic and channel at the right stage in their journey with us. This helps create a more meaningful interaction and a better customer experience.

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IBM | Diamond Winner Strengthening Marketing’s Role in Customer Experience and Success

ExpertAdvice Program BUSINESS CHALLENGE Prior to the implementation of this program, clients and prospective clients had very few, if any, opportunities to speak with IBM subject matter experts. Prospective clients and most existing clients had to first go through several digital interactions with IBM, including sending emails and using live chat on webpages to speak to a generalist Digital Development Representative (DDR). These representatives were spread thin with their various inbound and outbound marketing responsibilities, and have general knowledge of IBM products and services rather than specialized subject matter expertise. DDRs primarily interacted with prospects through a live chat tool, which yielded a conversion rate to sales opportunity of only 8%. All in all, the legacy process required prospects to overcome many layers of obstacles before speaking with someone, typically a seller, who could address their needs. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES

The ExpertAdvice program was implemented to eliminate layers by providing a free service to prospects where they could directly be connected with an IBM expert to discuss their business problem and technology needs. The program aimed to:

• Provide value to the prospect, whether or not they pursue a sales opportunity with IBM

• Bring IBM expertise to the forefront of the digital experience

• Introduce a human element in digital interaction

• Generate new business pipeline

EXECUTION

Over the past year and a half, IBM marketing conceived, piloted, and scaled ExpertAdvice—a first of a kind program that enables clients and prospects that digitally interact with IBM web pages to participate in a free, 30 minute consultation with an IBM subject matter expert (SME) on the topic of their choice. The customer journey is straightforward; a prospect exploring the IBM website in search for answers to an issue, can schedule a consultation through an interface that allows them to directly schedule time on calendars of distinguished IBMers, and describe the business problem they wish to discuss.

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Behind this simple yet effective user experience is an elegantly designed support system, including:

• Tools integrated with IBM systems to provide a seamless user experience • A team of digital representatives that ensure the requests are valid and would benefit from the

consult • A cohort of IBM experts that agree to dedicate up to two hours of their time per week to speaking

with prospects • A marketing team dedicated to discovering new ways to interact in an agile manner, and driving

traffic to prompt engagement with the program The program started as a pilot in April 2017 in the Global Technology Services unit and was scaled across IBM through 2018. Optimization has included working with sales leadership to empower and enable the sales teams to address the new volume of white space leads, as well as integration to marketing automation systems to ensure nurturing and progression of opportunities.

BUSINESS RESULTS ExpertAdvice was generated first and foremost to improve the customer experience by shortening the lead time to access IBM expertise at a peer level, and in turn, to organically convert leads into opportunities. As such, the success of ExpertAdvice is assessed across three key metrics:

1. Customer Experience Engagement through the ExpertAdvice program generates a much higher percentage of high value interaction than other channels, with ~65% of inquiries progressing to consultations. Those that engage in the consultation have positive feedback, most of the surveys indicating clients had “Great” and “Exceptional” experiences, and that they were “Extremely likely” to recommend the program.

2. Pipeline Conversion

ExpertAdvice saw high conversion rates from consultation to opportunities in pipeline, with ~30-40% conversion rates, compared to other channels such as live chat that have 8% conversion. 40% of these opportunities came from white space clients, demonstrating the value of expertise for new IBM prospects, as noted by one of our experts: “This programme has been very well managed and has led to direct contact with 3 or 4 clients IBM would not have engaged with otherwise……” - Steven Dickens, zCloud Expert, GTS

3. Opportunity Generation

For Global Technology Services, the longest standing pilot, over $29 million in pipeline has been generated through the program. As the sales cycle on these opportunities progress through close partnership with sales and the program expands across geographies, revenue and profit will logically follow.

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NTT DATA | Gold Winner Strengthening Marketing’s Role in Customer Experience and Success

The Collaboration Center BUSINESS CHALLENGE After the acquisition of Dell Services, construction began on a new North America headquarters for NTT DATA Services. We had the exciting opportunity to transition the existing Dell Services Digital Experience Studio to our new location. While the initial goal was a simple lift and shift of existing equipment and processes, the team saw an opportunity to create a space for exploring digital possibilities, solving business problems and understanding technologies with our clients. To do this, we fully re-imagined what this new Collaboration Center could be. From construction to technology. From mission to methodology. From our content to our method of engagement. We started with a blank canvas—and very aggressive deadlines. We had a tight budget and a small team, but our biggest hurdle was time. From concept to reality, we had just nine months to develop the strategy, build out the space, select and install the technology, create interactive content, and learn how to use it all. The pressure was on. And, we had to get the right team in place to orchestrate the experience for our clients.

