“Real time insights into our revenue allow us to act with confidence and adjust on the fly at a moment's notice.”
That’s how chief strategy officer Dan O’Connell describes Clari’s benefit to Dialpad.
Every company wants the ability to make bold, data-based decisions in the current economic climate. Thanks to the visibility Dialpad now has into its entire revenue process, their board and executive team feel confident they can lean into the moment and capture market share.
Dialpad isn’t alone in this, either. Even though dark clouds loom over the economy, Clari customers see bright spots. Analysts for Forrester’s recent study, The Total Economic Impact™ Of Clari Revenue Platform, discovered that companies using Clari increased win rates by 10%, reduced time spent on forecasting and other administrative activities by 90%, and gained 5 to 10% in revenue.
Hear more from O’Connell and Jeffrey Yozwiak, Forrester consultant, who joined Clari’s Chief Revenue Officer, Kevin Knieriem, in a webinar to discuss how companies use Clari to run revenue in a downturn.
Kevin Knieriem: What kinds of questions are you asking about your revenue process right now?
Dan O’Connell: At Dialpad, it comes down to three things.
- First, do we have proper insights into our business, both net new ARR and expansion?
- Second, what do those insights actually tell us about potential revenue risk, whether that’s the deals coming in or churn and expansion opportunities?
- Third, how do those insights and deal visibility impact hiring decisions?
Knieriem: Jeffrey, what are you hearing from CROs right now?
Jeffrey Yozwiak: Dialpad is not alone in asking these questions. In addition to low visibility hurting the ability of leadership to make strategic decisions, we've also heard about issues from the employee experience side. For example, they’re dealing with cumbersome user interfaces to create and track data, or manual processes that take up the time of valuable revenue team members—time they could be spending on higher value activities like meeting with customers or improving processes.
Knieriem: Dan, how are you using Clari to address these revenue issues?
O’Connell: With Clari, we’ve seen increased rigor and increased accessibility of data across the board. Importantly, that accessibility also brings alignment. We now have a consistent talk track and view of data in both our sales and our customer success organization, and we can see how these two teams and functions work together to drive the business forward. The accessibility of data and the visibility allow us to hone our processes, hold people more accountable, and then drive alignment to grow revenue and expansion.
Knieriem: Jeffrey, is what Dan said common or uncommon for the customers Forrester spoke to?
Yozwiak: It’s common. We heard from other Clari customers that they felt like team members at every level had more control over the business. They reported to us that in meetings where they used to argue about whether data was accurate, they’re now having conversations about making decisions—and all of that happened at every level within their businesses.
Knieriem: Dan, at Clari, we’ve used our own solution to change our processes and create strong plans during a couple economic shakeups. How has Clari’s Revenue Platform enabled this kind of strategic decision making at Dialpad?
O’Connell: We believe we sell mission critical software: AI-powered communication and video messaging on any device, anywhere in the world. We just came out of our board meeting, and one of things that’s happening right now is that we want to lean into this moment and capture market share. Clari allows us to go and be bold with that type of decision making because we have the insights we need at the control panel.
The real-time insights we get from Clari allow us to act with confidence and adjust on the fly at a moment's notice, and that’s something we didn't have before. Our board appreciates the tighter management as a business, whether that’s at the front line leadership, executive, or even board level.
Knieriem: Dan, what advice would you give to an organization now in today’s environment considering investing in Clari?
O’Connell: Clari solves so many problems for us, and makes our job so much easier. I believe Clari is literally mission critical software, especially in times like these. So my advice is this: Start sooner rather than later. If you’re not using a forecasting platform like Clari, you should be.
When it comes to implementation, Clari is extremely lightweight and easy to deploy. On your end, to implement Clari well, you need a rigorous sales process that has consistent entry and exit criteria for stages. You also need to have a forecasting cadence in place. Finally, if you don’t have a revenue operations team, it’s one of those teams you don’t realize how impactful it can be until it’s there, so I'd recommend either building or investing in a RevOps team.
Knieriem: As CRO at Clari, I’m “customer zero.” I use Clari to call and predict revenue accurately so our company can make the best investments. As we assess the current situation using Clari, we have visibility into all segments, industries, coverage models, sales stages, time in sales stage, and so on. I have an executive level cockpit for what’s happening in the CRM and what's happening across all revenue-critical systems. And it’s not just me who gains visibility. Our customer success team, our reps, our frontline managers all use Clari to understand their business, where they need to double down, pull back, and adjust. This real-time nature is critical to anyone in a revenue role to be able to drive and run their business.
In times like these, revenue leaders need to know where revenue is at risk. They need insight into slipping deals so they can act while there’s time.
With Clari, companies have an enterprise system of record for the most important business process: revenue. Learn how Clari can help your team beat revenue leak in Forrester’s study: The Total Economic Impact™ Of Clari Revenue Platform.
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