determining the business impact - virtual...

Building the Business Case for Groupware


Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, one should be able to:

Define an initiative and how it addresses business strategy

Identify the key stakeholders that are needed to develop a Groupware business case

Define the importance of analyzing and documenting the current state of business process

Determine how to qualify tangible and intangible risks and benefits

Determine criteria and weightings for evaluation of options

Determine how to properly utilize research results to prepare a business case

Introduction

When tasked with a Groupware project, many teams may tend to directly begin the project before taking

the time to develop and structure a detailed business case. This common approach is misguided, as a

carefully researched and well prepared business case sets the tone for successful procurement and

implementation for a Groupware application. One of the main differences between a business case for

Groupware and one developed for an ERP application such as Oracle is the inclusion of a return on

investment (ROI) analysis. A case for an ERP system will put the most weight on the financial criteria.

Conversely, a case for Groupware places more weight on business process analysis and collaboration

benefits. A solid business case lays the foundation for a successful Groupware application. To

demonstrate the importance of a business case resulting in a successful project, the following key

statistics have been identified from a 2008 survey by CIO.com (Assay, 2008) of 800 IT Managers:

62 percent of IT projects failed to meet their schedules

49 percent suffered budget overruns

47 percent had higher-than-expected maintenance costs

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41 percent failed to deliver the expected business value or return on investment (ROI)

25 percent were cancelled before completion

These figures illustrate the lack of stability that plagues many project initiatives and how a structured

business case can help alleviate this instability. In addition, the business itself should own the business

case, not the IT organization. In an application initiative, there are three primary stakeholders, all of

whom must be thoroughly involved in the development. In Denise Ganly's article for Gartner she outlines

the following three stakeholder groups (Ganly, 2009):

Business process owners – These are the business managers most directly affected by the

initiative. One or more of these managers needs to be the driving force behind the initiative and

will act as its sponsor. Primary responsibilities include defining business requirements, active

participation in defining the solution, and most importantly being the advocate for

communication among all involved parties.

Financial representatives – These are members of the finance group who are responsible for

budgeting the initiative. They also provide business executives with clearly defined lines of

responsibility and accountability.

IT organization – These individuals provide the necessary information for making IT decisions.

They also ensure a proper balance of roles and responsibilities among the three stakeholder

groups. The IT organization’s primary goal is to provide value to the business customer by

offering services that lead to competitive advantage, promoting a drive towards continuous

improvement, and maximizing investments in technology to improve productivity.

One of the first steps when building a business case is to identify the stakeholders based on the groups

identified above. Classification of the size of the project is a good place to begin; does the initiative stand

to impact a single department or the whole company? If it is a company- wide initiative, then the business

process owner and executive sponsor would most likely be the CEO or COO. If the project is targeted

toward a specific department, then a Manager or Assistant Manager would probably be sufficient as the

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executive sponsor. Once the stakeholders are identified, the selection process can begin for the

application initiative team. The individuals chosen for the application initiative team must continue

through the selection, implementation and post implementation phases to provide continuity to the

project. This continuity provides the organization/department with a deeper understanding of the overall

achievement of the project and how the defined objectives will be met.

A typical business case should contain the following sections:

1. Business Case Preparation

a. Situational (current state) assessment and problem statement

b. Project description

c. Solution description

d. Implementation timeline

e. Critical assumptions, constraints, and risk assessment

f. Conclusion and recommendations

2. Cost Benefit Analysis

a. Rules for quantifying costs and benefits

b. Project costs

c. Overview of benefits

d. Identification of benefits

e. Quantifying the benefits

f. Cost and benefit conclusion

One of the main goals of every business case is to clearly illustrate how the initiative will change or

improve a current business process. This is especially critical for Groupware initiatives as often times the

changes or benefits associated with these projects are intangible and difficult to quantify. The main

objective of a Groupware application is not just about cutting lead or production times, rather they are

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tools that can change internal processes and help employees collaborate. As a result, it is important to

distinguish the potential business impact that the Groupware will provide throughout the business case.

This concept will be discussed later in this chapter.

When preparing a business case, an organization should undertake a series of tasks in four stages:

Initiation, Business Impact, Option Evaluation, and Documentation and Review (see Figure 1). One key

point is that building a business case should always be an iterative process. Therefore, research findings

and lessons learned should be utilized to continually revisit these stages and update the business case

development accordingly.

