2016 Marketing Excellence Awards - ITSMA · 2016 Marketing Excellence Awards ... Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience ... (A focus on mutual success). • Industry insight

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© 2016 ITSMA. All rights reserved.

2016 Marketing Excellence Awards

Table of Contents

Accelerating Growth with Account-Based Marketing • Diamond Winner | Juniper Networks: Using Thought Leadership to Open New Areas

of Influence..................................................................................................................................... 1 • Gold Winner | Adobe: ABM Accelerates Growth at Adobe ..................................................... 3 • Gold Winner | Fujitsu: Accelerating Growth with ABM ........................................................... 5

Building Brand Differentiation

• Diamond Winner | HCL Technologies: GetAJob@HCLTech—Becoming India’s Most Preferred Millennial Employer .................................................................................................... 7

• Gold Winner | IBM: #Crushing it Globally and Mobiley: IBM MobileFirst at Mobile World Congress 2016 ................................................................................................................... 9

• Gold Winner | Vodafone Group: Repositioning Vodafone as a Total Communications Provider ......................................................................................................................................... 11

Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience

• Diamond Winner | Avanade: Avanade Global Programs and Campaigns Help Drive Business Transformation—Internally and Externally ........................................................... 13

• Gold Winner | Optum: The Power of an Integrated Thought Leadership Content Marketing Strategy ..................................................................................................................... 15

Driving Business with Thought Leadership

• Diamond Winner | Cognizant: The Robot & I by Cognizant BPS .......................................... 17 • Gold Winner | Infosys: Amplifying Human Potential—Infosys at WEF’s Annual

Meeting 2016 ............................................................................................................................... 19 • Gold Winner | PwC: Consumer Intelligence Series ................................................................. 21

Enabling Sales for Deeper Customer Engagement

• Diamond Winner | IBM: Driving Transformation and Growth with IBM Client Value Plays............................................................................................................................................... 23

• Gold Winner | Dell Services: Sales Enablement—Dell Services ........................................... 25 Ensuring Customer Success

• Diamond Winner | Misys: Misys Connect & the Client Health Index ................................... 27 • Gold Winner | Cisco Systems: Enhance the Customer Experience with Lifecycle

Advantage .................................................................................................................................... 29 Increasing Marketing Agility to Maximize Impact

• Diamond Winner | PwC: Increasing Marketing Agility to Maximize Impact....................... 31 • Gold Winner | Cisco: Agile in Motion: Cisco C-Suite Thought Leadership & Marketing

Deliver Fresh Insights on a Rapid Cadence ............................................................................. 33 Small and Medium Businesses

• Diamond Winner | Accelya: REVERA Strategic Product Group—Taking Customer Collaboration to Next Level ...................................................................................................... 35

• Gold Winner | North Highland: Delivering on CX for North Highland ............................... 37

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© 2016 ITSMA. All rights reserved. 01


Juniper Networks | Diamond Winner Accelerating Growth with Account-Based Marketing

Using Thought Leadership to Open New Areas of Influence BUSINESS CHALLENGE Juniper’s customer is a multi-national provider of enterprise connectivity and IT services. The shift to a cloud first ecosystem and the emergence of new networking technologies based upon software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) was beginning to disrupt the provision of enterprise-focused networking solutions. Furthermore, the market for the core product of MPLS VPNs was forecast to decline due to price erosion and a saturation of the market. Recognizing the challenge facing the customer, Juniper identified its Cloud CPE solution as a perfect fit to help the customer respond to the business challenges it was facing. The Cloud CPE opportunity was recognized as the single biggest long-term growth opportunity with the customer, and that it could lead to a step change in the volume of Juniper business. However, existing sales efforts were stuck within technical teams and were seen as being a ‘science project.’ The challenge was therefore to introduce a sense of urgency within the customer and accelerate time to market. PROGRAM EXECUTION From the outset, Juniper recognized that this opportunity was different, as it required influencing a much wider range of stakeholders with the customer, many of them completely unknown to Juniper. Many of the new stakeholders were within the product management and marketing teams within the customer. These stakeholders had different challenges to the traditional influencers in technology and operations. It was decided that the ideal way to engage with these customers was via the Service Creation Program. This is centered around a series of workshops where the following areas are addressed:

1. Point of View on market trends and where the business value will arise from 2. Ideation of new services that are specifically tailored to the customer goals and existing business

constraints 3. Business modelling of the value generated from the proposed new services 4. Go to market support for product definition, messaging, and launch

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The unique approach of the Service Creation Program is best summarized by a quote from another Juniper customer:

“No other vendor has approached us with a similar model as Juniper. It really makes sense to analyse that space from a business perspective.” VP of Business Development, Juniper Customer

At the start of the campaign, a cross-functional team was brought together that included the sales team, the chief architect from Juniper for the account, the ABM lead, and additional marketing experts from the corporate team. Working together, the key influencers were mapped out and scored based upon existing understanding of the Juniper solutions. Through discussions with customers in the technology area, it was discovered that the product management teams had not identified the emerging need for a new service with the urgency that was required. Juniper framed the Service Creation Program as a way to build consensus that the market was being disrupted and the customer needed to gain a sense of urgency to launch new solutions. Juniper conducted a series of engagements with key stakeholders within the product management organization at the customer to build awareness and sell the idea of engaging in the Service Creation Program via a series of workshops. Over a period of around six months, it was possible to build the consensus and then deliver a series of workshops. Within these workshops, Juniper highlighted existing interoperability with other technology suppliers that needed to be part of the solution. Similar solutions being deployed by competitors to the customer were also referenced to illustrate that the market was already being disrupted and that the technology was mature enough to act now. BUSINESS RESULTS Following a successful series of workshops with the customer, they identified five new services that they would like to take to market. Four of the five services had the potential for a significant amount of Juniper technology within the solution. These services were then simplified in to a single new solution that combined many of them in a multi-vendor environment. Juniper developed a demo of the new solution that was first shown to the client’s CEO, before using it to influence other executives. The same demo is showcased by our customer at external events. The customer is currently in final evaluations of technology suppliers and is expected to launch a service to the market in the coming months.

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Adobe | Gold Winner Accelerating Growth with Account-Based Marketing

ABM Accelerates Growth at Adobe BUSINESS CHALLENGE In 2012, Adobe recognized that a digital transformation of the business landscape was going to impact how creatives, document managers, technologists, and marketers worked together to deliver the best possible customer experience: delivering timely, relevant information, via the right channel, at the ideal time, to the right person. To address this change and position Adobe as the best partner to make this goal possible for its customers, Adobe set a goal to transition its marketing and sales models from that of selling individual products, to one of a customer-centric, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach, dedicated to developing, selling, and implementing fully-integrated digital marketing platforms solutions. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Objectives of the Adobe Account-Based Marketing Program included:

• Bring greater value to Adobe customers by providing solutions that empower them to work more efficiently, effectively, and creatively; and by creating a community of peers that enhances their efforts through learning and networking.

• Increase Adobe understanding of customers, anticipate their needs, and develop more efficient solutions and processes that address those needs, thereby increasing market share/increased sales.

• Introduce new products, ideas, and processes that advance the field of digital marketing, at large.

PROGRAM EXECUTION Adobe rolled out an ABM-based approach in 2013 to a targeted group, Adobe’s Strategic Accounts. The program required sweeping change, including: new vision and goals, reorganization to enable cross-departmental cooperation, extensive internal and external education, innovation teams to improve processes and practices, new metrics for reward, measuring success, and more. At the core of Adobe’s ABM approach was a customer-centric, cross-organizational, enterprise-wide team that was devoted to the customer’s success. Teams included: product development, marketing and sales, systems integration, customer support and training groups, as well as financial and legal counsel. Adobe supported customers with a single Account Manager who was responsible for leveraging the combined efforts of all Adobe resources to maximize the success that the customer could achieve with Adobe solutions.