PROGRAM OBJECTIVE We established a mission for the Collaboration Center, which would serve as our true north. A place to understand the human experience while exploring and designing solutions that inspire. We set out to provide an immersive, interactive space to uncover new experiences and solve client challenges while effectively exploring their digital journey. Our guests leave with actionable plans to revolutionize their business. Visitors walk out of our Center believing that NTT DATA Services truly understands their business and can help them solve their challenges.

PROGRAM EXECUTION Sometimes, like diamonds, the most spectacular things are created under pressure. We consider our Collaboration Center to be the diamond in NTT DATA Services’ customer experience crown. We took a game-changing idea from concept to reality, all during major changes in our organization. Because of our short timeline and shifting landscape, we knew we needed to take a methodical yet agile approach to create the Center and rally the right people to make it happen.

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The Ideas Our first step was idea-seeking and brainstorming. To broaden our perspective and explore new possibilities, we invited various company groups that designed, sold and delivered different services and products than we did. We also sought out viewpoints from our clients, competitors and industry analysts to test our assumptions. All while investigating metrics and lessons learned from existing centers across both companies. Purpose Rather than building a space for demonstrations and presentations designed to strictly inform, we decided to move away from an “innovation museum” to a space that would help clients actively and collaboratively solve problems. Therefore, a lift-and-shift wasn’t the right solution; we completely re-imagined our plan and physical space. Environment No matter how innovative or insightful our design ideas, technologies can quickly become outdated. The space had to be flexible for easy transitions so we created what we call “Technology Stage Design.” Almost everything can be moved, reconfigured, and customized according to the needs of each client. The Team We assembled a new team, implemented new technologies, specialized IP and trained on new methodologies. From new creative and bold concepts, from content to construction and constant enhancements, the Center requires a village of enthusiastic team members that span our global organization and ecosystem of partners. The Collaboration Center launched on November 15, 2017 and since then our reward has been the many “aha” moments our clients and prospects experience.

BUSINESS RESULTS Since opening, the Center has hosted over 150 engagements. About half of the visits have been with current or prospective clients, and half with internal teams, partners and analysts. We’ve also hosted large events focused on networking and knowledge-sharing. The results show that we are improving engagement with millions in new revenue and POC opportunities that were previously not represented in the company pipeline. And this is just the beginning. The build out of the Collaboration Center has been a highlight of our careers. And, the best part of it all? We have the honor and pleasure of putting it to work every day, helping our clients solve their toughest business challenges.

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SAP | Gold Winner Strengthening Marketing’s Role in Customer Experience and Success

Moments That Matter Initiative

Driving a Harmonized Post Purchase Journey Across Teams, Lobs and Global Regions BUSINESS CHALLENGE Over the past 45 years, SAP has been on a journey with customers to help them create value for their organizations by applying technology to solve some of their most complex challenges. As SAP continues to derive more of its revenue from its cloud solutions, it needed to develop a greater customer centric marketing approach for the post purchase (pre-renewal) journey. This E2E customer lifecycle journey approach needed to also align with the sales, operations, and services areas. This required a cultural shift to not only focus on the entire journey, but also to drive collaboration across the organization and provide resources necessary to effect such a change. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE The Customer Marketing Loyalty & Advocacy team developed the initiative called Moments That Matter. The goal was to harmonize the post purchase journey across the various business units and solutions so that all customers would receive a consistent, and foundational, level of content to enable their success. The initiative, based on industry best practices and the best practices of SAP’s cloud business units, identified seven key moments in the post purchase journey that would enable the customers’ success with their acquired solution and build a solid relationship with our company. By engaging and supporting customers throughout these moments to drive their usage, adoption, and success, SAP would achieve its business objective of customer loyalty, goodwill, renewals and expanded revenue. PROGRAM EXECUTION The Customer Marketing Loyalty and Advocacy team drove the initiative, working closely with the Cloud Customer Operations team as the company embraced this post-purchase customer experience approach. Significant cross organization collaboration, albeit somewhat novel, not only with the Cloud Operations team, but also across the regions and the many LOBS and their Customer Success Teams, enabled a comprehensive customer centric program to be developed. This collaboration required new methodologies not just for the marketing efforts, but also for operating processes and technology efforts. The company’s global footprint and vast portfolio of business solutions, especially from many acquired companies, increased the complexity of pulling this together. The Customer Marketing Loyalty & Advocacy team

