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Andy YeomansExecutive Vice Presidentaec360 by sa.global

Relationships + Experience:Unlocking the Keys to Business Development Success

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Speaker Introduction

• Andy Yeomans

• Executive Vice President, aec360 (sa.global)

• 20+ years experience driving business development and marketing transformation

• 16 years experience working with CRM technologies

• 11 years experience in the A/E/C industry

• Current focus with aec360 CRM solution for BD and marketing for A/E/C firms

• Email: andyy@saglobal.com

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Our Qualifications for Today’s Session

• aec360 is Microsoft Dynamics 365-based business platform purpose built for A/E/C firms

• Includes comprehensive A/E/C CRM platform:• Marketing

• Business development

• Experience management

• Relationship intelligence

• Built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM platform

• Pre-configured to meet the unique needs of the A/E/C industry

• We’ve helped dozens of A/E/C firms transform their business development and marketing processes

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Today’s Agenda

• Challenges in business development in A/E/C

• Experience and relationships – the two most critical aspects of business development success

• ERM makes its way into A/E/C

• Q&A session

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Polling Question #1

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What Makes A/E/C Business Development Hard?

• It’s a hyper-competitive industry

• A lot of firms kind of look the same

• Everybody knows everybody, but who do we really know?

• Pursuit-level investments are significant, and…

• The bid-to-win rate is generally low (industry average 37% - 44%)

• It’s typically managed by busy seller/doer professionals

• Visibility of work history and experience are more critical to the BD process than in any other industry

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Results From Recent Survey

What is your firm’s biggest challenge in business development?

32

32

20

16

High pursuit costs

Low bid/win ratio

Limited visibility of experience

Limited visibility of relationships

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Percentage Responses

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Unlocking the Keys to Business Development Success

Your Firm’s Experience

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Polling Question #2

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A/E/C Selection Criteria

16.90%

21.50%

23.80%

41.10%

45.40%

Good cultural fit

Ability to drive results

Knowledge of industry/client business

Team Expertise/Skills

Relevant Experience/Past Performance

Top 5 Selection Criteria of AEC Buyers

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The Importance of Experience in A/E/C

• A/E/C buyer behavior is favoring experience above all other factors

• Many jobs are awarded based on qualification-based proposals

• Those who show the most relevant experience and qualifications often win!

• Having a centralized, searchable view of firm-wide experience is critical

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What Comprises Your Firm’s Experience?

• Project history and experience• Project type• Market• Client type• Services provided• Awards • Other parties involved• Digital assets

• Employee experience• Years of experience • Projects, roles, and dates• Education, certifications • Unique skills, awards, qualifications

Project Experience

Client Experience

Employee Experience

Digital Assets

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Mining for ExperienceA simple example…

• Find me all projects …• Out of our Atlanta office, where…• We were the prime contractor• For architectural design services • In the higher education market• That was LEED Gold certified• Where our net fees were at least $1M• And who worked on the project

• And for those employees, show me…• Their years of experience• Their certifications and education• Any unique skills, awards, or qualifications they have• Other projects they’ve done like this one

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Challenges and Repercussions of Blind Spots

• Many firms lack a complete view of their experience and qualifications

• Key reasons:• No single system of record (data silos)• Data doesn’t flow seamlessly across the firm• Difficult getting employees to update

information• Impacts to the firm include:

• Wasted time• Lots of gymnastics during proposal process• Less relevant proposal responses• Lower bid:win rates

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Putting Your Best Foot Forward

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Getting to a 360-degree View of Experience

• Plan A = Implement an integrated business management platform (CRM, ProjectManagement, Accounting, HR) where data flows seamlessly across the business

• Plan B = Implement an experiencemanagement platform that can integrated with key firm-wide systems to consolidate experience into a single platform

• Plan C = Utilize network file / document stores and search tools to create knowledge repository

Project Experience

Client Experience

Employee Experience

Digital Assets

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Unlocking the Keys to Business Development Success

Your Firm’s Relationships

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Polling Question #3

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Importance of Relationships in A/E/C

• Relationships have always been a key to BD success

• Drives inflow of new opportunities

• Can impact pursuit success

• Win rate on bid where relationships existed is much

higher than net new clients

• Understanding relationships can help:

• Prevent collisions

• Enable more cross-practice introductions

• Relationship visibility should include:

• Clients and prospects

• Teaming partners, agencies, subcontractors, etc.

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IntelligentRelationships

o Who knows who?

o Who is connected to who?

o Who is communicating with who?

o Who isn’t communicating with who?

o Lonely hearts club!

o Are activity patterns trending up or

trending down?

