Sophos + Spaulding Ridge

Before:

A Need for a Reliable Sales and Financial Planning Tool to Easily Integrate within the Business

Sophos wanted to overhaul their sales and financial planning capabilities to meet the demands of the business. They needed an efficient process to automate territory management, deliver accurate compensation solutions, create a financial planning & analysis (FP&A) resource, and adapt to the complexities of the businesses’ processes and localizations in the many markets it serves. At that time, Sophos utilized 800 individual Excel spreadsheets per sales lead to track their compensation results, leading sales leaders to spend more time reviewing spreadsheets than on important tasks. Sophos turned to Spaulding Ridge to assist in implementing a new solution.

Solution:

A Technology Stack that Drives Operational Efficiency, Tailored to Sophos

After reviewing the issues Sophos faced, we designed a connected planning solution using Anaplan that would create a centralized location for all sales, finance, and company workforce data, enabling accuracy in business reporting and targeted forecasts.
We understood Sophos’ need to integrate their multiple third-party software platforms, and with our solution, they would be able to seamlessly connect systems to create a single source of truth. Not only would the integration with other software platforms enable better insight into sales and finance results, but it would also allow Sophos to:

• Formalize their sales letter planning process, sending letters at the correct times, automatically tracking signatures, and adhering to compliance requirements.
• Drive better sales outcomes through accurate incentive planning, revenue forecasting, pipeline analysis, and enhanced territory & quota strategies, enabling maximized profitability.
• Align their data warehouse with the rest of the system, enhancing FP&A and incentive compensation management (ICM) solutions.

Sophos knew that getting end users to accept the system would make or break their digital transformation, which is why they also leaned on our Change Management Services. We ensured the Sophos team would have the adoption support to fully understand and engage with their new sales and finance planning tool, quickly use its capabilities, and see value that would further encourage usage.

“We needed to understand the resource of the tool itself as we were going through a large go-to-market change and we didn’t have the resource to manage the whole implementation of Anaplan we would’ve liked, so we partnered with Spaulding Ridge’s Change Management Services which helped out a lot”. – Renice Hultman, Vice President, Financial Business Systems at Sophos.