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spearheaded this innovation, bringing about a business change that creates a better customer engagement model and success for our customers. The Moments That Matter initiative, harmonized across all SAP cloud solutions with a templated approach, ensures that a consistent experience and a foundational level of information is provided to all customers, independent of their size, segment or solution. Starting when the contract is signed with the Welcome Program, it continues with 54 touchpoints through customer journey aligned to the seven programs within the initiative. The other six programs are Go Live, Show Value, Emergencies, Anniversaries, Renewal, and Advocacy. Additionally important to the post-purchase journey, was creating an always-on communications approach to ensure continued engagement between the Moments. This four-pillar, always-on strategy consists of 1) regular cadence of communications—newsletters, 2) virtual connections—webinars and hosted communities, 3) live connections—global, regional and local events, 4) innovation and inspiration—customer storytelling. BUSINESS RESULTS The Moments that Matter initiative has

• Established a formal, harmonized program of solution specific touchpoints providing customers with a consistent experience across our varied solutions and regions.

• Provided customers with the relevant guidance and information they need, when they need it, to get started and move through their journey successfully.

• Generated on average 30+% open rates. • Resulted in content usage that aligned to our objectives and confirms the customers’ need for

assistance at these critical stages (i.e. top content in Welcome: “Getting Started”, “Planning Your Journey” & “Tips for Project Success”).

• Increased post purchase participation within the LOB and solutions teams with the templated approach.

We will continue to evolve post purchase efforts for enhanced customer success, illustrating to our customers SAP is running together with them on their journey. The initiative’s success supports SAP’s goal to be the number one cloud company in the world and to help our customers, and the world, run better.

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Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) | Diamond Winner Transforming Marketing: Talent, Organization, and Culture

No Marketer Left Behind BUSINESS CHALLENGE In the year 2015, Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI), a leading global technology consulting and digital solutions company embarked on an ambitious strategic transformation journey across four pillars—Sales, Delivery, People and Marketing. At that time, the brand identity needed to be modernized and the leverage of marketing technologies had to be improved significantly. The marketing team needed to reduce its dependence on limited channels, expand its global presence, induct new agency partners and improve its perception as just a support function. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE This massive transformation meant the marketing team had to undergo an urgent and exhaustive overhaul. Three concrete focus areas were identified:

a) Brand—Improve brand awareness to reduce friction to sales b) Demand—Feed the pipeline with high-quality leads c) Armed—Enable sales to win more

PROGRAM EXECUTION To achieve these goals, a comprehensive ‘30-60-90 days’ plan with a weekly review, and a 1-2-3 years strategy with quarterly review was chalked out. Key elements of this multi-faceted marketing transformation include:

• Unveiling the new brand identity: The brand LTI was unveiled in May 2017 and helped LTI differentiate in a very crowded marketplace—as an expert that understands digital and physical convergence.

• Hyper-personalization: The team moved fast from a generalized approach to hyper-personalization—based on an exhaustive study of customers to identify key personas and a befitting style for outreach.

• Innovation: The business results were amplified with unique approaches, like o Focus on MarTech stack to enrich audience interactions o Social media presence: The company expanded its presence on social media with targeted,

thought-leadership based interventions.

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o Customer visit experience: marketing team helped reposition the company by crafting unique experiences during customer and prospect visits, showcasing focus on innovation and customer satisfaction.

• ‘Solve’ centered campaigns: Based on the company’s motto of ‘Let’s Solve’, creative demand generation campaigns were conceptualized to enable the sales team to improve win rates. LTI marketing team also launched a learning initiative on its social platforms with rewards and recognitions for high-performers.

• Mosaic Experience Center: To showcase convergence of physical and digital world, the marketing team designed an impressive Executive Briefing Centre called Mosaic Experience Centre at the headquarter in Mumbai. It helps customers and prospects with rapid prototypes and understanding the impact of technologies before making a commitment.