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Adobe also engaged its Marketing Operations organization to revamp its data reporting to incorporate full data analysis, modeling, and visualizations. With access to frequent, highly accurate, and easy-to-evaluate feedback on our sales and marketing efforts, Adobe could be far more strategic, nimble, and successful in its ABM approach. Adobe rolled out a full complement of 100+ marketing activities, ranging from 1-to-1 engagements, to 1-to-few vehicles, to 1-to-many programs. These yielded greater understanding and helped establish valuable relationships between Adobe and its customers, as well as among members of the Strategic Accounts community. Adobe was uniquely positioned in the industry to lead an ABM-based approach, given its breadth of products to assemble into integrated platform solutions. Our program execution emphasized:

• A commitment to customer-centric solutions (A focus on mutual success). • Industry insight and vision (Astute strategists and leaders). • A willingness to move swiftly (Strong course of action and aggressive goals). • Re-aligning company resources and processes (Solid implementation plan). • Agility and flexibility (A workforce that embraced change and challenge). • Monitoring and measuring the results (Innovative analytics and rigorous reporting). • A commitment to continuous improvement (Benchmarking, testing, adjusting). • Alignment with the company’s mission. (To offer solutions that empower everyone—from

emerging artists to global brands—to bring digital creations to life and deliver them to the right person at the right moment for the best results.

BUSINESS RESULTS From 2013–2016, Adobe achieved significant improvements in sales, market share, and customer satisfaction:

• Solutions per Customer 2013–2015 20% increase • Customer Satisfaction Improvement 2013–2015 20% increase • Share of Wallet 2013–2015 30% increase • Percentage of Top 20 Adobe Deals 2015 (Deal Size) 80% • Retention/Renewal Rates 2015 90% • Revenue Growth from 2013–2015 1,400% • Retention and renewal rates average 90%

Adobe’s innovative marketing program is being benchmarked and scaled in a roll out to broader teams within Adobe, laying a foundation that will benefit Adobe colleagues and customers on a global basis for years to come. With its transition to a new business model, Adobe also raised the bar in the industry, introducing more customized, effective, and efficient ways of doing business. In this manner, Adobe’s efforts serve to advance the fields of digital marketing, digital media, and digital communications.

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Fujitsu | Gold Winner Accelerating Growth with Account-Based Marketing

Accelerating Growth with ABM BUSINESS CHALLENGE Fujitsu lacked mindshare in the European media sector, so when one of the world’s largest broadcasters signaled its intention to rethink its IT service provision, it represented both a huge opportunity and an enormous challenge. Our relationship with the broadcaster was minimal and restricted to technology teams. The broadcaster’s executives lacked awareness of Fujitsu’s brand, expertise, and innovation in media. The challenge was to create an ‘unmissable’ story that could win mindshare and disrupt the existing relationship. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Starting from scratch we needed to build:

• Insights—And intelligence for a holistic view of the broadcaster, building over 100 new contacts and understanding their roles

• Messaging—Aligning Fujitsu’s value with the broadcaster’s key digital themes • Communications—A suite of content, thought leadership, and campaigns built specifically for

the broadcaster and delivered through the most appropriate channels • Opportunities—Accelerating immediate sales pursuits with bid marketing support

And most important was building the team and ensuring that Sales and Marketing were working together. PROGRAM EXECUTION By bringing an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach to the challenge, and by appointing ABM specialists Momentum, Fujitsu was able to get ‘under the skin’ of the broadcaster in a rigorous way. Not just about market sector knowledge or, indeed, organisation-specific knowledge, ABM seeks to understand the individuals within the customer organisation who really matter. We identified key decision makers and decision makers that took us beyond the technology and networks teams and into the C-suite and the all-important governance board that acted as an intermediary between the broadcaster and policy makers. There could be no strategic dialogue without first identifying key stakeholders and their needs.

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We united the sales, marketing, and account management teams behind a common set of objectives and a consistent story for the broadcaster. By understanding the customer context, marketing can better support sales by, for example, backing up on-the-ground conversations with social media activity. We defined longer-term strategic goals for the broadcaster and accelerated immediate sales opportunities by supporting our sales team’s pre-bid and tender work for three major transformation projects. As a result of the insights and messaging, the three tender responses were united by a common set of themes. This was backed by a visual design that mirrored the broadcaster’s digital drive and reinforced Fujitsu’s broader strategic message. Such an approach broke new ground. We implemented an ABM strategy for the broadcaster. It was designed to disrupt the status quo of the existing relationship and prove our value as a strategic partner. Through a combination of desk research, market analysis, and internal account workshops, we undertook a deep-dive into the broadcaster for a holistic view of its key functions, pain points, and strategy. Fujitsu’s generic campaigns and communications were individualized to the customer and supported the messaging of the ABM campaign. We grew social engagement through campaigns across Twitter, LinkedIn, and our blog. This gave key members of our team a voice on the top-of-mind themes for the broadcaster, reinforcing their industry credentials. In addition to digital communications, relevant industry events attended by the broadcaster’s key personnel were identified and targeted. These events gave our team rare opportunities to meet the broadcaster’s senior decision makers and opened up the door for follow-up conversations. Hosting a talent event for apprentices and graduates helped underscore the broadcaster’s and Fujitsu’s shared brand values. We support the customer’s CSR initiatives and have been highly engaged in providing technical support, as a business sponsor, to help them deliver a consistent service. By identifying the right channels to engage the customer, we ensure we are delivering the right message to the right people and it is being received. BUSINESS RESULTS The ABM campaign helped Fujitsu win a place on a Framework agreement with the customer and we are seen as a strategic supplier. Fujitsu has also been shortlisted on two further deals. And, from a position of not being known to the customer, we now have a great relationship and have regular C-level conversations.

“The success of this campaign is proof that when sales and marketing are aligned, great things can happen.”

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HCL Technologies | Diamond Winner Building Brand Differentiation

GetAJob@HCLTech—Becoming India’s Most Preferred Millennial Employer BUSINESS CHALLENGE HCL Technologies Ltd., the $7 billion Global IT enterprise, was competing for Tech talent in the crowded, undifferentiated Indian IT services industry. Employer branding expert Universum’s annual study on most attractive employers among Indian campus students highlighted an alarming fall in HCL’s rankings as a career destination year on year (#8 in 2012 to #48 in the 2015 study for technology institutes, #24 in 2013 to #78 in 2015 for business schools). While this downward trend was also observed for our competitors in the IT services sector, they did not mimic the rapid fall in the rankings. It was also impacting the cost of talent acquisition significantly, where the top talent found no differentiation besides the compensation packages. This was a cause of concern, as HCL is an organization of millennials with over 75% of our employees being under the age of 35. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE HCL decided to turn the tide by partnering with LinkedIn and iconic youth brand MTV as part of their reality show, GetAJob—where top brands give talent a shot at exciting jobs/internships. Aspirants for the jobs/internships are supposed to apply using their LinkedIn profiles. The shortlisted candidates are required to make a minute-long video elevator pitch. The top five shortlisted candidates then move on to a televised selection episode at the employer’s premises, which is aired on MTV India. With a dedicated HCL episode on primetime, it was a great avenue to reach out to and engage with the millennial talent. HCL sought to emerge as the most innovative and preferred employer among participating brands through a digital marketing campaign, as well as expose our differentiated employee value proposition to the MTV generation. PROGRAM EXECUTION We designed a common campaign theme of “GET THERE.” For aspirants to internship profile, it referred to the internship at Manchester. For our employees evangelizing the internship on social media, we gave them a chance to be on MTV as one of the panelists during HCL’s episode. We also created a compelling internship profile by leveraging our association as Official Digital Partner with the world’s No.1 sporting franchise, Manchester United, and provided an all-expenses paid trip to Manchester. The internship

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profile saw the winning intern work with the digital marketing and brand team to come up with innovative campaigns to harness our relationship with one of the world’s most iconic brands. A 360o digital marketing campaign across social media and digital channels to reach the digital natives was launched. Besides directly engaging with talent through official social channels, we engaged our 100,000 strong employee force to spread the word through the internal contest. The employees had to serve as an employer brand ambassador on social media, spreading the word about HCL’s internship profile to their respective networks, in the process referring aspirants to apply for us. We engaged the aspirants by remarketing to candidates applying on our career section through mails, an Instagram-only contest for B-school students, and a social referral contest where we targeted Manchester United fans to spread the word about the internship to their friends on Facebook/Twitter, with the chance to win jerseys signed by Manchester United legends. Special video content featuring Manchester United legend Bryan Robson was created to encourage applicants to apply (36.5 K views). An exclusive video of VJ Gaelyn, the host of the show, was promoted, asking aspirants to apply for our profile (25 K views). A Twitter roundtable on social recruitment was held, featuring HCL’s CHRO, which we leveraged to inform about our GetAJob profile. Influencer marketing (Tweet chats, PR coverage) also helped increase awareness of our offering. BUSINESS RESULTS

