Sapient is a marketing and digital services agency that helps marketers transform their business to go digital. Culture has always been at the forefront of the company. As Sapient has continued to grow and expand, its dedication to continuous learning has never wavered — and learning is clearly a deeply held value at the core of many of its founding principles.
Sapient's People Value Proposition brings several topics to light, including the need to "cultivate openness to create the conditions for curiosity and change." The company is committed to exchanging information, feedback, and ideas that engage employees and pique their curiosity. Sapient understands that learning is continuous, no matter an individual's role.
The Challenge
In order to deliver at the speed and agility of the changing marketplace, Publicis.Sapient required a world-class business platform and selected Salesforce to help promote better collaboration and visibility into the pipeline. Because Sapient's culture is highly creative and opt-in, it does not mandate training on its new CRM.
Knowing the team would benefit from Salesforce, the organization needed a solution to drive adoption, quick onboarding, and a clear path to competency for all users. To get the team's buy-in, the training needed to create a highly engaging experience that would pull users in. It also needed to be in a highly scalable format that clearly showed each employee what was in it for them.
The Approach
Enter the new Salesforce On-Boarding and Adoption Program developed in partnership with Baker Communications. This program addressed the challenges of global diversity and opt-in culture by creating an engaging, informative, and creatively executed end-user onboarding and adoption strategy.
To sustain learning and encourage self-paced, incremental growth, the program focused on three main areas: strategy, implementation, and fine tuning. The design included a comprehensive blend of:
- Executive coaching
- Leadership coaching
- Virtual workshops
- Open office hours
- Video communications
- Self-paced e-learning
- Corporate communications and change management
Unlike most one-size-fits-all adoption programs, this unique blend appeals to all learning types. Because it is delivered over time, it maximizes retention and effectiveness. The e-learning series is driven by an engaging video host who takes end users through an informative and enjoyable learning journey introducing the new company sales philosophy and methodology, along with step-by-step Salesforce process demonstrations and knowledge checks.
The Results
The deployment impacted over 1,200 users across North America, the Asia-Pacific region, and the European Union. Sapient saw measurable results since beginning the implementation:
The 50% increase in early-stage pipeline entry improved the accuracy of forecasting and pipeline visibility across the organization. The 75% engagement rate demonstrated that the team was opting in and making use of the company's major CRM investment — all without mandates. Based on the success of this initial program, Publicis.Sapient continued to use and evolve this approach to drive further adoption.