• Thought Leadership: LTI also initiated a dedicated and continuous thought leadership and content marketing program where blogs are published at regular intervals and now serve as an important source of nurturing leads.

BUSINESS RESULTS LTI marketing team has undergone a holistic transformation with stellar results. Starting with a refreshing brand refresh, the team embarked on a martech-led transformation that is helping differentiate the company. Current team members are trained on ABM skills, while new skills are also being inducted in the team. The team’s presence has expanded across USA, UK, Nordic, France, Canada and India. Today, LTI is one of the fastest growing IT companies in the industry. The company has consistently grown during last nine quarters and digital revenue now contributes 37% of the business. Website traffic has quadrupled, social media feeds have become more engaging, and an impactful influencer relations program has improved the company’s awareness and perception. LTI marketing team has followed an impact-marketing approach to generate high-quality demand and reducing friction to sales. Subjective approach of marketing has given way to more objective and measurable activities. Elaborate spreadsheets have given way to visual dashboards. Marketing has become an important partner to the sales team and is viewed as a critical function across the company.

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Hexaware | Gold Winner Transforming Marketing: Talent, Organization, and Culture

Cost Center to Revenue Generation: Unifying the Marketing Function for Success BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Successful marketing enables an organization to create a great brand, communicate the right message to the right audience at the right time, build strong relationships, maintain its reputation, and gain the competitive advantage. To become successful though, marketing efforts need to be conducted in an integrated fashion. Marketing silos have great potential of damaging an organization. Nearly 65% of marketers admit that silos obfuscate the campaigns they're working on. There was a larger need to showcase Hexaware’s strengths and transformation capabilities to customers, prospects, and influencers and help them navigate their digital journey. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

Hexaware wanted to reposition itself in the market, while also addressing a more fundamental concern—breaking the silos! We realized the power of teams working together, seamlessly and in harmony. Our aim was to create a unified vision by synchronizing the messaging across channels and amplifying the potential of man and machine. We initiated a unique integrated marketing program—AMPLIFY, to fuel the marketing lead generation engine, through automation, digitization, and monetized prospecting. PROGRAM EXECUTION

Considering the unification of departments as the stepping stone to such broader organizational transformation, we integrated the marketing function. We synchronized the messaging across channels, thereby augmenting the overall potential of our efforts. We began to consolidate and unify various units of our marketing departments, bringing them all under one thought leader.

We focused on three major aspects:

Creating New Marketing Functions: We transformed from an outsourced model to in-house execution, with minimal support from external partners. We invested in creating high performing functional teams and Centres of Excellence (CoEs), to support the broader marketing objective. As a result, we created new teams in Marketing, namely Design CoE, Content CoE, Marketing Initiatives, Marketing Operations, Marketing Analysis, and Digital. We also realigned the Inside Sales team. These transformations coupled with the best practices drove major efficiency and effectiveness in the performance of the entire unit.

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Rolling Out New Initiatives and Invested in New Age Tools:

• Rebranded ourselves with a promise to advance into a digital age and position as a pioneer • Created state-of-the-art Customer Experience Zone to position ourselves as a transparent service

provider and reflect Care and Customer Centricity • Revamped our website with customer-centric content that could reach users at different stages in

their buyer journey • Invested in automation tools to save on time, improve efficiency and ROI, and provide seamless

experience to our customers • Acquired insight-driven data based on which we could segment our visitors and further fine tune

our website to map the buyer journey • Implemented mobility solutions to connect with employees, customers/ prospects in real time • Invested in tools to engage with customers through personalized messages across touch points • Incorporated appropriate call to actions to increase conversions • Invested in scaling and incentivizing inside sales teams • Focused at lead nurturing programs like webinars, webcasts, and whitepapers etc. • Created thought leadership content to assist and support our intended audience to become more

successful in their venture • Invested in content syndication efforts to generate more traffic, improve SEO rankings, and

increase brand awareness • Invested in training and development programs

Created a Culture of Unification: We imbibed a culture of unification in the department by focusing on the team, structure, accountability and constant learning. BUSINESS RESULTS

With our efforts towards unification of marketing, we could ensure that all our engines are firing at the same time to maximize potential. Given below are some of our achievements:

• We gained the tag of ‘the fastest growing service provider’ along with many awards and accolades from companies like HfS Research, Everest Group, Forrester Research, Whitelane Research, ISG, and contests such as Asia Outsourcing Congress, that stand testament to our remarkable growth story.