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Figure 1. Business Case Process

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Initiation Stage

There are four main items in the initiation stage. This may be the smallest stage in the business case

development, but it helps set the foundation for the case. The main objective in this stage is to define the

following:

Business case

Major stakeholders

Audience

Those responsible for writing the business case

Define the Initiative and How It Addresses the Business Strategy

The business case initiative must be defined as clearly as possible and illustrate how the Groupware

system will fit into the overall culture of the organization. This is important as the new application must

drive business value; otherwise the case for changing the standard business process will not be strong

enough to garner approval. The initiative should have clearly defined goals and proposed solutions.

Identify Stakeholders and Business Case Audience and Form the Business Case Team

These three tasks can be discussed in tandem because they have a similar purpose; to establish the target

audience of the business case and who will complete the preparation. The business case team should

involve the business process owners, financial representatives and IT organization. This phase will also

help identify the executive sponsor and any other key stakeholders.

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In all business cases, choosing the team is very important but it is especially important for a Groupware

application initiative. As Groupware is not for all companies, the project team should include a mixture of

members who understand the software and how it will impact the organization and improve business

processes. Also, as Groupware generally provides initial intangible improvements, it is often difficult to

provide an estimated ROI to the stakeholders. Therefore the number of financial representatives required

may be low. It is also important to ensure that some members demonstrate collaboration and facilitation

skills, as these will play an important role in building the business case. Team members will not only

develop the business plan for collaboration software, they will also need to use it, and this will help build

a deeper understanding of the process.

The next step in the process involves stakeholder identification. Project stakeholders are individuals and

organizations that are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be affected as a result of

project execution or project completion. The project team must identify the stakeholders, determine their

requirements and expectations and, to the extent possible, manage their influence in relation to the

requirements to ensure a successful project. Roles must be developed in this stage as well, and all

stakeholders should understand their purpose on the case. If stakeholders do not know the roles they will

play, then this could lead to internal issues and miscommunication. All in all it comes down to a very

simple concept; the business must own the project.

Determining the Business Impact

In this stage of the Business Case development process the focus is accurately accounting for the overall

impact of the proposed initiative to the organization's core business processes. A major function of the

business case is to justify the expenditure, or need, for the initiative in the first place. In order to

effectively quantify the benefits you need a clear view of where you currently are, where you'll be after

the initiative, what the benefits are and, of equal importance, what the risks are to undergo implementing

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the initiative. In Denise Ganly's article for Gartner (Ganly, 2009) she outlines a 3 step approach for

undergoing this stage: 1) Document the current state. 2) Determine the future state and 3) Quantify the

benefits and risks.

Documenting the Current State

The goal for this step is to determine the current state of any and all business processes that will be

affected by the initiative and identify the existing

applications, if any, that support them. Of note this

also includes gathering documentation on the current

IT strategy and architecture as well as evaluating the

initiative in the scope of other in-progress projects or

planned initiatives (if they should exist).

Remember, the focus of this stage is to objectively

measure the business impact of the imitative to the

overall organizations goals. A macro view of the

company is more helpful at this stage than the

opposite.

In many cases you may find that this

information is non-existent or out of date requiring

you to devote significant effort to establishing the

information you need; but without this information

you can not get an accurate baseline to measure

improvements against. One of the more important

areas of focus should be constructing or updating process maps.

In the business world process mapping is similar to what you see in the software world. The goal

is to identify, for each business process, the step-by-step function of how you get from the start to the

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finish. For example, in an accounts receivable office the primary function is to bill, or invoice, for

services or goods rendered by the organization and to make sure that those invoices are then paid in a

timely manner. The process map for this function would track step by step how this is currently

accomplished (Figure 2). In addition to a simple map it should include information on how many people

complete each step, how much time it takes per step and overall, what applications they currently use,

what other departments are utilized during this process, etc.

It is a fine line between dedicating the time for a proper analysis and wasting time on too much

detail. It is easy when you begin this stage to explore more and more processes as you delve deeper into

the affected department(s) but it is important to remember that documenting the current state is only one

small part of the overall business case development process. Ganly (Ganly, 2009) recommends you

restrict your efforts to, "processes that drive competitive advantage, support regulatory or compliance

needs, or provide unique functionality" and that you "should not spend more than 15% of the estimated

effort for the project in completing this task."

