Andrew wasn’t asking for much in his search to meet forecasting needs.
A more flexible solution where F5 had more ownership, with data that was accurate and accessible by all. That’s it.
Clari had it all.
Flexibility
Relying solely on a CRM meant his team was only able to review one deal at a time. It was impossible to see his entire pipeline health in one glance. This made it challenging to have valuable business discussions and deal reviews.
With Clari, the intuitive UI gives Andrew a “much better read on deals as we progress through the quarter.” For the first time ever, the team has confidence in calling that quarterly number.
Ownership
F5 was reliant on IT to make feature changes with their CRM — selling subscriptions or SaaS or any acquisition. “It took 3-5+ months to get things done. Some things we asked for years ago, and they're still sitting as an open ticket to this day!”
With Clari, Andrew’s team has gained back control. “Working with the Clari team to make changes at a pace that is excessively fast — is something we've never experienced before. Clari makes things happen with our weekly stand-up customer success meetings. It’s been phenomenal.”
Added bonus: They no longer have to lean on their IT team.
Accuracy & Visibility
Before, the forecast rollup was based on “meetings and activity,” — not ideal for accuracy.
With Clari, Andrew has all the data and insights to gauge quarterly forecasting accuracy — what’s happening at the account, how engaged the reps are, who they are engaged with, and conversations with the C-levels, “Clari makes everything simple.”
Clari helps navigate the complexities of an enterprise business
Forecasting and revenue management in a complex enterprise business — one that sells both hardware and software — is not easy.
Andrew loves how Clari pulls in data at the product line level.
“Much of our business is sold as one opportunity, broken out within hardware, software, and various business units. Because we pull it into Clari at the product line level and we have the mapping already completed, we're able to forecast the business units accordingly, something that we weren't able to do before.”
Frontline managers love Clari, too. They finally get real visibility into what’s happening as opposed to just relying on hearsay. With Clari, F5’s sales managers now receive real-time information about the account, the activities, and who they're engaging with, so they can spend more time coaching their team instead of hunting down information.
But Andrew and Global Sales Operations was not the only team at F5 on the hunt to improve revenue collaboration. F5’s sales team was looking to replace Salesforce Sales Engagement to consolidate, simplify, and accelerate its entire revenue process into one unified platform.
On the Groove with Clari
Hannah King, Director of Global Demand Response at F5, saw a big gap in the reporting and analytics in Salesforce Sales Engagement and knew there had to be a better solution out there.
There was no way to measure what was working and what wasn’t — a true blindspot as a sales leader.
Hannah and Gavin Grisham, the leader of F5’s Global Digital Sales Tools, evaluated all of the top sales engagement competitors, including Outreach and Salesloft, and ultimately went with Groove.
Why? Only Groove has their six must-haves to operate efficiently:
- Salesforce-native architecture: no shadow CRMs, reliable data, less context switching, top-notch security
- Enhanced reporting: the ability to trace ROI back to each action and standardize messaging and protocols
- Activity capture: real visibility into what reps are doing
- Wide feature set: Flows, Templates, Dialer, Groove Spaces Collaboration, and more all in one platform
- Ease of use: easy onboarding and 100% adoption rate across reps
- Self-managed: they didn't have to rely on the IT team (same as Andrew)
Gavin and Hannah found multiple limitations with Salesforce Sales Engagement: poor activity capture, a lack of visibility into what reps were doing, a lack of reporting, and a disgruntled workforce from the burden of use.
The team also was leaning in on consolidation. “We didn't want a platform that would operate on a separate database. We wanted to mitigate context switching in our reps day to day,” said Gavin. That knocked out Outreach and Salesloft immediately, which utilizes a second database often referred to as a “shadow CRM.”
And that left “the clear leader,” Groove, which “hit all cylinders from a needs and features perspective.”
