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HOST ANALYTICS: SUCCESS STORYHow Host Analytics operationalizes intelligent workflows by combining lead management and predictive analytics

THE CHALLENGEHost Analytics, a leader in cloud-based financialapplications, knows all about making data actionable.Executives run the company with a “math of thebusiness” approach, determining the metrics they needto hit using reverse waterfall calculations. This startswith Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and AverageSelling Price (ASP) targets, and tracks up to precise goalsfor how many deals, pipeline opportunities (at eachstage), and ultimately Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)they need to hit each month.

With the entire company focused on MQLs as a leadingindicator of revenue targets, the marketing team neededa better way to evaluate and prioritize good leads. Theywanted to reduce spend on marketing channels thatdeliver bad leads by gaining real-time insights intoprogram performance. On the sales side, the businesshad scaled to a point when the team could no longer riskspreading itself too thin by reaching out to every leadthat exhibited any type of interest.

Additionally, the company wanted to automate its leadrouting process in order to avoid giving reps too few ortoo many good leads. By integrating predictive and leadrouting technologies, Host Analytics hoped to create anintelligent, end-to-end lead management system thatwould get the best prospects to the right reps, andultimately help increase efficiency and revenue.

Host Analytics is the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM), offering a suite of financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.Founded: 2001Employees: 250 - 500Funding: Series ELeanData Customer Since: 2015Learn More: www.hostanalytics.com

“Infer and LeanData are two of my favorite, best-of-breed technologies that provide tremendous value on their own. Together, they become a powerhouse that enables seamless and intelligent workflows across sales and marketing. With Infer and LeanData’s open architectures, we’re able to orchestrate complex processes to become a more connected and impactful go-to-market organization across the board.”

– Nick Ezzo, Vice President of Demand Generation, Host Analytics

IMPACTIncreased Productivity: By identifying the best leads with Infer’s predictive analytics, reps can focus on engaging the prospects who are most likely to convert into opportunities

Account Visibility: LeanDataensures leads are automatically matched to accounts so reps are aware of all activity and can take the appropriate action

Accurate Attribution: Host Analytics clarified its definition of an MQL so it can measure the true effectiveness of marketing’s influence

THE LEANDATA AND INFER SOLUTION

Coffee, Demand Generation ManagerInfer Identifies the Best-Fit LeadsHost Analytics started with a fit-first predictivescoring model from Infer, which helped thecompany identify what a good customer lookslike. Infer’s fit model leverages Host Analytics’existing customer data from internal systems ofrecord like Salesforce and Marketo – along witha variety of external data points from Infer’slibrary of B2B signals – to predict how likelysomeone is to buy a Host Analytics solution.

With an objective method for determining whena prospect is a fit to buy its solutions, thecompany was able to align around a new MQLdefinition in which only prospects categorizedas Infer A, B and C Leads (initially the company’stop 50 percent of incoming leads by volume)were sent to the sales development team forfollow-up. Grouping leads in these buckets gavethe team a simple way to talk about how well(or poorly) a lead matches their ideal prospectand prioritize accordingly. Now, reps are able toinvest most of their time in the best-qualityleads, which boosts sales productivity andefficiency by aligning effort to impact. Thecompany also leveraged Infer to build an array

of Salesforce dashboards, which providepredictive metrics that help guide decisionmaking, track performance, spot trends andprevent looming problems. The marketing teamcan now see instantly how many high-qualityleads a certain channel, vendor or programproduces, along with typical conversion ratesfor each type of lead – enabling them toaccurately view its cost-per-good-lead for eachcampaign and predict how many prospects willconvert into sales opportunities in a givenmonth. Host Analytics’ sales development teamalso leverages its dashboard to monitor thevolumes of Infer A, B and C Leads across eachteam member and ensure parity.

This predictive-driven insight reduced thecompany’s ratio of bad-to-good leads byapproximately 50 percent, while increasing thenumber of high-quality MQLs delivered to salesby 3.5x. Host Analytics was able to fine-tune itsgo-to-market workflows in order to ultimatelyboost its average selling price and revenue justtwo years after implementing Infer into its salesand marketing stack.