• HCL emerged as most preferred employer by receiving 35% of unique applicants (i.e., 22,016 applications) applying for our profile

• 87 million digital impressions were generated, out of which 27 million impressions were generated by HCL employees

• 12,900 employees participated in full zeal in the internal campaign—highest employee participation ever for HCL

• 1,000+ more applications received than the 2nd highest employer • HCL was the only company to be aired on MTV twice

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IBM | Gold Winner Building Brand Differentiation

#Crushing it Globally and Mobiley: IBM MobileFirst at Mobile World Congress 2016 BUSINESS CHALLENGE IBM MobileFirst wanted to raise the visibility of IBM Mobile Solutions at Mobile World Congress (MWC), a top global industry event of nearly 100K attendees. As any marketer knows, the challenge at trade shows is not just standing out, but convincing attendees to make room in their packed schedules to spend some precious time with your brand. While an engaging in-person experience with attendees is critical at MWC, creating a digital event experience is equally essential to overall performance. In fact, MWC attracts a strong digital following, and IBM had a great opportunity in 2016 to engage with previously untapped audiences. With hundreds of thousands of people around the world watching live-stream and recorded videos of speaker presentations and panels, there was a high bar for our content to stand out. ‘Virtual attendees’ offered a much larger target and they actively join social media conversations about topics raised at the event. According to theMarketingblog, the hashtag for the prior year’s conference, #MWC15, received almost 450,000 mentions on Twitter. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE IBM MobileFirst’s objective at MWC was two-fold: motivate hundreds of busy senior level business leaders to attend IBM’s half-day deep-dive expo session on mobile innovation and create a unique digital experience for clients and prospects around the globe who were not attending the event. We needed to fill the room, and fill the marketing funnel. The marketing team wanted to create a digital experience during the event that would uniquely convey IBM’s core message of ‘business in motion.’ This experience was meant to ‘live the message’ by creating a unique sharable moment for clients and influencers. PROGRAM EXECUTION Phase One—Planning: Six months prior to the start of the event, the team began an agile marketing process with a collaborative cross-functional team representing event planning, content writing, graphic design, web site development, marketing automation, video production, social media, press and analyst relations, and sales enablement.

Phase Two—Execution: Beyond an engaging experience in the expo center, IBM MobileFirst’s presence at MWC included a half-day session, featuring client speakers from top international banks, airlines, and

http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2015/04/mobile-world-congress-2015-%E2%80%93-mapping-twitter-conversation�

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sporting events. Throughout the duration of MWC, the team actively maintained a digital surround—sharing their experience through live engagement with social media. The team also worked with our agency partners, most notably Ogilvy, to uniquely engage influencers and analysts deeply in the brand experience. The team created the ‘Mobile Ideas Cab,’ a branded minivan navigating the streets of Barcelona that brought to life the core campaign message of ‘business in motion.’ The team invited mobile experts, influencers, and clients to share their expertise and thought leadership in the cab, ultimately resulting in a series of videos. The videos connected the experts attending MWC with our digital audience and generated conversations on social media. BUSINESS RESULTS As a result of this integrated campaign approach, the IBM MobileFirst brand stood out at the event and the half-day session successfully attracted a full room. Additional results included:

• The focus on a robust digital presence with high production value video led to a 70% increase in new client contacts year over year.

• We also increased video views by almost 500% year over year, with well-crafted investments in both organic and paid media applied to the campaign to ensure continued success long after our expo center booth was closed.

• The MWC site landing page received more than 3,000 visits with an engagement rate that substantially beat benchmarks.

• There were over 14K Twitter mentions of #IBMMobile and @IBMMobile, and over 2,000 retweets. The campaign drove more than 100 new videos, presentations, and social assets for sellers and marketers to use throughout the year, with a majority focused on client speakers.

• Content created from the ‘Mobile Ideas Cab’ received record clicks for the conference and was featured on the top page of ibm.com for the week, adding substantially to our growing digital retargeting pool.

• The digital event surround generated a pool of tens of thousands of prospects that visited our thought leadership papers and perspectives on mobile, which we then retargeted with messages for MobileFirst.

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Vodafone Group | Gold Winner Building Brand Differentiation

Repositioning Vodafone as a Total Communications Provider BUSINESS CHALLENGE Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and one of the world’s leading brands in the consumer market. Its global reach and strong local presence stem from mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. With its traditional business-facing rapid commoditization, the company wanted to become a leading player in the converging market for business communications and IT services. This called for a comprehensive overhaul of how it marketed to business customers, from large corporations to single-owner enterprises. Vodafone realized it had to shift perception that it was mainly a tactical supplier of mobile services and reposition itself as a strategic provider, able to help business customers fully exploit the potential of communications to deliver sustainable competitive advantage. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE The new program had to support multiple objectives:

• Build awareness of what Vodafone already offered the business community • Change perceptions and position Vodafone as a strategic partner • Drive interest, leads, and sales • Integrate and align global marketing, brand, and sales

The new marketing platform had to appeal to business customers across the board, from large, international businesses to Vodafone’s extensive small business base. Positioning itself as a leading global total communications supplier by unifying 20 semi-autonomous operating companies around a common approach meant developing an approach that could be recognizable globally, but still support local flexibility to achieve brand consistency in marketing to business customers and deliver relevant messages. Ultimately, the new marketing had to make a difference to sales.

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PROGRAM EXECUTION The execution focused on three key areas: 1. Understand what customers want. The first stage was to carry out a large piece of multinational research that identified what kept business customers awake at night. What emerged was the idea of “readiness.” This concept clearly resonated with key decision makers, which was then refined to create Ready Business. 2. Build a marketing platform with consistency, creativity, and flexibility. Consistency Underpinning the platform is an integrated content marketing framework based on a standardized approach to encourage new customer conversations across the buyer journey. The emphasis is on aligning core trends across the business and developing consistent points of view on topics targeted at customers in businesses of all sizes. Creativity Vodafone Enterprise has detailed guidelines for the look and content of the new platform. This includes striking imagery, an end-to-end messaging hierarchy, and campaign design and structure, along with blueprints for individual campaigns. The focus of the platform is to use case studies to tell stories of how Vodafone has helped customers create value for their businesses from instantly recognisable brands to small local businesses. Flexibility Recognising the diverse nature of Vodafone’s markets, the platform was designed with enough flexibility to allow local markets to bring their own local creativity without compromising the overall consistency. 3. Implement an integrated, collaborative rollout. The campaign was first rolled out in 12 months to 20 markets, in countries with a wide array of marketing tools, from high-level advertising through to digital, social media, sales tools, and sales training. The Group team worked with key markets to help refine the concept and ensure its relevance. The speed of global deployment showed the success of the collaborative approach. BUSINESS RESULTS The commitment to the more strategic, content-led approach has paid off significantly in terms of brand awareness and consideration, with awareness increasing in 50% of markets and consideration increasing in over 60%. The concept has captured the interest of customers, with over 3.7 million visits to Ready Business content online, and over 110,000 customers completing the online assessment tool, the Ready Business Index. These successes of Ready Business have secured its future; work is underway to develop the platform further to drive even more relevance to Vodafone’s customer base.

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Avanade | Diamond Winner Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience

Avanade Global Programs and Campaigns Help Drive Business Transformation BUSINESS CHALLENGE Avanade’s Global Programs and Campaigns structure was launched three years ago as part of a marketing effectiveness plan to bring all our regions under a single, focused go-to-market approach for greater business impact. The campaigns enable our sales team to focus on client business issues rather than purely on technology. The success of this approach was a key factor in our leadership’s decision to transform the company to better align with those key client issues. That involved moving away from our technology service lines—not an easy shift, but essential to helping achieve our vision of being the leading digital innovator. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Change of this magnitude doesn’t happen overnight. As the company shifted to the new model, the campaigns also needed to evolve and align to our new organization and offerings. Our strategy included market and persona research, and evaluation and realignment of everything from messaging to content to channel strategy. PROGRAM EXECUTION As the business transformed, we took stock of our four global campaigns that were in market. Working with stakeholders, we chose to continue the two that had the strongest results. However, we decided to use the findings from our persona research to evolve those two campaigns and provide the field with new opportunities to generate demand for our new related offerings. We merged the other two campaigns and lifted the messaging to focus on IT buyer issues in a new campaign. The objective is to drive strategic conversations with IT leaders to help address their business issues and open the door for new sales opportunities in the areas of cloud and technology services. We worked with our stakeholders to take the campaigns forward. We identified client issues, how Avanade can help address them, our proof points and references, and key audiences.