In addition to process mapping it is also extremely important to gather traditional accounting

metrics. What metrics you use are highly dependent upon the processes you're trying to improve. We

will discuss this more in a moment but it's safe to say the biggest of them all will almost always be Return

On Investment (ROI) also known as Rate of Return (ROR). ROI is simply defined as the ratio of money

gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_of_return). Simply put, what does the organization gain in dollars in

return for the money spent deploying and maintaining the initiative? It is important to pick the metrics at

this stage because you will use the same criteria to show improvements when you move into determining

the future state.

Determining the Future State

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Now that you have clear process maps and you have selected and computed your accounting metrics you

have effectively established your current baseline. The next step is documenting the proposed future

state. This is the state envisioned at the start of the business case process and consists of not only the new

process but also any new applications to facilitate these processes.

You want to develop your future state to the same extent as you developed the current state. This

includes process mapping to the same level. Also evaluate your future state using the same accounting

metrics you selected for your baseline. Most importantly talk to the people directly affected so that you

can get their input on what you have planned. They'll best be in position to tell you how feasible a change

is or how accurate they think your numbers are.

As you move forward and develop the metrics it is important to keep up with documentation and

create an audit trail. This is important so that you can demonstrate to key stakeholders the rationale

behind how you came to a certain conclusion. This not only makes it easier for those outside your team

to understand but also allows you to easily update your metrics should new information arise.

Quantifying Benefits and Risks

Now that you have a well developed picture of the current state and a clear idea in mind for the

future state you can begin to do the comparison analysis. Looking at the gaps between the current and

future states give you a good start on identifying the benefits of your initiative. The benefits of any

initiative can be hard to measure but especially so with groupware projects that are largely new and just

becoming mainstream. Even so there are still three basic categories you should divide their benefits into:

Strategic Business, Hard Financial and Soft Financial.

A strategic business benefit is a benefit that affects the organizations core business strategy or

helps provide compliance with industry regulations. These benefits are both highly valuable but also

carry a high impact of failure. You can expect any initiative with this type of benefit to be closely

monitored from a very high level. An example of a business benefit would be a new compliance package

that consolidates all the reporting documentation for a pharmaceutical company into one centralized area

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for department wide review. This would allow for easier sharing of knowledge and collaboration on

monitoring and submission but would also be highly detrimental to the overall organization if something

failed.

Hard financial benefits, also known as tangible financial benefits are the easiest to quantify.

These benefits can be directly measured in monetary terms. Although on the surface these are the easiest

to compute it is important to look at the whole financial impact when determining this benefit. This not

only included the total cost of the entire initiative but also includes any consulting fees, transition and

implementation costs, hardware, training, etc. Examples of this benefit include reduced head count due to

increased collaboration, reduced travel cost or reduced office locations due to telepresence, etc.

The last and hardest benefit to quantify is the soft financial benefit. This benefit is the intangible

benefits that are often exceedingly hard to quantify. They do not lend themselves easily to any

established metrics and are often subjective. Examples of this include 'better collaboration', 'better

decision making' or 'better knowledge sharing'. Although these benefits are hard to quantify they are

often times highly important to the groupware initiative and as such there has been effort in recent years

to come up with ways to make hard financial benefits out of soft intangible ones.

Gartner, Inc bills themselves as the world's leading information technology research and advisory

company (www.gartner.com). Their research arm, Gartner Research endeavored to create a framework to

tie IT function improvement to more traditional business metrics and the result was The Gartner Business

Value Model. Within this document they created several new performance metrics which they have been

lumped into aggregate categories depending on initiative (Figure 3).

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Figure 3

Source: Gartner (September 2009)

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Although many of these performance indices may not directly relate to your groupware initiative you may

find several that you can adapt to meet your needs. After benefits are thoroughly defined you can move

forward and evaluate the risks.

