Creating the Future of Sales and Marketing at Intel
Intel's journey through digital transformation has been guided by a belief that the experiences that a company offers its customers and sellers are interdependent — and that both must be excellent if the organization is to thrive.
Armed with this understanding, the company has, in the past two years, undertaken a variety of initiatives to transform its approach to data and the experiences that enables it to offer to customers and sellers.
Key Takeaways
Initiatives on Behalf of Customers
As Intel was assessing its approaches to customer data in recent years, it came to recognize that it was not being well managed — that poor data quality was producing disconnected and duplicative data
To remedy the situation, Intel sought to achieve a single source of truth on its customers. Initially, this process began with a search for the right technology, but, after a time, Intel understood that the proper place to start was with devising a strategy. The approach that developed after that realization had four components.
- Strategy: Build a data model strategy focused on business outcomes and delivering on in-flight programs.
- Iterative rollout: Lead with process, starting small and scaling with standards, making use of technology as needed.
- Centralized operations: Develop mature centralized enterprise business operations and processes, starting with a core team, and then scaling out and developing automation and governance.
- Flexible platform: Build a common technical foundation to automate and consolidate customer data management across the enterprise.
With that system in place, Intel went on to develop its website into a "digital center of gravity." A plethora of microsites were consolidated to give customers a unified experience based on their needs, e.g., a unified experience for developers.
Initiatives on Behalf of Sellers
To improve the experience of its sellers, Intel has undertaken four initiatives.
- CRM simplification: Intel's CRM was first implemented in 2015, and much has changed since then. A detailed analysis of workflows is enabling a simplification of the system that delivers more value for sellers.
- Sales content transformation: By constructing seller journey maps, Intel learned how much time sellers were spending to find the right content to provide to customers. In response, Intel simplified its content structure and content management system, developing tools to deliver content more effectively.
- Sales collaboration: Intel has rolled out a community for sellers to open collaboration between them and the business units from which they need subject matter expertise.
- Sales AI: Intel is capitalizing on AI to generate and deliver insights directly to sellers, which they then rate for Intel, helping the machine learning technology to learn and improve.
Action Steps
- As you develop data and tools, focus on the impact and the experiences they make possible for customers and sellers.
- Align with IT; without a strong and empowered IT team, transformation can't happen.
- Reach across silos and build — you'll go further working together.
Source
"Creating the Future of Sales and Marketing at Intel." Becky Brown, VP, sales and marketing group, digital scale and insights at Intel. 2022 ANA Masters of Data & Technology Conference, 3/29/22.