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Once the messaging was established, we focused on our content strategy to ensure we had the right assets for our field to activate each campaign and maintain nurture flows. As with the messaging, content needed to align with our new structure and offerings. We then identified the appropriate channels to reach the right audiences. Our strategy included digital channels, especially social, as well as events, direct mail, and partners. Social media is a key focus for us. Our integrated multichannel social strategy includes content syndication, TweetChats, webinars, YouTube, blogs, and paid social. Events are also an important element of our campaign strategy, enabling us to extend our messaging to a wider audience. We use events to showcase innovative solution demos that reinforce our campaigns and related offerings. Central to the campaigns are the email nurture streams. Electronic mailers highlight key messages and link to a variety of campaign assets, including infographics, video webisodes, interactive story presentations, and thought leadership. We also incorporated a bit of direct mail as a contrast to the digital tactics. We added a new focus on market triggers that have the potential to drive short-term wins. These triggers are identified by the field when speaking with clients and get us closer to immediate client issues and, ultimately, faster to lead. Once the messaging, content, and channel plans were in place, we conducted a series of briefings for field marketers. Recurring calls keep the field marketers and our business units up to speed on new developments with the campaigns. Perhaps the most important, and challenging, aspect of our strategy was sales enablement. We implemented an education plan that included regional sales briefings and virtual training sessions via our Avanade University. BUSINESS RESULTS The success of our campaigns is due to several factors: flexibility, focus on the audience, collaboration with stakeholders, innovative approaches, and best-practice guidance. These factors have helped drive year-over-year improvement against metrics like sales and pipeline influenced. The qualitative benefits are also clear. Noted an Avanade senior director: “We are now able to shift traditional conversations about systems and infrastructure to actual digital process innovation discussions, positioning Avanade as a trusted adviser.” Now that our new business structure is in place and our campaigns are fully activated, we will continue to evolve to ensure we remain out in front in helping to deliver results in our transformed organization.

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Optum | Gold Winner Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience

The Power of an Integrated Thought Leadership Content Marketing Strategy BUSINESS CHALLENGE Optum’s advanced data and analytics solutions were well established among insurers in 2013, but the company wanted providers to have the same brand and product awareness. To address this, Optum developed an integrated Thought Leadership Content (TLC) marketing strategy that focuses on creating, supporting, and promoting persona-based content that Optum knows its audiences consider valuable. The TLC strategy ultimately led to the development of a 140-plus page integrated content marketing eBook that documents unified, multi-level campaign strategies, step-by-step processes, resources, and shared vocabulary for content marketing. This best-practice guide is the foundation upon which ongoing, multi-channel marketing campaigns are built. The eBook defines Optum’s content and lead-nurture machines, both of which leverage Optum’s extensive content library. This integrated approach led to creation of multiple content marketing campaigns that support one another and drive recipients to additional information:

• Game Changer—Centers on data/analytics to win the population health management game • #5in5—Experts answer five questions about health information topics in five minutes • Journey Executive Lead Nurturing (ELN)—Capabilities organizations should perfect on the

journey from volume- to value-based care • RISK MATTERS—Quarterly publication (print and digital) sharing provider executive insights on

the shift to risk-based business models PROGRAM OBJECTIVE The TLC strategy, which has evolved over the course of three years, now supports multiple campaigns that tell the Optum Provider story using thought leadership and sales materials aligned with their mapped buyer journey. Once the campaign messages are developed, the marketing team creates white papers, infographics, playbooks, case studies, collateral, and other content deliverables as premiums to support the campaigns. That content is used as the basis for supplemental content, including blog posts and other social media, podcasts, emails, web, and sales support materials. This supplemental information promotes the source content and generates new leads while also feeding Optum’s multiple lead nurture tracks. All marketing processes are standardized using Optum’s TLC integrated content marketing strategy eBook. It documents step-by-step processes, resources, and a

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shared vocabulary. With proven success in the Optum Provider segment, the eBook is now being used by all Optum segments as the best-practice resource to help the entire marketing organization adopt this proven integrated content marketing approach. PROGRAM EXECUTION With the TLC strategy as the foundation, Optum developed and is currently running several impactful, integrated marketing campaigns that consistently engage prospects/customers with relevant information: Game Changer achieves two goals: establish itself as a thought leader in population health and persuade its audience to turn to Optum for solutions. This campaign tells the story of how to use data and analytics to win at the game of population health management. #5in5 is a large-scale, long-term integrated content marketing campaign focused on topics that the Optum provider market is interested in: analytics, value-based care, and risk enablement. At its core, #5in5 is a content campaign, so information must not only be relevant, but its delivery must be timely, continuous, consistent, and mobile-friendly. Every week, a new #5in5 episode goes live. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are the primary social outlets. Journey ELN introduces a point-of-view that speaks to the pressures health care providers face and then swiftly convert and connect Optum capabilities to their specific needs, thus generating qualified leads for existing campaigns. RISK MATTERS is a quarterly publication that contains articles and expert opinion on managing risk. Health care leaders are provided information to help them ask tough questions about their organization’s risk capabilities. The magazine is targeted to executives with oversight of leadership, payer relationships, provider networks, care delivery, and operations. It is distributed through email, at trade shows, and via secondary promotions. BUSINESS RESULTS Game Changer:

• Open rates = 89%; Click through rates = 15% • More than 5,800 prospects downloaded Moneyball Analytics eBook • More than 5M impressions

#5in5:

• Web/form submit activity: 16,210 #5in5 page views, 1,800 clicks, 1,131 downloads and 229 form submits (new leads)—average 3.5 minutes spent on site

• Organic email activity: 164,000 emails, 23,000 opens, 14% open rate, 1% click-through rate Journey ELN:

• 5,547 targeted prospect inquiries in three months • Page visitors downloaded information 34% of the time

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Cognizant | Diamond Winner Driving Business with Thought Leadership

The Robot & I by Cognizant BPS BUSINESS CHALLENGE Cognizant’s thrust into the RPA arena began in 2014, when news trackers began picking up on RPA as a growing focus for cost cutting and revenue generation among numerous horizontal industries. Cognizant’s survey supporting “The Robot & I” campaign established a credible foundation on which our BPS group could begin meaningful conversations with prospective clients in the banking, insurance, and healthcare payer industries. Because we had done our homework, we knew the business problems and opportunities our prospects faced. One of Cognizant’s top goals was to gain a “Top 5” leadership position in RPA, as measured by analyst reports. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE “The Robot & I” represented a departure from the norm. It was an intentional thought leadership piece created to differentiate Cognizant as the go-to source for RPA services, wrapped in an integrated marketing campaign aimed directly at a narrow group of prospects we had identified as ripe for harvest. “The Robot & I” campaign provided deep penetration into our core constituency. It effectively hit a nerve with pinpoint accuracy, as evidenced by the overwhelming influx of qualified leads resulting in a major business win. PROGRAM EXECUTION While “The Robot & I” proved to be a novel way of talking about our RPA offerings, the real innovation behind this campaign is our core approach to RPA transformation. From this platform, our “Robot & I” marketing message gained credibility and strength. The gamification ingredient we included in our event experience drew large crowds on the chance to “Beat the Robot” at process performance games, because it was creative and credible. “The Robot & I” campaign presented a full-court press on the target audience. Its genesis was born of our survey and whitepaper, and its timing centered on the IAOP, SSON, and IRPA industry events, featuring our gamification “Beat the Robot” challenge. In and around these events, we planned wave-based emails, a cold-calling campaign to set up 1:1 meetings with event attendees, a series of online videos, social media on Twitter and LinkedIn, plus a spin-off article and infographic to draw sustained attention, build interest, create desire, and connect us with interested prospects.

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Perhaps the most critical ingredient in our success was our Cognizant sales team, giving a face to the campaign. Before, during, and after the launch, they stirred the pot, fueled the pipeline, fielded questions, and engaged with prospects at length. Throughout the campaign, we issued more than 1,000 tweets and LinkedIn shares, expanding the media wave. Our Perspectives article and infographic kept the buzz going; it scored more than 2,000 views alone. What’s more, our follow-up videos, featuring Rob Brown, our whitepaper author, scored another 6,000 views over the following weeks, giving “The Robot & I” top-of-mind awareness among our target audience and creating the momentum our sales teams needed to set appointments and close deals. BUSINESS RESULTS The following metrics were used to gauge the impact of “The Robot & I” campaign:

• Whitepaper Views: 23,863 • Downloads: 6,878 • Tweets: 1,119 • LinkedIn Shares: 1,295 • Video Views: 5,761 • # of New Business Contacts: 300+ New Target Contacts • 26,000 Emails with 2,700 Opens and 30 Downloads • # of Leads: 20 • # of Opportunities: 5 with Potential of $150M+ in Total Contract Value (TCV)

In addition, the campaign netted one significant win with a large financial institution, totaling $70M in TCV for Cognizant, with an additional opportunity to expand the deal in excess of $300M over time.

