In an aggressive market, fueled by on-demand information and breaking news around the clock, Prysm leverages its own technology for competitive advantage.
Challenge
Jason Smith, Prysm’s vice president of worldwide sales and operations, reflected on a recent example, “We wanted to expand our sales team to address some great new use cases for Prysm, and we needed the headcount quickly to stay ahead of our competitors. I was faced with the task of trying to persuade our board of directors to let me swiftly hire more staff.”
Smith knew the board members would have questions about the data — both the costs and the proof that additional personnel would translate into revenue. He explained, “To facilitate quick decision-making, I needed to be able to present the high-level idea, and then drill down to the smallest proof points, and finally zoom back out again to address everyone’s questions within one meeting.”
Solution
Smith asked his director of sales operations to join the board meeting remotely – via Prysm – and had him open spreadsheets as well as the Wave Analytics dashboards that run on-top of Prysm’s Salesforce.com instance.
“As the director walked us through the data, I was able to pull up a virtual whiteboard and start sketching diagrams,” recounted Smith. “I even made annotations right on top of the screens he was showing; board members were able to see all of this information on the display simultaneously, enabled all of the potentially disparate content to be kept completely in context for them.”
Results
Providing instant access to information in a collaborative session – where all members could manipulate the content to have their questions answered – proved to be very powerful. “Being able to instantly see how pipeline growth per sales person directly correlated to specific sales scenarios — from the high-level concept to the smallest analytical detail — enabled the board to feel confident that our proposed strategy would unequivocally translate into revenue,” noted Smith. “The board members loved the proposal, and were excited about the possibility of extending our reach into new environments, better yet, within one hour, they said ‘go hire more people, ASAP!’”
He concluded, “When you look at the opportunity cost of slow decision-making across an enterprise, it can be significant. In fact, it can make or break a company. I’m proud that Prysm leverages its own solutions to enable us to move quickly and efficiently in today’s highly competitive markets.”
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