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Colin Day
Vice President - Global Demand Centre & Marketing CTO, FIS
Supernova Award Category:
Digital Marketing Transformation and Sales Effectiveness
The Company:
FIS™ is the world's largest global provider dedicated to financial technology solutions. FIS empowers the financial world with software, services, consulting and outsourcing solutions focused on retail and institutional banking, payments, asset and wealth management, risk and compliance, trade enablement, transaction processing and record-keeping. FIS’ more than 55,000 worldwide employees are passionate about moving our clients’ business forward.
Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS serves more than 20,000 clients in over 130 countries, and our technology powers billions of transactions annually that move over $9 trillion around the globe. FIS is a Fortune 500 company and is a member of Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.
The Problem:
This problem statement relates to the marketing function within a company formerly known as SunGard. I say formerly, as SunGard was acquired by FIS, one of the world’s largest FinTech Company’s in December 2015. Looking back at that former SunGard business, the business had grown through acquisition. Since the company’s inception in the mid 1980’s we had been involved in over 150 acquisitions and most had been left to run independently, or as managed entrepreneurship. The business had many best in breed products, in fact over 200, that sat alone in silos. All of this resulted in a go-to-market approach that was highly fragmented, left to the individual businesses to define. Frequently, multiple sales reps pursued the same clients. The company had thousands of consultants engaged in professional services work, yet its main selling focus was licensed software. From a marketing perspective we were heavily centred around events, spending in excess of 30% of the overall marketing budget on these tactics alone. Back in 2012 we started to move from a holding company to an operating company, we needed to maximize our channels, sell the broadest set of solutions possible, and go to market in a coordinated manner. We needed to build a sustainable growth engine.
These same problems existed in the wider FIS post its acquisition of SunGard, building a sustainable growth engine and going to market in a coordinated manner.
The Solution:
We went through was a marketing transformation, we had to shift the whole organization to a new way of thinking and that all takes time. This wasn’t a simple project. It wasn’t something that could have been executed overnight. Today our Solution Marketers take the lead in the planning process and bring together sales and product to ensure alignment and interlock around go-to-market activities.
Marketing operations and the campaign framework became the glue, the technology through Marketo became the enabler. As we think more about time and the structure of the campaign framework, sometime less is more. We went from 60 standalone loosely defined campaigns in 2014 to 19 targeted campaigns built upon the SiriusDecisions Campaign framework in 2015 and further refined this number down to 8 vertical based campaigns in 2016.
The Results:
After comparing our budget to industry benchmarks, we saw that we were above the in certain areas; most notably events for branding; and well below in other areas. The budget realignment saw us shift to invest more in digital, content and sales enablement. We implemented 1 common campaign framework based upon the SiriusDecision concept and deployed it via our sales and marketing automation platforms, Microsoft Dynamics and Marketo. In 2016 the team took over 200K inquiries converted them into 9,889 marketing qualified leads and sourced 2,276 opportunities that our sellers were able to win. Leads handed to sales by marketing had an average closure rate of 30+% verses an industry static of 10%. This was thanks to the lead scoring models deployed in Marketo. We reduced our focus on events from 800 in 2014, to 400 in 2015 and down to 60 in 2016. We moved from spending 31% of our marketing budget on events in 2014 to under 18% in 2016. The program dollars that we freed up allowed us to move to a digital first strategy supported by our content strategy. The 30% and 6% numbers are the benchmark contribution numbers provided by SiriusDecisions. The real results should be based on how we compared to these. 2016 saw us grow our contributions and bet industry benchmarks for the 2nd straight year. Marketing sourced contribution to pipeline was at 37.11% across the year, around $2.8bn and 16% contribution to closed won, around $480.11m
Metrics:
We went from 60 standalone loosely defined campaigns in 2014 to 19 targeted campaigns built upon the SiriusDecisions Campaign framework in 2015 and further refined this number down to 8 vertical based campaigns in 2016. Our role as marketers at FIS is all about increasing shareholder value and for that
The 30% and 6% numbers that we measure ourselves against are the benchmark contribution numbers provided by SiriusDecisions. So the real proof of what we have achieved can only really be based on where we are to those numbers. In 2015, we were a little off on our contribution of marketing sourced leads to sales pipeline, given that we achieved 28% against the benchmark of 30% and our contribution of marketing sourced leads that ultimately turned into closed won business was more than double the benchmark at 13%. In 2016 we grow these contributions even further and bet industry benchmarks for the second year straight. Marketing sourced contribution to sales pipeline was at 37.11% across the year or around $2.8bn and 16% contribution to closed won so around $480.11m. Not possible without the Marketo partnership.
The Technology:
Marketo
Microsoft Dynamics
Oktopost
Synthio
Kapost
SnapApp
Converscia
Disruptive Factor:
As we worked to educate ourselves on the ideal framework we needed to support our campaigning needs, we talked about three specific clusters that we were going to need to focus on; mindset, skillset and toolset. The Mindset of our associates, we were moving people from being a marketing generalist and asking them to specialize in a marketing discipline. Did we have the right people for the role, were their remuneration and compensation packages structured correctly? Did we know what we expected from them and more importantly did they know what we expected from them. As we looked across the marketing function we realized there wasn’t a common understanding of what a marketing campaign was and the interlock with sales on what constituted a lead just didn’t exist, we needed to focus on the Skillset of our associates, we needed a common vocabulary. That vocabulary was going to be key in helping establish a new culture. On the Toolset front, we had been like so many organisations, we had a history of under investment in the technology used to empower our marketing associates to perform their duties. If we were to operationalize a campaign framework that would ultimately end up supporting a $9.8 billion company, we certainly needed the assistance of some tools and technology.
Shining Moment:
It takes a village and the pride I take from what we have achieved has been to witness the cross functional collaboration, determination and growth of team FIS. Going form a set of marketing generalists and focusing on specialising in a marketing discipline. Going from having little to no common understanding of campaign to having a single framework across a $9.8bn business.