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Infosys | Gold Winner Driving Business with Thought Leadership

Amplifying Human Potential—Infosys at WEF’s Annual Meeting 2016 BUSINESS CHALLENGE As the most influential gathering of business and political leaders in the world, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting that takes place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, is renowned for influencing everything from public policy to corporate investment decisions and job creation initiatives. The major focus of WEF’s 2016 Annual Meeting was the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a theme close to the heart of the new strategy and direction of Infosys. Infosys needed to compete with the political, economic, and business agendas of the conference, whilst using it as a milestone to signify a change in strategy, and a shift in brand perception to that of a next-generation services company. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Infosys needed to deliver a campaign that would insert the brand into the highest levels of influence, within a crowded event dominated by long-established players. This goal had to be met despite constant scrutiny of Davos themes and discussions by a global audience of media, influencers, and leaders of industry. Key objectives were to:

• Enhance the perception of Infosys as a global next-generation services company, anchored in the vision of creating a better future for humanity, through technology and education

• Create a recognizable and visible platform for Infosys with a physical destination • Enable a higher number of quality connects with customers, prospects, influencers, and the

media PROGRAM EXECUTION Infosys conducted the program in collaboration with several organizations, including the World Economic Forum, leading global think tank Future Foundation, and global communications agency LEWIS. The three main tracks were:

• Content and positioning: A thought leadership programme based on bespoke research, Amplifying Human Potential: Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

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• Onsite presence: Enhanced brand visibility on the ground at a new Infosys venue, which included a technology showcase, digital promotion of the research and assets, and executive hospitality including CxO engagements and private events

• Amplification and engagement: Media engagement pre-, during, and post-Davos; digital promotion; social media engagement; proactive customer and prospect targeting

Infosys participated in several major platforms as part of the official WEF program, using the Amplifying Human Potential research to provide the narrative, and enabling it to actively shape discussion throughout the event. These included Dr. Vishal Sikka’s participation in the main event plenary, The Promise of Progress, and the first joint media launch for Infosys with WEF, Educating the Masters of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with a live global audience of 1,700+. The research sampled 1,000 16 to 25 year olds in 8 markets. Global influencers were also interviewed, including Rick Goings, Chairman & CEO, Tupperware Brands Corporation, and Dr. Peter Hirst (MBE), Associate Dean for Executive Education, MIT Sloan School of Management. The central piece of content was a 20-page report, from which multiple assets were created, including a microsite, videos, infographic, and customer communications. Report data was made available to media, used for example in The Financial Times. BUSINESS RESULTS

• Media and influencer engagement: 300+ pieces of coverage and 13 media engagements in Davos, including The Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, Fortune, Handelsblatt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Frankfurter Allgemiene Zeitung; with broadcast media covering WEF, including CNBC, ETNow, NDTV, and CCTV. The research was used by the Financial Times as the backdrop to a Connected Businesses report entitled “Education struggles to provide millennials with right tech skills.” The BBC reported on the Infosys approach to Davos in a piece titled “This is where the real deals at Davos are done.”

• Digital engagement: A social media campaign targeted influencers, clients, and prospects and drove users to assets on a dedicated microsite. This resulted in 1.5 million impressions, 250 engagements on LinkedIn, 4,000 engagements on Twitter, and 3,000 highly qualified visitors to the microsite.

• Client and prospect engagement: The highest number of CxO meetings with clients and prospect companies to date for Infosys, with over 40% at CEO/Chairman level. Three private events were held, attracting 400+ customers, prospects, and influencers.

• New business: A significant amount of new business has since been won as a result of conversations that started in Davos, as well a number of new CXO-level relationships.

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PwC | Gold Winner Driving Business with Thought Leadership

Consumer Intelligence Series BUSINESS CHALLENGE PwC is seeking to be recognized by C-Suite executives as a thought leader, but has been historically less well known in this regard. Concurrently, thought leadership within the B2B space is becoming ubiquitous. Too often, it can be dry and boring, too dense to read, lack detailed implications, based on fluff, or simply a series of opinion-based blog posts. Additionally, differentiation within the category is challenging as many competitors offer many of the same services, so PwC knew it was time to push its thought leadership capabilities further. PwC’s “Consumer Intelligence Series” thus took on the goal of establishing the firm’s expertise in new business areas to improve the firm’s reputation in the strategic advisory space. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE PwC built out a content platform called the “PwC Consumer Intelligence Series” (CIS) that included four major content streams, along with marketing campaigns for each, over the course of twelve months. Our primary target audience was “Business Decision Makers” (BDMs) in large organizations across divisions. To understand where the PwC brand stood with this audience, PwC conducted an in-depth review of PwC and competitors to increase brand strength and differentiation. This led to the following driving target insight for the CIS initiative: “Show, don’t tell.” We learned that simply talking about PwC’s brainpower or strategic capabilities was not enough for our busy and skeptical audience. PwC needed to prove that they are thought leaders by uncovering new “aha’s” about important topics with high pay-off implications. These BDMs were particularly intrigued by the idea of grounding content in high quality empirical data—in this case, consumer research consisting of qualitative, quantitative, and online listening—rather than opinion. PROGRAM EXECUTION Executed in a way that was consistent with our target insight—this includes both the topics we picked, basing our findings on empirical evidence, the way we conducted our research, and how we served up the findings—we analyzed:

• “The Wearable Future,” a deep dive into consumers’ growing fascinating with wearable technology.

• “Videoquake,” a look at consumers’ changing relationship with TV viewing. • “The Sharing Economy,” an investigation into consumer views of collaborative consumption. • “Bonfire of the Brands,” a fifteen-year study on consumer attitudes towards brand leadership.

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Each topic was grounded in a report accompanied by infographics and a brief animated video asset. For each report, we created a custom content strategy that would reach our target audiences through: public relations, digital, online video, and live events. BUSINESS RESULTS The program worked. There were nearly 300 unique stories in the press, such as Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek; 10x the average PwC social media engagement; and over 35 million impressions. The program was an important contributor in helping increase PwC’s “Brand Strength” score among business decision makers by over 20%. And just as importantly, PwC partners used the content to help develop significant new engagements and solidify existing client relationships. As a result of the success, the program was expanded this year to cover more topics, to use new research tools, and to span across territories.

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IBM | Diamond Winner Enabling Sales for Deeper Customer Engagement

Driving Transformation and Growth with IBM Client Value Plays BUSINESS CHALLENGE IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) faced a major growth challenge and in 2015 launched a new transformation agenda around three principles: 1) share a compelling vision for our clients, 2) innovate a superior method of working, and 3) be the most motivated expert workforce in the industry. The Client Value Play (CVP) program transformed GTS’ sales focus and approach to customer engagement with targeted messaging, improved teaming, and innovative education material and tools. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE The CVP program is a seller enablement approach to create customer conversations around technology-driven business innovation. The program focuses on six IBM service lines, or ‘plays,’ that support a customer’s infrastructure technology needs: Cloud, Systems, Networking, Resiliency, Mobility, and Security. For each service line, the CVP program:

• Prioritizes our service offerings on IT issues that matter most to clients • Drives a focus on next quarter pipeline development • Unites sales and marketing to work in concert for business development • Promotes continuous improvement through analytics, collaboration, and best practices

PROGRAM EXECUTION The CVP program is executed through six levers:

1. Portfolio Planning and Sales Tactic Development: Priority offerings are defined quarterly and sales tactics—a predefined set of actions, supporting assets, and marketing activities—are created to generate new opportunities for those offerings.

2. Seller Education and Assets: A multi-faceted educational approach and tools drive offering knowledge and sales tactic use. • Education: Online curricula and face-to-face workshops enable sellers to understand the

priority services offerings, sales tactics, and their alignment to business imperatives.

