Growing Cloud Revenues Using BI Dashboards
A leading cloud technology company was launching a new partner program with a few goals in mind. First, they wanted to bring on more partners for their cloud solution, ideally resulting in increased market share against a number of major competitors in the cloud space.
They also wanted to help partners get onboarded faster and more efficiently. The program featured five maturity stages that partners would progress through as they became more knowledgeable in the client’s solution.
With budget allocated to increasing their number of partners and tracking their progress, the client only had one roadblock standing in their way: they needed a business intelligence (BI) dashboard that would help them measure the success of this program.
A need for better reporting
When the business strategy director at the client’s organization approached Prime 8 Consulting about developing a dashboard for their partner program, they had two significant concerns:
The amount of data they currently had was overwhelming and siloed
The current data review process was inefficient
For the client to scale their partner program and ultimately grow revenue, they needed a reliable way to measure every aspect of the program. The goal was to track partners through each of the five stages of maturity, so they could focus on increasing the number of more mature partners in stages four and five. The number of advanced partners was directly tied to cloud revenues, which was the main KPI the client was focused on.
Building alignment and clarity
The Prime 8 Team began by meeting with the client to ask a series of standardized questions that would help clarify their dashboard requirements. They identified which KPIs mattered the most to each stakeholder, and the reasons behind these. They also uncovered data sources to be culled, and defined timelines and data refresh rates.
Using this time-tested discovery process, Prime 8 was able to put together a blueprint showing how they would structure the dashboard build.
The Prime 8 engagement lead collaborated closely with multiple teams on the client side, all of which had their own preferences for the dashboard. Prime 8 worked to align goals and to provide customization in the solution where necessary. For example, they created separate tabs with unique views for different stakeholders so everyone could see the analytics that were most relevant to them.
Powerful, customizable reporting for program growth
Because of Prime 8’s experience in BI dashboarding, they were able to turn around a finished solution in a matter of weeks. The result was a highly customizable analytics dashboard that gave each department the autonomy to find and analyze the information they needed most.
This created a single source of truth across multiple users, allowing everyone to focus on KPIs that mattered to them — while ensuring they were viewing only the most recent and accurate data. The dashboard:
Aligned different points of view with a single data hub
Allowed users to generate custom, actionable reports
Was built with scalability and flexibility in mind
Featured weekly snapshots with insights for week over week changes
In the end, the insights uncovered from the BI dashboard enabled the client to more than double the size of their partner program (and increase the funding for the program, as well).
At the beginning of this engagement, the program served 100 partners — two years later, there were over 250 partners.
An ongoing partnership
Once the dashboard was launched, the Prime 8 team conducted regular reviews with the client in the following months. They listened as the client’s needs expanded and evolved and adapted the dashboard to meet their new needs.
In the end, the engagement expanded, and the finance department also adapted the same dashboard system.
“The best part of my day is working with Prime 8 on this solution,” a member of the client’s leadership team shared. They weren’t not only happy with the dashboard, but they were also impressed by Prime 8’s ability to handle their requests and evolve the solution.
Project Snapshot
Industry: Technology
Location: Redmond, WA
Company Size: 150,000+ employees
Critical Business Issues: Needed a centralized dashboard to provide better insights into a new partner onboarding program. The client was limited in their ability to improve the program due to siloed and missing data.
Solution: Creating a dashboard that provided a single source of truth for stakeholders, allowing them to review data that was relevant to their KPIs and functions.
The Method: Prime 8 quickly and efficiently custom-built a BI dashboard that incorporated multiple views into a single solution.
The Outcome: Increased cloud revenues and market share for the client. The new solution also contributed to the client doubling the size of their partner program, and increased funding for the program.
