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“ Companies that collaborated well within and between sales, marketing, and the rest of the organization- and supported that collaboration with cross-functional processes and systems -were far more effective overall. ”
- Aberdeen, Sales Effectiveness: Helping Sales Sell, 2004
Cross functional collaboration and alignment is a best practice in the best companies. These companies create a culture that builds cross-functional cooperation. The majority of knowledge sharing and innovation within organizations occurs through people interacting with people - especially within groups or teams that cross conventional organizational boundaries. This internal collaboration translates to an organization that understands and is more focused on the needs of the customers.
PowerSkills Solutions can help your company release and leverage the power of internal collaboration and alignment for exceptional growth and customer satisfaction. We will develop a solution that breaks down the functional silos that exist and aligns the organization to provide a total organizational response to the customer.
Client Case Study
Client:
Our client is the Strategic Alliances Sales Organization of a Top 20 World-Wide software company.
Issues:
A very complex organizational structure, existing of several marketing and alliance support groups working with a field sales group, selling complex solutions had created an ineffective relationship management structure, internal and external, which was now hampering efforts to grow the business with their key alliances. These different groups were working in silos and a lack of internal coordination and cross-functional collaboration was leading to inconsistent positioning and missed opportunities. Due to the complexity, field sales had stopped communicating with these groups and a lack of executive sponsorship with these key alliances was exacerbating the situation. High turnover was occurring and a general lack of job satisfaction existed.
Solution:
PowerSkills interviewed the heads of each department to identify the bottlenecks and issues that existed. We then customized and delivered the PowerSkills Relationship Management program to the managers of the different groups to expose the issues and get people talking about ways to solve them. Through our approach, a forum was created in which real conversations could occur and real solutions to the lack of collaboration and coordination was developed. Our relationship management software tool was used to identify, rate, and rank key relationships and internal and external relationship management plans were created to manage and grow these relationships.
The Results :
Shortly after delivering our tailored solution, several organizational changes occurred, including senior management changes and departmental consolidation and reorganization to improve communication and collaboration across the organization and with key alliances. Regular meetings were occurring between the different groups and progress against the relationship management plans was being measured. Job satisfaction increased significantly and turnover was reduced.
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