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• Mobile Application: The ‘Conversations’ mobile tool provides sellers with on-demand access to education materials, videos, door openers, client references, competitive information, and more.

• Sales Portal: The CVP program is fully integrated into the IBM sales portal, where sellers can access comprehensive CVP seller execution guides for each CVP.

3. Routes to Market: The CVP addresses the unique needs of different seller teams, including face-to-face sellers, digital sellers, and business partners.

4. Communications: CVP program communications drive change management through updates, best practices, and brand identity.

5. Performance Marketing: Demand generation campaigns are developed to align with CVP offerings and sales tactics.

6. Program Management and Analysis: The other 5 levers come together through the program management system, which has three primary activities: • Align cross-functional and geographical teams to drive pipeline results. • Support each of IBM’s seven major geographies to create a next quarter pipeline plan using

the sales tactics. • Develop analytics to measure program and sales tactic effectiveness, by service line and

geography, to assess performance results and identify issues for resolution. Collaboration is essential to the program’s success and involves ownership and joint execution across multiple groups, including 1) sales and marketing disciplines, 2) global and local geography teams, and 3) different route to market sales organizations. Finally, execution simplicity is critical in order to capture the sellers’ attention and engagement. “Keeping it simple” drove everything from clarity around strategic intent to the development of easy-to-use tools and assets, the on-demand nature of education, and the alignment of a global management system with local processes. BUSINESS RESULTS Next Quarter Pipeline Attainment. The primary program success metric is Factored Pipeline (FP)—a percent-based algorithm that calculates whether there is sufficient pipeline to meet the signings target for that quarter. When the program first launched, the FP for the next quarter was 79% of target signings. However, FP for the next three quarters exceeded 100% of target signings. Strong pipeline has translated into signings growth—a core business challenge. IBM GTS signings grew 1% (yty) in 2015 and 2% (yty) for 1Q 2016. (Source: IBM Annual & Quarterly Reports) Seller Education Completion Rates. CVP online education was deployed to all GTS and cross-IBM sellers with 100% completion. This translates into more than 12,000 hours of completed training in just 2.5 months. Global sales and marketing consistency. The program has driven greater execution consistency through the use of globally-developed sales tactics. When the geography teams created their first CVP plans, collectively 63% of new pipeline was coming from global sales tactics (vs. local sales tactics). Today, global sales tactics are driving 92% of new pipeline.

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Dell Services | Gold Winner Enabling Sales for Deeper Customer Engagement

Sales Enablement—Dell Services BUSINESS CHALLENGE The Dell Services executive leadership team set a goal to grow revenue at a multiple of the industry. This created a unique opportunity for marketing to play a significantly larger role in driving revenue and structuring an organization, approach, and investments aligned to this goal. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE To stay true to our customer-focused culture, marketing and sales continued to refine its approach for the evolving customer journey. We made significant investments in sales training, marketing training, technology, and processes to enhance direct sales enablement, to foster a deeper understanding of the customer path, and to build in-house expertise in emerging technology. PROGRAM EXECUTION To enable our objectives, we identified three areas of focus: (1) stronger sales and marketing alignment; (2) agile marketing; and (3) technology investments and marketing process enhancements.

(1) Sales and Marketing Alignment With the strengthening of an industry oriented go-to-market motion, marketing quickly aligned to the new priorities by first resourcing industry marketing teams and operationalizing adjacent functions to support the new sales motion. A comprehensive sales and marketing training approach was then developed to deepen the understanding the customer, better identify customer needs, and better align to the customer buying journey. We engaged several external vendors to help with this process. Starting in 2015, we trained more than 600 sellers worldwide on a common approach to the sales cycle, aligning front line sellers and sales specialists to the customer buyer’s journey. Marketing too was included in this training to ensure the marketing motion best supported the sales motion. Concurrently, marketing made additional investments in front line capabilities, by increasing its capacity and capability for Account-Based Marketing and by executing an impactful CXO thought leadership program.

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(2) Agile Marketing Marketing invested in agile training for its team. Over the course of a week, 60+ marketers refined content marketing techniques optimizing inbound marketing for blogs, videos, eBooks, webinars, and other forms of content marketing to attract qualified prospects. Equally as important, the agile methodology increased cross-functional collaboration for rapid iterations and response to campaign response and market changes. (3) Technology Investments and Process Enhancements To mobilize sales with an even more focused conversation with the customer, an investment was made in lead nurture and marketing automation technology, internal tools to project sales probability for target accounts, digital tools for web analytics and content management, CRM process enhancements, and an industry-leading approach to optimize sales: customer engagement with every marketing program. Marketing also tightened its alignment with key sales metrics, focusing on pipeline and won revenue as its primary objectives, further galvanizing the marketing team and building deeper partnership with sales.

BUSINESS RESULTS As a result of the marketing program enhancements and alignment to the sales strategy, we drove significant, material contribution to the business with well over $1B of annual pipeline generated and numerous strategic wins at both existing and new logo accounts. Training programs have contributed to an increase in revenue and helped to improve our win rates by ~1,900 basis points. We’ve nearly doubled the number of meetings and engagements with new contacts in just over 10 months. We are seeing a 3x improvement in our lead-to-opportunity conversion rates. Our ABM accounts generated year on year growth an average of 900 basis points higher than non-ABM accounts. Focus on our .com properties has driven direct traffic up 2x. Organic search traffic is up nearly 20% month over month and paid search has lifted traffic by 18% of late. We are exceptionally pleased with our progress to date and are using this as a springboard for even greater enhancements to our marketing model.

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Misys | Diamond Winner Ensuring Customer Success

Misys Connect & the Client Health Index BUSINESS CHALLENGE In 2013, we valued the size of new business lost due to lack of referenceable clients. Whilst we cannot externally provide the specific number, it was in the multi-millions. At that time, we quickly recognised that we could not simply tackle this problem by launching a standard, old-fashioned—and predominately reactive—customer reference program. We felt that this would merely have to deal with the symptoms of low customer satisfaction, since, for many companies, referenceability is detached from the overall thrust of proactive client engagement and professional account management. Instead, we took a bolder step: to launch a truly cross-functional, fully integrated client engagement model—from which referenceability would be just one main benefit. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE At Misys, our vision is to create customers for life—meaning a superior B2B client experience, higher levels of customer satisfaction and engagement, increased cross-sell/upsell opportunities, and improved referenceability from our global customer base. PROGRAM EXECUTION Below marks a breakdown of how Misys Connect and the Customer Health Index was implemented at Misys:

Time Frame Activity Planning June 2013 Agree on the appointment of a Global Customer Advocacy Manager. August 2013 Day 1—primary goal to launch a Global Customer Advocacy Program. Built

initial straw-man plan and socialised. September 2013 Met with all key business stakeholders—understand the concerns around

achieving a referenceable client base. October 2013 Analysed customer survey data and sales data—established rationale for

launching a customer engagement initiative. November 2013 Prepared a launch of an interim project—Reference-ICE, a combination of an

Advocacy Program and the Improving Customer Experience Program.

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Time Frame Activity Pre-Launch December 2013 Launched Reference-ICE—an online Salesforce.com system to track customers’

involvement in the Improving Customer Experience (ICE) programs and their referenceable status.

January 2014 Ran an internal competition for all client-facing staff to nominate clients for ICE programs and referenceability. Achieved over 400 nominations in 2 weeks!

February 2014 Planned and built Misys Connect client engagement model. March 2014 Planned and built Misys Connect client engagement model, replacing the

Improving Customer Experience Program and integrated NPS. April 2014 Recruited two marketing associates to help run the program. Upgrade

Reference-ICE to become the Misys Connect Hub. May 2014 Recruited 100 sales references and produced 10 marketing references for

launch at the Global Sales Kick-Off. Launch June 2014 Launched Misys Connect at the Global Sales Kick-Off in Barcelona to 500 field-

facing sales and pre-sales professionals. Global customer email, PR and social media campaign.

Adoption July 2014—May 2015

Cross-functional rollout/adoption drive resulting in 800 customers recruited to Misys Connect Programs, 230 sales references, 45 marketing references—plus demonstrable impact on client satisfaction, revenue, and pipeline on many clients.

Launch–Phase 2 June 2015 A more concentrated and powerful version of Misys Connect launched at

Global Sales Kick-Off end June in Berlin! Launch–Phase 3 June 2016 The Client Health Index, launched as part of the Misys annual operating plan.

