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At IRD we know that to be a leader in your field you need to be able to single out the big-hitting opportunities, and have access to the right tools and sales insights to act on them quickly. Whilst this may sound straightforward, the vast majority of b2b sales organisations we work with are struggling to make truly effective use of the data and systems at their disposal. Consequently, many are unable to take maximum advantage of their unique competitive advantages.

Connecting Disparate Systems

One of the biggest issues we see is the B2B industry relying on a range of tools that, on their own may be suitable, but collectively have little strategic and physical alignment. It’s not unusual for a business to deploy a large number of technology solutions across the enterprise, and this is where the challenge lies.

As we’ve previously discussed, there’s no doubt the right tools can have a massive impact on profitability, productivity and customer service. Sales is no different – as you build out a b2b sales stack, it’s critical to have the right tools! Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the stack is more than the sum of its constituent parts. It is inevitable that problems will soon snowball if the systems a business chooses to deploy aren’t talking with each other.

In short, disparate sales enablement tools need to align, but they frequently get lost across the team. Sometimes two to three systems need the same information, and because they never connect, someone must manually sync that data. Manual data entry leads to separate processes and the need to get others involved, sucking up valuable time. It’s a black hole of productivity.

Chaos grows, redundancies plague the system, and soon a well-oiled machine is filled with gunk. This is a death sentence for workflow.

Building a Central Hub

Our recommendation is to build with centralisation and seamless interaction in mind. The right tools for the jobs at hand can increase efficiencies if they are intelligently connected to one another. The idea of a hub, that can normalize, translate and send data to these systems is one that time and again we have seen boost performance and supercharge revenue.

When your systems work in unison you’ll see that your sales team and indeed the wider organisation can work effortlessly together. Everyone from front line reps to the director of sales benefits from using a central data hub tuned to the organisation’s particular sales workflow. Passing critical information between systems using APIs, connectors and native integrations, gives all involved a clear understanding of what’s going on across their organisation. Never a bad thing!

The Results of Organising Data

When sales organisations align their resources and create a central, unified hub, performance efficiency gains and real upticks in revenue results are never far behind.

In Australia and New Zealand IRD represents global media ad sales platform Matrix Monarch. And in practising what we preach, our very own media sales prospecting tool Prospector now integrates with the powerful ad platform. It’s revolutionising media sales workflows, including local business Australian Traffic Network. If you want more of the nuts and bolts, why not check out this case study from Sales Director Chris Thornton. And here’s a few more examples from organisations that have used Matrix, showcasing how they created a central hub to connect their systems.

1. The rise of the tech platform

There’s been a dramatic increase in the use of the available tools, and not just the Matrix product. We’ve heard it said, “If once a month I have to go into another system or another platform I’m going to ignore it. By bringing this into a centralised location, you get more value out of the technology and give employees back valuable time”.

2. Convincing the Decision-Makers

We were able to bring in the data to show the c-level and management how to better manage their business. By building intelligent reports and sharing that data, we saw an increase in how they were able to sell their inventory.

3. Increase efficiency by 38%

We eliminated redundant data entry double entries, so the things going into our system was going into the other systems so they didn’t have to re-input it. We saw a 38% improvement in time because they didn’t have to spend time in multiple systems. And we dramatically decreased the amount of errors in the system.

Our takeaway: If building a central hub isn’t on your radar, it should be!