Figure: Infer's Best-Fit Lead Score for Host Analytics

“A” leads are converted 5x as often on average and 22.8x as often as often as “D” leads

Breaking down leads by bucket at each stage of the sales funnel: “A” and “B” leads together make up 30% of all leads, but represent 78% of converted leads

LOWER SCORESHIGHER SCORES

LeanData Routes Best-Fit for EngagementHost Analytics also struggled with the lack of anatural connection between leads and accountsin Salesforce, which created a structuralproblem that is an endless source of frustrationfor revenue-generating teams. The companyimplemented LeanData’s proprietary fuzzymatching algorithm and best-in-class leadrouting to simplify this process by automaticallymoving every lead along to the next best stepof the buyer’s journey. LeanData ensures thatincoming leads matching existing customers,open opportunities and target accounts arepromptly sent to the correct account owners.Using a round-robin system, LeanData alsodistributes 750 net-new, Infer-scored leads each

month to Host Analytics’ front-line inside salesteam – guaranteeing that each salesdevelopment representative (SDR) receives anequal share of Infer A, B, and C Leads.

This intelligent lead-routing system gives salesreps visibility into accounts, and ensures thatthey receive prompt and appropriate attention.Additionally, fair distribution of leads amongSDRs boosts team productivity and guaranteesthat the highest-quality leads are followed upquickly. Host Analytics’ reps are able to makedecisions based on the full context of eachaccount’s activity, thus increasing the likelihoodthat leads will convert.

Figure: LeanData's Routing for Host Analytics Based on Infer's Best-fit Score

THE RESULTS• Host Analytics’ marketing team

doubled its revenue contribution, in part by prioritizing the leads most likely to convert to customers.

• Marketing now tests-and-invests in various marketing campaigns, optimizing spend around the programs and channels that generate the hottest leads for sales to follow up on.

• The company clarified its murky definition of an MQL with proven data-driven criteria, building trust in the scores and bringing sales and marketing into deeper alignment.

• Host Analytics unlocked the maximum value of their leads by ensuring reps have the complete context of account activity and are enabled to respond immediately to hot leads.

Figure: Host Analytics' Intelligent Workflow Combining Infer and LeanData

ABOUT LEANDATALeanData’s best-in-class solution simplifies the complexity of the B2B sales process through intelligent lead management. LeanData makes revenue-generation teams more successful by matching leads to accounts and then automatically routing them to the right rep, every time. LeanData provides richer insights into accounts so that more than 250 fast-growing businesses such as Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, Marketo and Cloudera can maximize marketing ROI and close more deals.

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ABOUT INFERFounded in 2010, Infer delivers a predictive sales and marketing platform that helps companies win more customers. It leverages proven data science and machine learning to rapidly model the untapped data sitting in enterprises, along with thousands of signals from the web. Customers include several large enterprises and numerous high growth companies like AdRoll, Cloudera, HubSpot, New Relic, ShoreTel, Tableau, Xactly and Zendesk. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., Infer is funded by leading investors, including Redpoint Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Social+Capital Partnership, Sutter Hill Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.

Learn more at www.infer.com

“Predictive-driven lead routing gives us the best of both worlds: we’re able to identify our highest quality leads and quickly get each one to the right sales rep for follow up. The deep interoperability between Infer, LeanDataand Salesforce helps us spend less time researching leads and figuring out who should work them, and instead focus that effort towards initiatives that convert more qualified leads into actual revenue.”

– Nick Ezzo, Vice President of Demand Generation, Host Analytics

How Salesforce, Infer, and LeanData WorkBetter TogetherInfer and LeanData have deep integrations intoSalesforce, which enables data to flow easilybetween all three platforms. As soon as newleads enter Salesforce, Infer analyzes thousandsof signals about them, which inform a singlescore that accurately predicts how likely theyare to convert segments the leads into A, B, C orD buckets that represent the highest-to-lowestscoring leads, respectively.

LeanData’s lead-management solutionoperationalizes those insights by automaticallyrouting net-new leads to a round robin thatshares the bucketed leads equally across front-line sales reps for immediate follow up, creatinga balanced and fair distribution of thecompany’s highest quality leads.