MON JUL 15 2019

How Aviso's time-series database helps Fortune 500 leaders win more deals

by Amit Pande

Fortune 500 companies that are executing their sales operations with AI have found a competitive advantage that their competition just doesn't have the discipline to implement. Such companies are relying on data in a very different way. Every company has plenty of data and in many cases too much data. What is absent from their data is recognizing how it changes from minute to minute and how data correlation reveals things not visible to the naked eye. AI makes the invisible visible. Most companies just view data in traditional analytics tools and CRM systems that present where things stand right now. They don’t leverage a time series database and cannot correlate data to reveals critical insights. If you are using static data, the only value is you know where you are right now. Nothing there tells you where you need to go and how to get there. Applying time series capabilities and forecasting algorithms to your data reveals things you would never have known otherwise including important things like what you need to do differently to close an important deal. This qualitative analysis can be applied on a deal by deal basis to help even the highest performing salespeople improve their chances of winning.
A significant improvement for companies using time-series databases is you can use this technology to help ‘B’ and ‘C’ salespeople perform more like ‘A’s.’ Leading companies are are getting more out of their B and C players.
Here is what happens when you use the data in a standard way. A sales organization creates their forecast through a typical roll up process (AE to manager, manager to regional manager, regional manager to VP, etc.). The reporting/analytics tool tells everyone what was rolled up and what is in the various forecast categories in terms of dollars that will be closed. Then there is a drill down process of asking the AE detailed questions about the deals to get a “gut” feeling as to where the deal stands, where there are risks, how you will win, why you might lose, etc. This human judgment process has proven to be very inaccurate when you look at results from a micro level. In plain terms, deal by deal forecast judgement is often 40-50% wrong. While this in itself significantly hurts the business, the real shame is you never get key insights on what you could have been done to win the deal.
If you are focusing on 50 or so deals a quarter, you probably can get away with using spreadsheets, reporting tools, etc. But if the sales organization has hundreds or thousands of deals a quarter, relying on static data just gives you “people judgment.” This limited judgement is like rowing a boat with only one oar in the water.
Using AI-based algorithms with time-series databases, you learn so much more about your deals than you ever have before. Thats why time-series databases have been rising in popularity over time and why we embraced this technology. Aviso customers close, on average, 20% more deals per quarter than they did prior to using Aviso. Aviso applies sophisticated AI to every opportunity in your quarterly pipeline to create highly accurate win probabilities. We call this the Aviso WinScore. Then we compare the Aviso WinScore to the current forecast category the opportunity is in to alert you whenever there is a disconnect. In most cases there are often several disconnects. For example, your team may have a deal in upside or commit but the Aviso WinScore and AI rates it much lower. From there, the AI provides guided selling insights, so sales managers and AE’s can adjust their sales execution to win these deals. We can even integrate the AI driven Aviso Win Scores into your favorite BI tool so you can leverage AI with those platforms. Here is what one of our customers, Dell EMC says:   [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NODcwqy-ye4[/embed]
Aviso has changed the way we conduct our deal reviews and we have made a major advancement. Now we use the AI-driven Aviso WinScores and we compare them to the forecast category. Often we have deals in commit but Aviso rates them lower so we then drill down and get actionable guidance how to improve our chances of winning. The sales team now comes to the meetings more prepared with action plans to win. Aviso helps us win more deals!” – Jay Flanagan, Senior Director of Strategy and Transformation, Dell EMC