Mark Martynus

Managing Director - Internal IT, Accenture

Supernova Award Category: 

Future of Work - Employee Experience

The Organization: 

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, offering a broad range of business services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology, and operations. The company partners with three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500. Accenture has expertise across more than 40 industries and all business functions. With 482,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives.

The Problem: 

The ability to efficiently and effectively manage sales is crucial in supporting Accenture’s growth aspirations. To do this, sales teams need technology that not only supports their processes but also gathers meaningful insights they can action. Accenture’s sales application, Salesforce (internally called “Manage mySales”), is leveraged by 34K active/global users where 12K opportunities are created per month and where 375K contacts are managed. Sales analytics were hard to access and were provided in a “reactive” manner via offline/manual reports from a number of disconnected and inconsistent sources. Data extracts were pulled manually and used for interpretation and aggregation. Accenture was looking for a way to enable intelligence and analytics in the sales application to provide powerful, predictive insights to leaders, sales teams, and sales support.

The Solution: 

During phase 1 of Accenture’s journey to enable insights with intelligence and analytics, and upgrade the platform to use predictive analytics, Accenture implemented Core Analytics directly on the sales opportunity form. This brought metrics together to answer a business question (ie, analyze volume of wins by using supporting measures to assess the strength of growth, sold margin, and Win Rate). Phase 2 was focused on insights and diagnostics to identify root causes and evaluate performance against peers. Phase 3 focused on predictive analytics, which includes building algorithms to predict business outcomes and return results to the users at the point of need. For example, a machine learning model was created called Win Probability Predictor (WPP) that was embedded on the opportunity form to score and predict the probability of winning sales opportunities. WPP indicates areas of strengths and weaknesses in the deal and supports teams to make smart qualification decisions.

The Results: 

Accenture’s Manage mySales solution using Salesforce capabilities has digitally enabled the entire sales process and supports the company’s business growth. Hosted in the cloud, the solution can be accessed and data logged by client teams anywhere, anytime, on mobile devices. After setting up the initial platform (deployed globally over 5 months, across all Accenture geographies), the company implemented Einstein Analytics and Einstein Discovery to enable predictive analytics powered by artificial intelligence. This resulted in increased sales effectiveness, improved Win Rate and business development ROI, and increased sales plan achievement and account health prediction. Accenture can continue to evolve assets including utilizing predicative analytics to answer more questions, return insights, and evolve capabilities. The solution helped reduce manual efforts of Sales Support and reduce reliance on traditional “reporting.”

Metrics: 

Today, at any one time, approximately 45,000 sales opportunities are in the Manage mySales system. Every opportunity companywide is scored by the Win Probability Predictor. The model accurately predicts the score of opportunities with 97 percent accuracy—in less than three seconds.

The Technology: 

Salesforce “classic” platform was implemented in 2015 as the single, digital platform for sales enablement and account and opportunity management. The Salesforce Lightning platform was implemented in November 2017 as a new user interface to improve usability and enable process excellence with intelligence and analytics. Accenture implemented Einstein Analytics, which allows Accenture to use predictive analytics powered by artificial intelligence.

Disruptive Factor: 

This was a multi-phase approach to rapidly enable sales insights with intelligence and analytics as well as upgrade the platform. Accenture is one of first global enterprises of its scale to be fully on Lightning to use predictive analytics. Predictive analytics are driving value to leadership, sales teams, and sales support, particularly by embedding predictive insights on the opportunity form at the point of need. The solution integrates data from other organizations at Accenture into the sales application to provide even more insights.

Shining Moment: 

Today, at any one time, approximately 45,000 sales opportunities are in the Manage mySales CRM system, and every sales opportunity companywide is now scored by the Win Probability Predictor. The model accurately predicts the ability to win an opportunity with 97 percent accuracy—in less than three seconds. We continue to train this AI model on more than 120,000 sales opportunities a year with high speed and accuracy so that sales teams benefit from its best practices.

About Your Organization

Accenture is a global professional services company, providing services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network—helping clients improve performance and create value for stakeholders.