Risks should be looked at from two standpoints. First what the likelihood is of occurrence and

second what the impact to the business or initiative will be if this risk occurs. A standard project

management risk matrix can be used to help assist with this. Along the y axis build out your likelihood of

the risk occurring and across your x axis build out your impact. On this graph plot out the likelihood and

impact of each identified risk to get a visual representation (Figure 4) of the overall risks. Risks identified

with the highest likelihood and highest impact are considered to be the most important to monitor and

plan around.

Option Evaluation

In the next stage of the Business Case development process we must conduct a series of evaluations to

determine our options and select criteria for weighing them. The model parameters should also be created

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with a variety of factors to determine success. They include but are not limited to payback, non-financial

assessment, risk and costs.

Determining Options

The first phase is determining your options. I have broken it down into two separate phases: phase one

looks at how the option appeals to your boss and other stakeholders and phase two evaluates how the

option will appeal to employees and fulfill the collaboration requirements.

Your options are determined by a number of other factors besides the beginning evaluations.

This includes resources, office politics and an umbrella category called other external factors. Other

external factors could include anything from how risk-averse or innovative the company culture is to

factors such as spending freezes, collaboration with certain vendors etc. If you are determined to go

forward with this program then there are several factors that can guide you in picking the best available

option: 1) Depending on the economic climate the option should either save the company the most money

or make the company money. 2) You must be able to provide the most reasons possible for picking your

option. 3) It must support other company initiatives. 4) It should be of the lowest risk.

If your options have survived phase one of the vetting process and the appeal to the stakeholders

then we can verify if the options meet phase two of your requirements. This option must fulfill the

requirement to improve collaboration within your company. In order to evaluate on these grounds, we

can reference a white paper by Socialtext.com (Socialtext, 2009). They have come up with five:

1) Integrate social networking. Most importantly this means that it should help employees get to

know each other and keep each other updated automatically. It also means that it should help

employees collaborate on ideas easier and discover who else might have skills that are valuable to a

project.

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2) Very high adoption rate. By very high it should be 99.9%. Everyone must be onboard for it. In

order for this to happen it must be easy to use and install, easy to see what value it provides the

user.

3) Fits in with work. It should integrate with email and mobile devices so the user can be informed

real time. It should also be available offline so the user can read messages and work on files in

places such as airplanes or areas without data service.

4) Aggregates information from everywhere. Other commonly used enterprise applications,

Outlook calendars and work blogs should easily integrate into the solution for ease of use to the

user.

5) Total Cost of Ownership. Basically the cost to implement and maintain should be low and the

ROI should be high.

Determining the Evaluation Criteria and Weightings

Now that you have an option selected we can determine what we should evaluate and what we consider

most important to least important. In determining evaluation criteria and weightings we will use some of

the same guidelines we used for determining our options however this time we have to decide what is

most important. Where before we were asking “what does?” type questions now we are asking “how

does?” type questions.

The first set of criteria to evaluate is for the company mission as a whole and how this

collaboration software helps with that. The factors to evaluate are how the collaboration software

improves productivity, cost reduction, business continuity, and revenue growth. Productivity and

cost reduction should be weighted higher than business continuity and revenue growth. This is because if

productivity increases and costs are reduced it will insure business continuity and revenue growth. The

tools that increase productivity and reduce costs the most are the tools that should get the highest rating

(Kelly, B, and Marty Parker, 2009).

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Next, once the tools that improve overall business operations the most have been determined it is

time to once again go back to similar criteria we used for picking our options. A tool should be picked

that has the best ability to meet seven critical factors. These factors are (Osterman Research, Inc, 2005):

1) Contact Aggregation: Similar to aggregates information from everywhere this software must have

the ability to grow with the company through mergers and acquisitions. It must be something that

IT can support easily.

2) Presence-enablement: The user must easily be able to identify the online presence of other users.

This adds value be making impromptu meetings easier to start.

3) Support for multi-presence sources: The average corporation uses an average of 3.1 instant

messaging systems in the office. This collaboration system must be able to use multiple systems

also.

4) Security: A no-brainer, sensitive corporate information is being shared so a firewall and best

practices in information and network security management is a must.

5) Ease of use: The easier it is to use the more likely it will be adopted.

6) Ease of Administration: The easier it is for IT to maintain the more likely it will approved. Your

CFO will like to better also.

7) Flexibility: Similar to ease of use it should be flexible to handle large and small meetings, work

online and offline and allow customer access.