• AMPLIFY program led to an improvement in marketing ROI. Traffic and engagement considerably increased through the website and social media pages.

• We could map our customers’ journeys as a result of this transformation in marketing. • Our analysts orchestrated a comprehensive outreach effort that helped us establish and maintain

successful relationships with industry analysts. Over the next years, we will continue to transform marketing by adopting out-of-the-box ideas and implementing newer technologies consistently to achieve and maintain our leadership position.

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InfinityQS | Diamond Winner Small and Medium Businesses—Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth

Educating and Qualifying Leads Online to Streamline Sales and Drive Revenue BUSINESS CHALLENGE

InfinityQS is headquartered near Washington, D.C., with offices in Seattle, London, and Beijing. Founded in 1989, it services more than 2,500 of the world’s leading manufacturers, including Boston Scientific, Graham Packaging, and Medtronic.

While InfinityQS experienced its second-highest year-over-year growth in 2017, a majority of the deals were single-site deployments at the plant-level. More profitable corporate deals made up a minority of its sales.

This created an opportunity for InfinityQS to better target corporate buyers that would deploy its solutions across tens or hundreds of factories, with the potential to inspire years of exponential growth. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE

By 2020, according to both Gartner and Forrester, 80% of the buying process is expected to occur without any human-to-human interaction. To address this growing trend, InfinityQS’ marketing, sales, and product management teams streamlined the buyer’s journey with a multi-pronged strategy to get in front of prospects early during their initial research.

This approach is intended to educate and qualify leads online earlier in the buying process, so the sales team can concentrate on selling and closing deals. PROGRAM EXECUTION

InfinityQS employed modern marketing strategies, data analysis, and ongoing research and testing to create highly customized and targeted campaigns for each of its personas.

These communications carefully guide prospects through a buyer’s journey that delivers the right information to the right people. Starting with high-level overviews of benefits, the journey drills down to a product tour that breaks down features and functionality through videos and whitepapers.

Fine-tuned inbound marketing campaigns; PPC and SEO tactics; nurturing campaigns; an added layer of Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing (BANT) qualification for marketing qualified leads (MQLs); and enhanced sales support and chat options resulted in better quality leads for the sales team.

This emphasis on qualifying leads means the company can easily scale the process to accommodate an increased volume in the top of the funnel and maintain a high level of quality leads.

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To address a 12- to 18-month sales cycle and plan for aggressive five-year sales goals, the marketing team engaged more traditional outbound tactics (email marketing, trade media advertising, LinkedIn ads and InMail campaigns, etc.) to reach prospects that weren’t in the buyer journey yet, filling a larger pipeline that stretches out three-to-five years.

Further, InfinityQS created a quarterly newsletter and a Tips & Tricks webinar to educate customers on its product offerings, engage them for add-on sales conversations, and build better relationships.

Once leads are handed over to the sales team, marketing continues to help streamline the sale using tools and materials with the right, research-backed messaging. Many of the top-of-the-funnel content pieces are also re-used in the sales funnel as a “reason” to re-engage with prospects.

For the sales department, sales enablement is focused on culture, accountability, and consistency. By building a tenured sales team that is accountable for every lead (if it’s not in the CRM, it doesn’t exist) and supported with ongoing coaching and open communication, the director can ensure that everyone is on pace to exceed their goals.

Together, the sales, marketing, and product management teams have accelerated the sales cycle, leading to faster growth and higher revenue. BUSINESS RESULTS

InfinityQS took risks in 2017 that paid off—the highest annual software sales in InfinityQS’ nearly 30-year history with the best first quarter to date (+26.5% year-over-year) and best third quarter ever (+23.3% year-over-year).

In the first half of 2018, software sales trended 20% higher than the previous year and were 83% up over 2016. Several Fortune 1000 manufacturers adopted the company’s quality intelligence solution for enterprise-wide deployments.

Marketing continues to drive impressive top- and middle-of-the-funnel results: • Website: Total visits +125%, new users +144%, page views +69% • Social media traffic: +184% • SEO Metrics: 3,386 keywords rank in Google’s top 100 (+251%), 137 keywords rank in the top 3

(+234%) • Conversions: Mobile conversions up 34%; cost of paid conversions down 56%.