BUSINESS RESULTS “Misys Connect (www.misys.com/misys-connect) is a world-class strategic client engagement model that is helping Misys to put customers at the centre of everything we do. With over 1,200 clients connected, 430 sales references and 75 marketing references generated from it, and over $200 M of sales pipeline directly supported—all in just 24 months—it is demonstrably and positively impacting customer satisfaction, revenue, and referenceability.

“Complimentary to Misys Connect is the Client Health Index, which marks the next chapter in Misys’s evolution of becoming the most client-centric software organisation on the planet. By measuring our cross-functional performance according to the lifecycle the customer takes with Misys, we are able to

score every Misys customer according to a 10-step customer journey on a scale of 0-100%. The scoring system is underpinned by a series of key performance indicators that show a 360-degree view of

overall client health. This, in turn, is helping the organisation to work more effectively across functions according to the lifecycle of the client and to support Misys Connect and other client-facing

programmes to help Misys create customers for life.” Martin Haering, CMO at Misys

http://www.misys.com/misys-connect�

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Cisco Systems | Gold Winner Ensuring Customer Success

Enhance the Customer Experience with Lifecycle Advantage BUSINESS CHALLENGE In the B2B technology sector, the ultimate target of closing a single deal is no longer the end game. Instead, research shows that the key to success is actively managing customers throughout the post-sale relationship lifecycle. More importantly, today’s customers want to be assured that they’re gaining full value out of the solutions they’ve purchased, and that they are achieving the business outcomes they signed up for. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE In 2015, Cisco introduced Lifecycle Advantage as part of a larger customer success initiative that puts partners front and center in the digital sales process, making it easier for them to sell—and easier for customers to buy—in a digital world. By unifying people, process, analytics, and automation, Lifecycle Advantage helps partners modernize and simplify sales processes throughout the relationship lifecycle, empowering them to deliver business outcomes and create customers for life. PROGRAM EXECUTION Lifecycle Advantage is based on these key dynamics: Scalability: The program’s cloud-based platform enables partners to cost-effectively scale to address today’s recurring revenue explosion, transforming the way they quote, nurture, and transact service sales and renewals, as well as software and subscriptions. The platform uses automation and analytics to digitize and streamline selling motions across the full customer lifecycle, with a focus on growing partner profits. The Customer Experience: Lifecycle Advantage allows Cisco and its partners to more effectively manage every important milestone across the customer journey. Partners can use digitized selling motions to guide their customers to successfully “land, adopt, expand, renew, and refresh” their Cisco investments, from the point they are purchased, to the time they are implemented, and when upsell, cross-sell, and technology refresh opportunities arise. Lifecycle Advantage also takes the time and cost out of sales, which allows partners to focus on creating greater value for the customer.

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Personalized, Partner-Branded Lifecycle Marketing: In a new model for the technology industry, Lifecycle Advantage delivers partner-branded lifecycle marketing materials addressing every stage of a buyer’s post-sale journey, and then uses its own customer data and marketing automation technology to deploy ongoing, personalized content on behalf of the partner. Cisco is then able to track real-time customer response and manage leads. The partner does not have to do anything but book deals when they’re ready to close. To make the booking process even easier, a pre-validated quote has even been automatically generated for them. In this new model, Cisco sees exponentially more opportunities, greater partner satisfaction, and higher ROI. As a result, everyone—from Cisco to its partners to its customers—realizes greater business value. Data Driven Foundation: A centralized data core made up of complete, accurate customer contact records for every customer is the foundation of Lifecycle Advantage. The data not only heightens insight into the depth and breadth of the opportunity, but also enables sales reps and channel partners to know precisely who to reach out to and when—with the right offer. In addition, the data core drives email automation via the Cisco Impact platform, fueling the creation of automated service renewal quotes, which are sent out to the market via email 90 days in advance of service expirations. The expiration date of the quote is listed within the email and a built-in quote validation tool incorporates up-to-the-minute Cisco pricing and reseller-specific discount models to ensure quote accuracy. The quotes are first delivered to resellers, then to end customers. BUSINESS RESULTS In the first half of 2016 alone, Lifecycle Advantage automated hundreds of thousands of emails to end customers on behalf of Cisco’s most strategic partners—addressing nearly half a billion dollars in service renewal and technology refresh opportunities to benefit customers and partners alike. It has made nearly 98% of the service renewal opportunity actionable across Cisco’s partner base, and doubled the annual percent of available service renewals closed globally. In addition, it has saved Cisco distribution partners thousands of hours of sales and administrative time. But more than the numbers, Lifecycle Advantage gives Cisco and its partners an entirely new way to automate the end-to-end customer engagement model, eliminating a once-manual process and allowing new levels of scalability, time savings, and value exchange in the changing subscription economy.

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PwC | Diamond Winner Increasing Marketing Agility to Maximize Impact

Increasing Marketing Agility to Maximize Impact BUSINESS CHALLENGE In 2014, PwC’s Financial Services Regulatory team grappled regularly with a pipeline of 100+ content items, including everything from blogs to 100-page whitepapers. The sheer number of pieces made it difficult to manage and even more difficult to get something published. Driven by a need for efficiency, the team began to consider how they could speed up the writing and publishing process for items deemed as “newsworthy.” The current regulatory environment alone also made a substantial test case for a more agile content development process. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE The Financial Services industry’s surplus of content creates excess “noise” in the system. However, most people aren’t interested in reading publications that essentially represent a delayed, run-of-the-mill repost; they want insights. At PwC, we knew people were looking for answers on topical and relevant material—especially when it came to financial regulatory thought leadership. So we needed to build a “fast track” process that responded rapidly to the news cycle without sacrificing quality. PROGRAM EXECUTION

• Dedicated financial services thought leadership team. The FS Reg practice created a new team primarily dedicated to thought leadership. In place of the previously harried, all-hands approach where thought leadership was one of many focuses for an individual, a brand new agile group was what was needed.

• Dedicated contractors. FS Reg thought leadership team hired a design and layout contractor, as

well as a web contractor. Both contractors are available almost 24/7/365 and fully prioritize FS Reg over any other projects. Most importantly, both contractors are completely familiar with the FS Reg process and can deliver both quickly and efficiently.

• Expedited approval process. To avoid ~48 hour turnarounds or longer, we have been able to

obtain dedicated resources that we can communicate with via email in order to obtain various firm-required approvals on publications. Additionally, for specific approval processes, we also

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were able to schedule training and obtain approval to self-review documents ourselves. This has drastically reduced the barriers around the approval process.

• Dedicated marketer owns the process. FS Regulatory Practice has structured their team so that

one key team member is entirely focused on the thought leadership process. From obtaining proper sign-offs, to coordinating formatting and posting, providing final technical edits, discerning the appropriate segment list, and finally sending, one team member owns the entire end-to-end process.

• Public relations and promotional activities. Our dedicated marketing resource works to

facilitate the posting of new publications to our dedicated Regulatory Navigator app for delivering content in a different format for the individual on the go. This person also drafts social media posts to further call attention to the content, and works regularly to secure placement and commentary on CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, Harvard Law School’s Blog, and Columbia’s Blue Sky Law blog.

BUSINESS RESULTS After over two years of developing this agile process for content development, we find ourselves with a whopping record average of 65 pieces of thought leadership per year. We serve 47 of the 52 Fortune 1000 Banking and Capital Markets companies. During this time, the practice has grown an eye popping 26% YOY and grew $200 million in revenue in just two years. This could not have been accomplished if we were not seen as “the source” for all timely news and innovation. We run our own series of events that discuss these issues in greater detail with a bimonthly invite-only roundtable event. We also maintain an app called PwC’s Regulatory Navigator app. This app is available in 20 countries and has been downloaded over 20,000 times. The app is another delivery mechanism for our thought leadership.

