Background: Most often, IT services firms face the challenge putting together a “managed business process” for efficient lead generation and conversion. It is a well known fact that being extremely fragmented and working in country-siloed environments, it is always a challenge for global headquarters and sales directors in such IT services firms to drive synergy across the organization. To download visit: blog.cequitysolutions.com and www.cequitysolutions.com

1. Accelerating Demand Management in an IT services
firm
A case study

2. Background:
Most often, IT services firms face the challenge putting together a “managed business process” for efficient lead generation and
conversion. It is a well known fact that being extremely fragmented and working in country-siloed environments, it is always a
challenge for global headquarters and sales directors in such IT services firms to drive synergy across the organization. The
benefits of synergies and organic growth of IT accounts are well known but how does one do it? Also, it needs a
systematic marketing process to manage the prospecting to conversion across a multi-channel environment. Also, given the long
sales-cycles of these businesses, it is important to build a marketing lifecycle approach to keep the prospect ‘hot’ across the entire
sales cycle.
Building the a demand management framework
Data Management
Collateral Marketing
&Content Process strategy &
Management Consulting
Demand
Management
Global Internal
Framework
Deployment Communication
Campaign Targeting Strategy
Operations
Privacy & Security
It was imperative that the demand management was managed right from the way data - incoming
leads, existing accounts, new accounts was managed. An integrated lead management system was the
need to get top management a “single view” of the client or prospect accounts. Once the data
management was set-up, it was critical that there was a marketing planning system that effectively

3. managed all incoming leads and information. Once the information came into the lead database, there was a need for enriching
the information as all prospects and customer information was not complete. External/ Secondary sources of information
was needed to enrich enterprise and organization information. This determined the targeting strategy and it had to take
into account privacy and security issues of the lead management list. It was important to design contact strategies for each
client or prospect based on nature of the organization and prospect contact hierarchy. It was also important that the campaigns
were well coordinated and orchestrated across mediums - online, offline, events etc. It was also important that all processes were
designed for global deployment and collaterals had to ready for immediate response and business impact.
Managing the entire marketing lifecycle
Source: Forrester Research
The above marketing lifecycle approach was adopted for the IT services firm. It ensured that all activities were managed in right &
real-time basis. Also, all activities had to measure for response, business leads generated, conversions, X-sell opportunities etc.

4. Managing the Implementation & Delivery
Step#1: Building a central Sales & Marketing Database
Step #2: Use all the channels for building an orchestrated sales & marketing lead management system
across new prospects and client accounts
IT Services Search @search Search engine Client
IT.com
Buyers optimization
links
Downloads & Mandatory Client website
information
data
Contact details e -mail campaigns
Cleaning &
Filtering Domain area Tele-prospecting

5. Step #3: Driving orchestrated campaigns across the sales & lead management process. In an ever-
changing IT business environment, the biggest challenge for a CTO/ Technology heads is to keep
oneself constantly updated with the latest. Demand Management campaigns did exactly that by providing information in
the following forms: Case Studies, White papers, Presentations, Solution Definitions, Brochures etc.
Results: Direct leads through the demand management system had resulted in over $20 + million for the client.
Awards: Best Marketing Practice Award - ITSMA Award, California - 2003. Best Marketing Program Award - IDC ,
2003