A Manufacturing Specialty Materials Company Increases Productivity by Advancing Territory & Quota Process

A Fortune 500 company that produces a broad range of products used in our everyday lives partnered with Voiant to advance their Territory & Quota planning, eliminate manual processes, reduce wasted time, risk, and human error, and prioritize the correct accounts to drive the most revenue. This organization is a leader in innovative solutions and is committed to furthering sustainability. These commitments mean that any technology they invest in has to showcase how they can help further the company's mission by increasing productivity and revenue. With all this in mind, this organization chose Anaplan as their solution and Voiant as their implementation partner, so we got to work. 

Real Progress Takes a Village

Before determining the correct solution to build within Anaplan software, the Voiant consultants conducted discovery interviews with members from departments across the company. These interviews included members of the marketing, supply chain, and finance department. The consultants were also in close communication with the stakeholders in the sales organization throughout the project. The comprehensive discovery process allowed the Voiant team to incorporate feedback from many different company divisions while keeping the needs of the main stakeholders intact and improving the requirements and the design for the solution along the way. The discovery interviews also kept the team apprised of potential hidden project setbacks to avoid. Learn more about how Voiant works and our process here. 

Complexities are the Spice of Life

While creating this Territory & Quota planning solution, there were some complexities to the system that needed to be understood by the Voiant team. The way territory hierarchies and approvals were not always aligned linearly. When the approval process isn't linear, issues can arise in an automated system because automated systems don't typically differentiate from one instance to another, but knowing that ahead of time allowed the Voiant team to avoid those issues and plan for that in the final build.

Another reason Voiant was able to avoid any setbacks or hiccups was because of the initiative and cooperation of the company's Sales organization. The Sales Operations Team would eventually own and maintain the new Anaplan instance, and they began to learn how Voiant built the solution as soon as the consultants could show them. Throughout the project, they learned how Anaplan would function and began to learn how to manage it themselves. The team quickly became knowledgeable enough to explain Anaplan to other interested parties, which freed up the consultants' time to dedicate to strategic and technical needs. The initiative by the company's sales organization allowed Voiant to focus more on the build and create a more streamlined solution, avoiding any difficulties in approval hierarchies.

Validation is Key

The new Anaplan solution allows this organization to make important business decisions with all the knowledge and data they need to feel confident they are making the right choices. They can now ensure they've created equitable territories in terms of opportunity, and they can set targets that are motivating and fully aligned with the organizational targets. When a company is as committed to change and progress as this company has proven to be, each choice they make must be based on reality and data - it can't be a guessing game. To ensure the correct data is now readily available to the right teams, Voiant created dashboards. Voiant created dashboards to make alerts and KPIs more usable and instantly available so the teams could get a quick glance at the important metrics across the territory and quota-setting functions. One dashboard that will heavily impact decisions includes a data validation input. This dashboard will alert the necessary teams if there are any data errors, rather than relying on manual checking of source data, which can be easily missed. This new dashboard streamlines the process of data clarity and strengthens analysis with the confidence that the data is error-free.

Outcome: Reduced Time, Errors, and Risk

Implementing Anaplan for territory and quota planning has; reduced human errors and the manual efforts of the sales organization and significantly reduced risk. This new solution also incorporates visuals that showcase territory changes and how that change affects the outlook of a sales rep. This transparency into territory setup provides a much better work experience for a sales rep having the necessary knowledge to manage their workload and accounts. The effort of managing the territory and quota process was reduced by 50% after the implementation of Anaplan. That reduction of effort and time now frees up time and space for more value add activities and new projects for the sales organization.

Some of the feedback from this project regarding the new solution:

“This solution is exactly what we wanted and what we needed”

“Outstanding”

“Exceptional, Lightning fast”

"I can't describe to you how much better it has been."

Visit the Anaplan website to learn more about the connected planning solutions they provide. 

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