Writing the Business Case

At this point in the business case process you have are finally ready to begin writing the actual business

case. You have a clearly defined initiative and clearly state how it affects the overall business strategy.

You've clearly documented the current baseline and have compared it against the future state. Benefits

have been quantified and weighed. Options have been gathered, evaluation criteria have been developed

and weighed and you've created a cost model to support everything. Your option has been determined

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and you are finally now ready to construct the actual business case. All the hard work has been done, but

there are a few things to keep in mind when writing the actual case.

Write/Compile Business Case

As Ganly points our in her article (Ganly, 2009) an important point about writing a business case that's

often overlooked is that the document should be written in a very simple and logically laid out manner.

The goal of any well written business case should be for any member of the business case process to be

able to pick up the document and clearly understand the concepts within. Business cases are evolving

documents and writing them clearly and simply also makes it easier to update as you go.

As you write, also endeavor to create a balance between hard and soft benefits. Should you find

your project is one where most benefits are soft, then what hard benefits you have quantified must be

strong and presented in a way that clearly shows how they were generated. Most executive staff have a

tendency to rely on hard data, so if this is sparse within your document it at least has to be ironclad and

clearly understandable in terms of rationale.

Finally, arguably the most important piece of the business case is the executive summary. The

executive summary is what is sounds like. It's a summary of your business case that the executive staff

will start their process with. It should contain all the pertinent conclusions but without the support data

and rationale used to achieve them. It should be concise and clearly worded. Borrowing from the

journalism world, it should only be who?, what?, when?, where?, why?, how?, and how much?. Lastly,

use reference marks within the text when presenting any financial conclusions so that the executive can

refer to your detailed plan for supporting data.

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Summary

Writing a business case for any initiative is not an easy undertaking for the IT professional. The

vocabulary and culture of the IT and Finance worlds are divergent and never more obvious than when the

two come together to attempt a project initiative. This is further complicated by the often hard to quantify

aspects involved with a groupware project, but by using the progression outlined in this chapter you can

maximize your chances of a successful project initiative.

First know your stakeholders and build a solid team. By identifying and receiving the blessing

and support of the key people involved, and getting them involved, your initiative begins to gain

momentum. Second, determine the impact to the company. By clearly identifying and documenting

where you are and where you want to be you can illustrate the benefits, or worth, of what it is you're

trying to do. Don't forget to also discuss the risks as well. Understanding the danger not only allows for

full disclosure but also allows you to plan around potential problems and mitigate their affects. Third,

carefully weigh your options and select the right tool. Invest the time to really understand what fits

within your organization. This means not only financially but in terms of scalability, culture, usability,

flexibility and any other '-ility' that you deem important.

Lastly write a solid business case. Lay things out logically and as simply as possible. Back up

your calculations with clearly defined rationales and make sure that evaluations are based on facts and not

assumptions. Spend time on getting your executive summary together and be prepared to quickly answer

any questions your executive staff might have. By taking these steps and by putting the thought and time

into developing a concise business case you will command respect and ease the merging of cultures in

your next pitch meeting.

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Glossary

CDW- (formally known as Computer Discount Warehouse) a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government and education. www.cdw.com

Dropship- SPS program that is used to send products directly to customers. www.cdw.com

Plays and Programs – SPS program to generate revenue and product for account managers. www.cdw.com

Task – SPS program dedicated to account managers to organize daily activities. www.cdw.com

SPS – Sales Productive Suite: System used at CDW as customer database and order taker. www.cdw.com

Business case - A type of decision-making tool used to determine the effects a particular decision will have on profitability. A business case should show how the decision will alter cash flows over a period of time, and how costs and revenue will change. Specific attention is paid to internal rate of return (IRR), cash flow and payback period. Analyzing the financial outcomes stemming from choosing a different vendor to sell a company's product is an example of a business case. www.businessdictionary.com

Scope - Sum of all individual jobs comprising a contract, employment, program, or project. www.businessdictionary.com

Process maps - Graphical representation of the sequence of steps or tasks (workflow) constituting a process, from raw materials through to the finished product. It serves as a tool for examining the process in detail to identify areas of possible improvements. www.businessdictionary.com

Metrics - Standards of measurement by which efficiency, performance, progress, or quality of a plan, process, or product can be assessed. www.businessdictionary.com

