How Bottomline Technologies Consolidated Siloed Data and Uncovered a New World of Opportunities
IN SEARCH OF A SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH FOR GTM DATA
Bottomline Technologies, a global SaaS platform provider for business payments and digital banking, struggled with fragmented and siloed data inhibiting the company’s marketing efforts. These silos arose as a result of company acquisitions over time, with each acquisition operating independently and with its own GTM strategy.
Each new line of business had its own Salesforce instance, which was not connected and frequently duplicated. As a result, there were seven unique lines of business and Salesforce setups. The combined entities also had a universe of accounts in Marketo. Bottomline became increasingly challenged to effectively use all this siloed data to improve marketing performance.
The company recognized the importance of bringing together all of its disparate data, then cleaning and consolidating it so that it could be used to answer key growth-related questions.
For example:
- How many accounts exist?
- How many contacts exist?
- Are there any gaps in the contact record?
- What is the current coverage of companies that match the ideal customer profile (ICP)?
- How do we go to market (GTM) more effectively by targeting areas of opportunity?
Marketing needed a single source of truth to answer these fundamental questions. It then needed to analyze that data to determine its ICP, which is essential to align GTM motions across Sales, Marketing, and Product teams.
UNIFY THE DATA, DEFINE THE IDEAL CUSTOMER, AND IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITIES
Bottomline Technologies turned to Dun & Bradstreet solutions as a key element of their three-phase program to build and maintain the data foundation they needed. In phase 1, “Fixing,” Dun & Bradstreet solutions were critical in consolidating and cleaning their marketing data, allowing them to understand what companies and contacts they had in both Marketo and Salesforce. The detailed and extensive corporate hierarchy information Dun & Bradstreet provided was essential to linking accounts and contacts. As a result, Dun & Bradstreet helped Bottomline identify duplicates in systems, increasing marketing efficiency.
In phase 2, “Understanding,” Bottomline used additional Dun & Bradstreet solutions to compare their ICP attributes against a view of their total addressable market. In this way, they identified white space and areas of opportunity. With cleaner data and better insight, Bottomline was better positioned to develop strategic marketing plans and execute those plans by managing and setting demand-generation goals focused on the right prospect accounts.
Phases 1 and 2 of the program, which also included putting data governance in place and fixing associated processes, were completed in less than 60 days!
Marketing, Sales, and Product team alignment on ICP
The company has also worked with additional Dun & Bradstreet capabilities to further improve their lead-generation activities. For example, Bottomline has unmasked anonymous website visitors with audience-targeting solutions, helping Bottomline profile digital traffic for better engagement and targeting. Specific demand-generation programs for unmasked visitors are yielding strong results. Unmasking visitors through visitor intelligence has also been critical in understanding the whole of the buyer journey — before the completion of a form fill. Connecting web page visits to an associated company and then related leads has revealed new insights into understanding the buyer’s journey, including interaction with paid and owned media assets.
DATA AS FOUNDATION FOR ALIGNMENT OF SALES, MARKETING, AND PRODUCT TEAMS FOR DATA-FIRST EVERYTHING
After implementing Dun & Bradstreet’s solutions and achieving a single source of truth for their marketing and sales data, Bottomline has moved into phase 3, “Insights & Activation.” This phase relies on the consolidated view of customers and opportunities to tightly align the Marketing, Sales, and Product teams.
The data foundation helped Bottomline advance its planning process. For the first time, they had ICP alignment (size, vertical, geography, etc.) among the Sales, Marketing, and Product teams. They developed a dashboard to compare their accounts with the total addressable market of other accounts matching their ICP. This dashboard showed that sometimes they were well-penetrated, whereas in other segments there was growth opportunity. This insight then informed GTM plans. They also identified the overlap in accounts and contacts among business lines.
Once the ICP was defined and white space identified, Bottomline’s data foundation helped the teams discuss opportunities, average deal size, and how to approach companies. Jerry notes that this added rigor to developing GTM campaigns and tactics that did not exist previously. With more than 75 Marketing and Sales team members now being trained on dashboards associated with the data foundation, Bottomline believes it is moving toward a more performance-based approach. The standard data platform also allows Bottomline to bring in additional sales or marketing technology in a systematic and uniform way. Going forward, Bottomline is looking to move from descriptive to predictive analytics in order to advance decision-making.
Bottomline views these results as essential to its larger transformation to data-first operations. It also notes that maintaining its data integrity is not one and done; it’s constant maintenance and cleanup using best-in-class solutions. “Really, the program is ‘always on,’” explains Jerry.
Watch the presentation “How to Activate a Data-driven GTM Strategy in <60 Days” to learn more about Bottomline Technologies used a data-driven approach to drive incremental value.
Congratulations to Bottomline Technologies on receiving the 2022 SAMMY Award as well as on all of its outstanding achievements in digital transformation.
— Dun & Bradstreet
Similar results are not guaranteed. Dun & Bradstreet does not validate accuracy of customer statements made in customer stories or spotlight articles.
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