With optimized educational campaigns and nurturing programs, InfinityQS delivers more, better-qualified leads to the sales team, with 50% of sales qualified leads moving into the negotiating phase. Astoundingly, 75% of those are won. The team entered 2018 with its largest sales pipeline ever—a 22% year-over-year increase from 2017—and closed the single largest deal ever.

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Perficient Digital (formerly Stone Temple) | Gold Winner Small and Medium Businesses—Driving Business with Thought Leadership

Stone Temple Builds Top Agency Reputation with Original, Data-Driven Research Studies BUSINESS CHALLENGE The primary challenge in marketing a digital marketing agency is differentiating your agency from the competition in a highly competitive space. How do you stand out, attract attention, and build your reputation when all agencies make the same claims? How do you obtain clients and grow with no outbound sales force? PROGRAM OBJECTIVE We believed regularly publishing helpful, expert-level content on our site, in industry publications, and through conference presentations, was the best way to achieve that goal. The further challenge, however, was what kind of content would best achieve the above goals? Surveying our competition, we could see that publishing content was not in itself that unusual for marketing agencies. We decided that publishing original, groundbreaking data-driven research studies was the way to rise above the pack. PROGRAM EXECUTION Our studies are managed by our marketing department, and our CEO is the head coordinator of the entire process. He actively drives the final analysis on all studies. The marketing department meets with the CEO at least weekly to review ideas for new studies, report on progress of in-process studies, plan next steps, and coordinate efforts across departments. Because of our CEO’s background and experience in advanced data analysis, he oversees all our studies and is their head analyst and author. One member of the marketing team handles project management for the studies, while others assist with execution (in some cases), publishing, and promotion. Over the past year, another member of the marketing team directly managed specific aspects of data acquisition and pre-analysis.

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The CEO and marketing department also coordinate the recruitment, training, and management of other company assets, including our development and tools staff as well as our in-house designer. BUSINESS RESULTS Our first and most important success metric is the large number of our clients who have told us how our studies either first made them aware of us or helped impress them with our knowledge and expertise, or both. As an example of this, major brand new clients we closed during 2017 and early 2018 include: Comcast, Arrow Electronics, SeaWorld, Amazon, JC Penney, and many others. We also measure our success by the number of citations and articles our studies have generated in major industry and technology publications, as well as mentions by online influencers and major conference speakers. Our studies have been cited in over 800 articles in numerous major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Inc.com, The Next Web, ReCode, Techcrunch, The Verge, Huffington Post, AdWeek, CNN, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and many more. A third success metric is traffic to our site driven by these studies, since such traffic creates many other opportunities to market to these visitors. By far our studies are the most significant traffic-drawing asset on our site, accounting for six out of our top ten content pages by landing page sessions over the past year. Since most of the online publication articles mentioned above contain links to our studies, they have contributed significantly to the organic search traffic growth of our site. The influx of links to our first viral study alone, back in 2014, caused our search traffic to jump by 300% in a matter of days. As a result, we now dominate the top of Google results for a number of terms important to our business and related to some of our top studies. For example, as of this submission we are #1 for “mobile vs desktop” and “digital personal assistants.” We have also won a number of industry awards, including SEO Agency of the Year (US Search Awards), and both Search Personality of the Year (US Search Awards) and Search Marketer of the Year (Search Engine Land Awards) by our CEO, Eric Enge, based in part on the industry reputation built by our studies. But our most important success metric is the growth of our business, from approximately 30 employees before we started doing regular studies to nearly 70 at present, and revenue growth in the same period from $3M to a projected $10 million this year. Because our growth is only achieved via reputation, and a large part of our reputation comes from our studies, we have no doubts about their value to our business. This success was a critical factor in our friendly acquisition by Perficient Digital in July 2018.