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Cisco Systems | Gold Winner Increasing Marketing Agility to Maximize Impact

Agile in Motion: Cisco C-Suite Thought Leadership & Marketing Deliver Fresh Insights on a Rapid Cadence BUSINESS CHALLENGE When Cisco’s Thought Leadership and C-Suite Marketing groups merged in November 2015, the timing was perfect to adopt Agile Marketing. We had an incredible opportunity to join industry-leading thought leadership with market-leading delivery. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE In the midst of change, we saw Agile as an effective vehicle to build a cohesive team with new values, principles, practices, and benefits—in a very short amount of time. Agile provides a mechanism to continuously prioritize the work we do in order to stay focused on our key objectives. Chief among these are understanding and anticipating the needs of customer executives. Our two constituent teams came together in a reorganization that simultaneously reduced overall marketing headcount and shifted the focus of the entire marketing organization. Cisco Marketing’s new charter is to provide personalized, country-specific marketing through digital channels first. As part of a significantly smaller corporate marketing organization, we knew this demanded a different approach to how we think about and do our work. PROGRAM EXECUTION By deploying Agile methodologies in our daily operations, we can cover topics at record speed. What used to take one or two weeks can now be done in 12 hours or less. We’ve also been far less distracted by work that is not central to our mission. Agile helped us to quickly:

• Identify our goals, charter, and priorities • Focus our activities and programs • Tighten our communications

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In addition, with Agile we could:

• Comfortably increase the publishing cadence on Connected Futures, our online newsroom and platform for thought leadership, by 400%

• Capitalize on current events and publish related articles in a fraction of the time it would have taken us previously

• Adapt the release of a major study, “Cybersecurity as a Growth Advantage,” to integrate into the corporate brand relaunch

• Modify and experiment with the formats through which we publish elements of our thought leadership content, including websites, podcasts, videos, blog posts, and social media

• Make major changes and some tough decisions on marquee C-suite events—in particular, the Cisco CEO Leadership Council and the CIO Summit

• Coordinate more closely with subject-matter experts and marketers in priority countries as we develop major studies, rather than including them at the end of the process

BUSINESS RESULTS By adopting the Scrum methodology, we have fundamentally changed the way we work as a team. Email load and meeting time have been reduced by 50%. As a result, we are able to capitalize all of the individual skills and talents within the team to achieve a shared set of objectives. The quality and timeliness of what we produce continue to improve. Even better, we operate like one well-oiled machine—in which each of us understands, respects, and enjoys working with the others.

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Accelya | Diamond Winner Small and Medium Businesses

REVERA® Strategic Product Group—Taking Customer Collaboration to Next Level BUSINESS CHALLENGE Accelya is a leading provider of airline finance and commercial solutions to the airline and travel industry. REVERA® PRA is Accelya’s Passenger Revenue Accounting solution for airlines. In 2011, the airline industry was undergoing transformational changes in business models, distribution channels, and sources of revenues that added complexity to airline accounting. At the same time, regulators were seeking tighter risk and accounting controls. Airline management and commercial teams were relying on Revenue Accounting team to provide real-time information for decision making. To keep pace with the industry’s evolution and demands, many airlines were considering replacing their legacy revenue accounting systems. The landscape presented a great opportunity for REVERA. But the team faced three key challenges:

• How do we keep pace with the speed at which the industry is evolving and stay relevant to the needs of the revenue accountant?

• How do we make sure that new features and functionalities add value to customers and make their lives better?

• How do we convert customers into advocates? The revenue accounting community is a close-knit one, and peer references played a pivotal role in decision making.

Accelya Marketing team wanted to come up with a long-term sustainable strategy that would make REVERA® a preferred solution in the industry and also instill a sense of ownership among its customers. And so was born the REVERA Strategic Product Group (SPG), an innovative program that took customer collaboration to the next level. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE REVERA Strategic Product Group (SPG) is a board of democratically elected customer representatives and product specialists from Accelya, with a dedicated budget and a say in the product roadmap. The board is chaired by a customer representative and its charter is to ensure that REVERA meets all customer requirements and becomes the preferred solution in the industry.

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PROGRAM EXECUTION Accelya Marketing and REVERA product teams got a buy-in from the Accelya management by making a strong business case on how customer collaboration can be a key differentiator. Next, they spoke to many customers to bounce off the idea of SPG. The feedback was encouraging. REVERA SPG was launched in 2012. The SPG is set up as an independent board, comprising 10 members, including 6 representatives from revenue accounting teams of customer airlines and 4 experts from Accelya representing REVERA product, services, and delivery. The customer representatives are democratically elected by the REVERA user community through a nomination process and hold two-year tenure. The group has a dedicated budget to develop new features and functionality identified by the SPG. Every customer can submit unlimited enhancement requests that the board reviews and democratically decides on the most beneficial features to be developed in REVERA. Every year, the SPG chairperson presents a full report of the board’s working to all REVERA customers during the annual User Meet. BUSINESS RESULTS The SPG program has significantly improved customer engagement and advocacy levels, and has substantial impact on business.

• Since its launch in 2012, SPG has significantly improved customer engagement and advocacy levels, which has led to substantial business benefits.

• REVERA is a feature-rich solution and meets all industry requirements. • REVERA customers have recommended over 100 enhancements, most of which have already

been incorporated into the product. This has led to higher customer affinity and loyalty towards REVERA.

• REVERA’s new business win-ratio has increased from 25% in 2012 to 62% in 2015. • REVERA has more than doubled its customer base, which includes some of the largest airlines in

the world. • SPG program has significantly improved the brand perception of Accelya as the global leader in

airline Revenue Accounting solutions market. The idea of the SPG is revolutionary and deeply rooted in solid business and marketing logic. It is a winning combination of customer engagement, product evolution, and business impact. It has transformed how Accelya thinks of its customers, product, and marketing strategies. It has also transformed how REVERA customers and prospects think about Accelya.

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North Highland | Gold Winner Small and Medium Businesses

Delivering on CX for North Highland BUSINESS CHALLENGE As North Highland’s business model has evolved, there was a need to develop thought provoking content that would drive new conversations with clients and prospects, particularly around customer experience (CX), one of the firm’s four service lines. From our annual client satisfaction study, we learned that many of our clients enjoyed working with North Highland, but only viewed the firm as capable of doing one specific type of work. They needed to be introduced to the full depth of expertise North Highland brings to client engagements and partnerships. However, thought leadership from management consultancies is a crowded space and the team was aware that the approach needed to be differentiating in the marketplace. Additionally, the creation of the CX campaign would require input and collaboration from a number of stakeholders within the firm, from industry SMEs to regional leaders to Sparks Grove, North Highland’s marketing and experience design agency. PROGRAM OBJECTIVE Objectives for this campaign included:

• Strategically align with cross-industry perspectives of CX leaders (through Fortune “Industry Pulse” report) • Uniquely position North Highland’s CX position at the intersection of strategy, execution, and

management consulting • Uncover new business opportunities by generating and nurturing new leads

PROGRAM EXECUTION A multi-pronged approach was used to activate the campaign over the course of a 12-week period. The phases included:

• Release of a co-branded thought leadership piece and follow-up • Release of a North Highland-owned thought leadership piece and follow-up • Hosting live events in several key markets (ongoing)

Creative assets developed included:

• Fortune CX Report: The Experience Imperative: Customer Experience Executives Share their Stories (Released October 21)

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Co-branded industry pulse report on CX challenges/opportunities, introduction written by NH (Alex Bombeck).

• North Highland CX White Paper: Optimizing Your Customer Experience-Focused Organization: An Actionable Guide (Released November 5) Compilation of North Highland Perspective, Primary Research, and Case Studies on Customer

Experience. Through the lens of 3 building blocks, we provide a practical guide on how to enable your structure, people, and processes to drive ROI through new customer acquisition, transform passive customers into loyalists, and engage your employees for optimized CX.

• Four CX Cross-Industry Case Studies • CX POV Video • CX Case Study Video • True North (North Highland blog) Blog Series

Amplification included:

• North Highland Microsite • Nurture Email Campaign via HubSpot • Paid Social Media Strategy • Media Engagement

BUSINESS RESULTS We identified the below key performance indicators to define campaign success:

• Number of white paper downloads from the North Highland website • Above industry average click-through and open rates for the email campaigns • Increase of social media engagement and conversion rates to website • Number of cold and warm business leads/number of meetings secured • Number of media engagements and potential article placements • Anecdotal feedback from clients and prospects

For the Fortune report, emails delivered received a 25.9% open rate (above the industry average of 20%) and a CTR of 4.7% (above the industry average of 2.5%). For the North Highland-owned white paper, emails were delivered with an open rate of 21% and a CTR of 3.4%. Media/PR results included:

• Eight unique placements, representing four different industries with 2.8 media impressions. • Coverage included WWD, FT Adviser, Retail Customer Experience, and HR & Charity News.

Identification of $1M+ of new revenue resulting from CX projects.

Documents

2016 Marketing Excellence Awards - ITSMA · 2016 Marketing Excellence Awards ... Delivering an Omnichannel Customer Experience ... (A focus on mutual success). • Industry insight