ROI - Earning power of assets measured as the ratio of the net income (profit less depreciation) to the average capital employed (or equity capital) in a firm or project. Expressed usually as a percentage, it is a measure of the profitability which (while not taking the time value of money into account) indicates whether or not a firm is using its resources in an efficient manner. For example, if the ROI of a firm (in the long run) is lower than its cost-of-capital then the firm will be better off by liquidating its assets and depositing the proceeds in a bank. www.businessdictionary.com

Hard Financial Benefit - Measurable increase in revenue, or cost savings, expected to be realized through the implementation of a policy, program, or project. www.businessdictionary.com

Soft Financial Benefit - Benefits that are not financial in nature. www.dictionary.com

Risk - The degree of probability of such loss. www.dictionary.com

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Thought Exercises

Using the CDW business case found in the other resources section of this chapter answer the

following:

1) Using what you've learned from this chapter what are three ways in which you can improve upon this

case and what data would you need for each?

2) Using the ROI Section of this document and assuming that growth average is static, when will CDW

break even in cost for the new SPS system?

3) Using your answer from question 1, construct a new business case executive summary for your

proposed additions. Make up the data as necessary but make sure to use it logically to support a position.

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Other Resources

CDW Business Case

IntroductionAccomplished sales people must be able to manage their customers, book of business, and daily operations. Finding the right balance between these demands requires a certain type of individual with sound skills as a multitasker as well as a grasp of the business. With the help of SPS this is easily obtainable at CDW.

CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government and education. Ranked No. 41 on Forbes’ list of America’s Largest Private Companies, CDW features dedicated account managers who help customers choose the right technology products and services to best meet their unique needs.Sales Productive Suite (SPS) is tool that has become the backbone of the CDW’s organization to all their end users; this tool is used as a customer database, an order taker, a personal directory, an order manager, etc…. the only problem is that a legacy software application is still in use by many of the employees.CDW has decided to test out the SPS tool with new incoming sales account manager classes. Forty people where hired in the spring of 2008. 20 had access to SPS and the other 20 had access to the legacy tool. We will discuss the result in the ROI selection.

StagingCDW Corporation's sales reps/managers are tasked with meeting very aggressive sales goals. This requires skills at managing both short- and long-term strategies through a team averaging 20 account managers. As a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, and education, CDW had experienced tremendous growth over the last few years. But as a result, important processes for sales management had become disparate and in need of fixing.The initial role out of SPS was viral, CDW chose not to affect the entire sales force, by allowing older account managers to use the legacy software application (Zorro) in efforts not to influence sales and creating the atmosphere of “Business as Usual”. CDW is no longer training sales reps in Zorro, in hopes that new employees will show veteran reps that SPS will be the wave of the future. The team at CDW has dedicated time and resources to SPS programs such as:

Plays and Programs which are designed to empower Account Managers with timely, relevant, and actionable strategies to position with customers, the business intelligence about customers, recommendations for a solution and lastly a new hinge to talk with customers and offer value as an Account Manager.

Tasks are connected to the things employees use every day such as customers, products, orders, quotes, and your teammates. People can assign tasks to a teammate, check on progress, and even use custom tags to get more organized. Tasks also lay the groundwork for much of our future work around CRM and activities such as renewals.

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DropShip which will be an enhancement to eliminate the pre-population logic for Microsoft Open License and to add an edit check on the Authorization Number to warn the user when they use a number that is about to or has expired.

Business Impact StageRecognizing the importance of the sales manager's role, as well as the fact improved training is critical for success in implementing that all co-workers use SPS , CDW's upper management knew the system needed to be enhanced. Many of the company's sales managers struggled with the demands of managing short and long-term strategies, yet had no clear guidance on how to better themselves.

In evaluating where change needed to occur, it soon became evident there were three areas requiring immediate attention. First, the role of the sales manager needed targeted training materials based on current job requirements by using SPS.

Second, the organization needed a pipeline for sales opportunies . Lastly, an internal analysis uncovered the need to enhance the effectiveness of the sales account managers population as a whole.