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Snowflake | Gold Winner Small and Medium Businesses—Deepening Engagement with Account-Based Marketing

ABM Delivers 300% Growth Fueling Global Expansion and Category Disruption INITIATIVE SUMMARY Snowflake Computing transitioned their marketing efforts to deliver a comprehensive ABM program. In just 15 months, they were able to deliver upwards of 300% growth and build a global business. Snowflake’s program success is based on their thorough approach to providing account intelligence, aligning with sales, and operationalizing ABM tactics to deliver turnkey 1:1 personalization. SITUATION OVERVIEW Snowflake is the only data warehouse built entirely for the cloud with a mission to safely and efficiently store, transform, and analyze business data so anyone can easily and quickly gain data-driven insight from one location. Snowflake had an aggressive goal to triple revenue, but only had 25 sales people. Sales leadership decided to move to an account-based model in which both sales and marketing had to shift their organization, structure, and processes away from a “spray and pray” demand gen strategy. UNDERSTANDING OF CUSTOMER/MARKET NEED Snowflake recognized that there is a large, total addressable market in data warehousing, but that it required a customer mindset shift from using legacy on premise deployments to a more modern data infrastructure. More evangelism and customer wins were viewed to be critical in driving that shift.

Marketing defined the ideal customer profile with several factors defining an ideal target account, including: company was currently using a legacy data warehouse solution; company had a defined initiative or strategy to move operations to the cloud; and company had already deployed cloud-based business intelligence solutions from companies such as Tableau or Lookr.

These criteria provided a clear indicator of the account being ready to adopt cloud-based technologies, and they acknowledged the ecosystem of cloud-based data solutions. Cloud-based BI had already gained market traction, but these providers knew their customer experience would be enhanced by partnering with Snowflake to target high potential, “win- win” accounts. INNOVATION The most immediate impacts were a change in how the go-to-market team operated and an increasing sophistication in delivering ABM insight and guidance. Market development reps were limited to only 100 accounts each and aligned with 3-4 sales directors so no more than 400 accounts were targeted. Comp plans changed entirely and marketing processes for account intelligence and alignment were also refined.

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EXECUTION The marketing organization shifted from broad-based, demand generation to a hybrid approach integrating ABM as a core part of their marketing strategy and operations. Easy-to-Access Account Intelligence Account intelligence was used to define a consistent set of parameters to help evaluate each account, which included: Fit, Intent, Relationships, Engagement aka “FIRE.” Delivering this information to sales in a digestible, easy-to-access format was critical in getting sales leadership and operations on the same page to ensure buy-in on the selected target accounts and help with territory planning and resource allocations. An account intelligence snapshot was built in an open source format so anybody in the company could access an overview of each account, which helped build goodwill across marketing and sales as they migrated to account-based selling.

Delivering ABM at Scale Developing and operationalizing account intelligence was just the first part of the initiative. The second part was building the foundation to deliver customized programs at scale. Snowflake began by curating all the content and tagging it properly by use case, industry, and persona. A disciplined and consistent approach to content management was another core part of the program’s success. Uberflip was used to curate and tailor the content so it could be aligned to specific accounts. To help drive engagement, Snowflake uses a variety of tactics, customized for the account, including display advertising, email CTA marketing, sponsored content and direct mail.

High Touch = High Impact In order to maximize ABM impact, sales worked closely with marketing to tailor messages account by account. Although each rep was assigned 100 accounts, the team used their account intelligence to elevate the top 10 accounts for highly customized 1:1 programs. This focus was critical to ensure efforts were properly prioritized and the top ten are reviewed on a quarterly basis. Each ABM marketing manager supports 30 sales people. Their scope of responsibility covers 3,000 accounts with each rep’s top 10 accounts (or 300 in total) receiving 1:1 marketing. The remaining companies on the account list also benefit from ABM, but 1: few programs are used to drive engagement. By operationalizing account intelligence and content, everything is well packaged to turn it quickly. Marketing is considered a core part of the revenue team and they collaborate with sales to deliver these programs. A key sign of their success is the ongoing request for more capacity to deliver 1:1 programs. BUSINESS RESULTS In the 15 months since launching their ABM program, Snowflake has achieved over 300% growth and added 4x the number of salespeople to their organization, enabling the company to raise $500 million to fund additional growth and globalization

ABM targeted accounts are demonstrating more than 15 engaged people across the account. The team has also put together proactive “sales plays” to cover various account scenarios including the “Data Warehouse Modernization” program designed to shift companies from legacy to cloud-based infrastructure. With all these enhancements to the ABM program, Snowflake is building account intelligence and accelerating new opportunities faster and easier.

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