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One year after implementing Wave Analytics, IDC calculates that HMH will earn a five-year ROI of more than 200% and break even on its investment in less than one year.
When Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) was founded 1832 to bring new ideas to life. Nearly two centuries later, HMH is one of today’s most storied companies, claiming titles ranging from Curious George to The Lord of the Rings. While its goal remains the same, HMH has evolved from a publishing giant to a global learning company spurred by the massive digital transformation that has changed the way we work, consume information, interact with one another and learn. Today, HMH reaches over 50 million K-12 students and lifelong learners worldwide with content, services, and cutting-edge technology solutions across a variety of media.
One key component to HMH’s evolution was to empower its sales force to unlock insights from the torrent of data that our digital world produces and rethinking how it engages with customers from the ground up. Hazel Hughes, HMH Vice President of Sales Operations and Business Intelligence turned to Salesforce Wave Analytics to fuel the transformation and provide sales teams with access to real-time, actionable insights on their business, empowering them to be smarter about their customers. Now, one year after implementation, IDC reports that the company will earn a five-year ROI of more than 200 percent, breaking even on its investment in Wave in less than a year.
“Wave Analytics has allowed us to grow more rapidly and to achieve our goal of becoming an increasingly responsive company," said Brian Wickham, Director, Sales Operations Business Intelligence. "It is very important to have a one-to-one relationship with the customer, and that requires a deeper understanding of the customer beyond a series of transactions."
Having been a Salesforce customer for several years, HMH had been creating custom reports and building Lightning dashboards to get snapshots of their business at any moment. But in order to provide greater visibility and take sales effectiveness to new heights, HMH deployed Wave Analytics. Designed for intuitive, ad hoc data exploration, Wave Analytics empowered sales managers and reps to dig deeper into data from any source and take immediate action-- no more weeding through static Excel sheets or waiting days or weeks for answers from analysts.
With Wave Analytics, sales managers have a real-time, comprehensive look into sales opportunities, team performance, pipeline forecasts, trends, and risk indicators allowing them to drive more targeted, efficient sales efforts. As a result, each sales team is on average able to close more deals every month with Wave Analytics. In addition, sales reps have access to customizable dashboards and visualizations allowing them to generate quotations. Forecasts can also be created in front of the customer, so the sales team can respond more fully and accurately to customer inquiries.
Finally, because Wave Analytics was built mobile-first, sales teams are able to analyze and view custom dashboards, visualizations and KPIs right on their phone or tablet, so they can go from insight to action on any device and from anywhere. Now, HMH's sales managers can lead their sales teams more efficiently and better target and support potential customers and reps are armed with an even closer understanding of their markets and business opportunities.
As HMH closes in on their first year with Wave Analytics, we’re excited to partner with them in their continued success as they extend Wave further into their business.
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