To fix each of these problem areas, a team was formed to bring consistency to the sales rep role and enhance the impact of the sales account manager. This was the creation of the SPS program. Because of the size of the project, teams were broken into two primary concentrations: account manager productivity and Sales account manager Development. Both teams worked in tandem throughout the process to ensure success.EvaluationMany organizations, including CDW, recognize and promote the best sales people to fill the sales manager role. But without the correct tools sales people cannot be successful. By accessing SPS and using the tool to the fullest capabilities a person can use SPS as a gateway tool to propel one’s self to the next level.

Below is an example of a scoring card to measure the success of the program:

Importance CDW Growth Strategy Prioritization Criteria Metric to use2 Capture Greater Share of

WalletImpact on customer spend Improved Customer TTM

Increased Revenue4 Expand Customer Base Market Penetration Increased Market Penetration

Quotes by Customer

5 Grow Addressable Market Market Creation Creation of new profitable marketsNew Customers, by industry/vertical

3 Optimize S&M Model Sales and Marketing Productivity

Increased RevenueIncreased Marketing Impact?

1 Provide Unmatched Customer Experience

Customer Impact Improved Loyalty scores

7 Better, Faster, Cheaper Project Investment On Time, On BudgetIncreased Operating Income

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6 Drive Market Advantage through Coworkers & Culture

Knowledge/Experience advantage

Coworker engagement

N/A Technical Difficulty Improved ArchitectureImproved IT ProductivityImproved Knowledge

N/A Project Benefit/ROI Baseline vs. actual (cost & benefit)

The sales organization selection team focused on the assessment, selection, development, and on boarding of programs in SPS for account managers. The process has provided the organization a consistent, predictable process with transparency and accountability.

The need to look at both new and existing sales reps was also identified. It would have been a disservice to assume existing reps have learned on-the-job skills while in this role, when they had not had specific developmental interventions in the past. The intent was to build them not only into high-performing reps, but also to arm them with the skills and tools necessary to excel at sales growth and customer retention.ROIAs a result, the development team has focused on the processes, systems, and skills of sales managers in the role. To date, two critical processes have been tackled and a third is in design. Respectively, these processes are pipeline/forecasting process, annual planning, and go-to-market strategy.

Recognizing sales people required targeted development efforts to increase their results, the program was created to focus on selection and development of future sales reps and the development of processes, systems, and skills of currently practicing account managers. The program now incorporates objective and subjective evaluation based on high performer characteristics.

Out of our test group of the forty employees, we saw unexpected results. The test group that used the legacy tool made 50% more phone calls and also made 50% more orders than the group that used SPS. Although, the group that used SPS had more talk time and less orders but the dollar values of those orders were 200% more profitable in addition to more revenue than the legacy system users.

SPS users were equipped with more information and became solution sellers versus transactional sellers.

Raw Data for the first 6 months of the program, ROI was calculated as Net profit divided by total investment:

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GroupTime Period

Total Calls Talk Time

Number of Orders

Dollar Amount

Gross Profit ROI % % Difference

SPS January 28000 800hrs 950 $300,000 $35,000 1.17%Zorro January 32000 700hrs 1000 $250,000 $25,000 0.83% SPS February 22800 700hrs 1000 $350,000 $25,000 0.83%Zorro February 30400 650hrs 1200 $200,000 $19,000 0.63% SPS March 21000 700hrs 1000 $450,000 $50,000 1.67%Zorro March 29400 650hrs 2000 $250,000 $25,000 0.83% SPS April 20000 700hrs 1500 $750,000 $100,000 3.33%Zorro April 41500 650hrs 2500 $500,000 $60,000 2.00% SPS May 26000 700hrs 5000 $1,500,000 $150,000 5.00%Zorro May 28000 650hrs 2500 $500,000 $60,000 2.00% SPS June 20000 700hrs 3000 $700,000 $70,000 2.33%Zorro June 41500 650hrs 2500 $500,000 $60,000 2.00%

Total RevTotal Profit

Total ROI

SPS Group $4,050,000 $430,000 14%Zorro Group $2,200,000 $249,000 8%

*Cost of Total Investment $3 million to Implement SPS

CDW's picture of success includes the expectation the company will be perceived as having the most

knowledgeable and responsive experts in the industry. This directive has lead to a significant investment

in employee development. As a result, the sales force is expected to bring in above-market results.

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determining the business impact - virtual...

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