
August 23, 2021
August 23, 2021
As the 3rd-largest Ethernet provider in America, Spectrum provides scalable fiber technology solutions to many of the United State’s largest businesses and communications service providers.
Industry: Telecommunications
Company Size: 10000+ employees
Headquarters: Stamford, Connecticut
In 2021, Spectrum's focus is on enabling their acquisition by integrating siloed CRM and MAP instances and streamlining lead routing workflows.
Five years ago Spectrum acquired Charter, Time Warner, and Bright House Networks. Post-merger, equipped with new product offerings, Spectrum wanted to hit the ground running fast with a land-and-expand strategy, increasing revenue and customer lifetime value by expanding their product footprint across their customer base.
However, new product lines, sales groups, territories, databases, and data structures created operational complexities and challenges that hindered immediate growth. Fortunately, CRM Marketing Manager Matt Kromer was able to quickly overcome these challenges with RingLead’s data orchestration platform, accelerating the time-to-value of Spectrum’s M&A strategy.
Mergers and acquisitions have become a popular growth strategy for companies looking to expand into new markets or territories & extend customer lifetime value by expanding their footprint to more seats, additional departments, or more products and services.
"With the acquisitions, we implemented a land-and-expand strategy, where we had multiple sales teams representing different regions and products selling into the same account."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
Spectrum’s land-and-expand strategy required multiple sales teams representing different regions and products to sell into the same account. As Matt describes, the territory and lead management process required to enable this strategy presented a complex roadblock in terms of Spectrum’s post-merger go-to-market.
Examples of routing workflow complexities include (but aren’t limited to):
Note: Routing and territory management were not the only operational challenges to Spectrum’s post-merger go-to-market. For years after the acquisition, Spectrum was still operating with a disparate CRM instance for each acquired company. In part 2 of this case study, we’ll cover how Spectrum used RingLead to integrate all three datasets and the impact it had on their bottom line.
Prior to implementing RingLead, Spectrum's routing workflows were managed manually by a third-party team that took at least two days to assign leads. Not only was lead assignment slow, but it was also often inaccurate due to unintentional duplicates.
"Before implementing RingLead, it could take us a few days to hand off leads. The lead would also get bounced around because it wasn’t initially assigned properly, and sales would waste time trying to find the right lead amongst duplicates."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
Additionally, when territories changed or business strategies were revised, it would take Spectrum "months to make changes to routing workflows," preventing Spectrum from being able to scale when business changes were made.
"Before implementing RingLead, it could take us a few months to make routing changes. Now I can make territory and routing changes in minutes."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
"Having RingLead Route and being able to take our lead assignment time from a couple of days to a minute or less has been a huge benefit for sales teams and for marketing."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
Matt was able to easily manage territories with RingLead’s segment builder and routing workflow engine. Additionally, Matt was able to orchestrate pre-requisite data cleansing and account matching as part of Spectrum’s routing workflow to prevent duplicates and ensure the right lead was routed to the right rep every time.
"After implementing RingLead, one of our sales reps called me to say it was the first time he’d received a correctly-routed lead in an entire year. Also, by looking at the ‘Routing Log’ in Ringlead I was able to explain the logic that was used to send him that lead."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
As Matt describes, reliable lead routing not only impacted conversion rates, but also increased the trust that sales had in the company’s processes, thus enabling enforceable sales SLAs.
Additionally, Matt was able to significantly cut down the time it took to make changes to territory assignment rules when business strategies changed; that time went "from months to minutes."
"Our change management was lengthy. That’s why we would keep third-party groups manually assigning leads; we could provide them with updated process flows and files to do that manual assignment logic. But it could take months for them to make changes."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
"Now I can just make the changes programmatically in RingLead and I don't have to worry about turnover at a third party or training issues with a process flow. We make the changes based on our data. It takes seconds."
- Matt Kromer
CRM Marketing Manager at Spectrum
As a result:
Spectrum also enjoys the following RingLead Route features:
Mergers and acquisitions are powerful growth engines, but present complex operational process challenges that can stall expected growth objectives. In Spectrum’s case, using a data orchestration platform to automate and streamline said processes in a data-driven manner was critical. Matt was able to use RingLead’s routing and real-time data optimization workflows to streamline Spectrum’s territory and lead lifecycle management, as well as routing workflows—all crucial pieces of the mergers and acquisitions puzzle.
As stated above, routing and territory management were not the only operational challenges to Spectrum’s go-to-market following their acquisition.
Post merger, Spectrum was equipped with siloed CRM and MAP instances for each acquired company, which not only prevented Spectrum from having a single customer view, but led to many other challenges that stalled growth before being fixed with RingLead. In part 2 of this case study, we’ll cover how Spectrum used RingLead to create a single customer view by integrating all three datasets from their acquired companies and the impact it had on their bottom line. Stay tuned!