Relationships are Complex

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Curiosity Around A/E/C CRM

• Why are firms interested in AEC-specific CRM solutions?

• What are the primary drivers?• What capabilities are the business users

looking for?

Surveys of Professional Firms

• 3 clients that have implemented AEC CRM• 3 actively implementing AEC CRM solutions• 3 firms looking to make the decision to invest

• 5 used Deltek Vision as their primary ERP• 2 used BST Global as their primary ERP• 1 used Unit4 / Business World ERP• 1 used Oracle as their primary ERP

Microsoft Funded Survey

ERP = Enterprise Resource Planning (Accounting and Project Management)

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• 9 A/E/C firms surveyed• Small, medium, large

• 750 A/E/C Firm Users • Principals, SMEs, marketing and business development users

• 14 Simple Questions and Requests for Comments• Scale of 1-5 responses

• 1 was “not beneficial” / 5 was “highly beneficial”• Top Areas of Interest – Highest Perceived Value

• crystal clear results• Lowest Perceived Value

• complicated areas

Survey Details

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Consolidated Results from 750 User SurveysResponse Breakdown by Question

# Question 1

2

3

4

5

Total

1

Allow me to find out what relationships and contacts we have within a client (i.e., who

knows whom).

0.00%

0

4.76%

1

14.29%

3

28.57%

6

52.38%

11

21

2

Allow me to track client activity to see who from “Client

Name” is communicating with specific

clients or client sectors

5.00%

1

15.00%

3

25.00%

5

20.00%

4

35.00%

7

20

3 Provide me an easier way to

identify projects that have been completed for specific clients

10.00 %

2

20.00%

4

5.00%

1

55.00%

11

10.00%

2

20

4 Allow us to coordinate the

pursuit of opportunities across offices

14.29 %

3

14.29%

3

23.81%

5

14.29%

3

33.33%

7

21

5

Provide a more simplified process to add/delete client

contacts to a marketing list or event

5.00%

1

15.00%

3

25.00%

5

25.00%

5

30.00%

6

20

6

Allow ready access to client information and contact data

from a mobile device (smartphone and tablet)

5.00%

1

5.00%

1

25.00%

5

30.00%

6

35.00%

7

20

7

Provide reporting and analysis around percentage of jobs that

“Client Name” is being awarded vs. not

being selected

20.00 %

4

20.00%

4

20.00%

4

35.00%

7

5.00%

1

20

8 Allow ready access to client contact information from a

centralized database

0.00%

0

9.52%

2

19.05%

4

19.05%

4

52.38%

11

21

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Top 5 Results86%Relationships: Employees, Contacts & ClientsWho knows who?Who is connected to who?Who has worked with who?

81%

Centralized Knowledgebase Client data, projects, contacts, pursuits, activities, etc..

75%MobilityEase of use and ease of access while out of the office.

70%

Activity and Communications ReportingWho is communicating and meeting with who?

67%Easy to Use System for contributing and consuming information

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CRM, Meet ERM… (Even in A/E/C)

• Client tracking• Contact tracking• Activity tracking• Lead and pursuit tracking • Experience tracking

Traditional CRM

• Automated contact harvesting• Seamless contribution to CRM• Intelligent relationship connections• Relationship strength scoring• Relationship dashboards

ERM

360-degree view of clients,

contacts, and relationships

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What is Relationship Intelligence?

• Practices and tools that lead to a 360-degree view of interactions with a contact (clients, partners, industry)• From Outlook (emails, meetings, activities)

• From ERP (bids, projects, experience)

• Other data sources

• Create connections throughout your firm• Who knows who?

• Who has worked with who?

• Leveraging algorithms (AI) to score relationship strength • And identify weaknesses!

• Turn data into actionable insights that your team can use to strengthen relationships, adapt pursuit strategies and win more business!

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Enterprise Relationship Management

360-degree View of Firm Relationships

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Email Signature ScrapingA key component to ERM solutions

Q: Where is the most up-do-date contact data actually stored? CRM? Outlook card file?

A: An Email Signature

• Email signature scraping uncovers who users are communicating with through email activity.

• The email signature scraping tool creates, quantifies, and enriches the relationship data based on the passive email communication via Outlook.

• In the end, the firm gains valuable contact/relationship data, and the end user does not have to manually enter data.

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Employee Activity Before Harvesting

• Employee 1 = 21 contacts• Employee 2 = 8 contacts• Employee 3 = 26 contacts• Employee 4 = 114 contacts• Employee 5 = 131 contacts

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Employee Activity After Harvesting

• Employee 1 = 112 contacts• Employee 2 = 52 contacts• Employee 3 = 104 contacts• Employee 4 = 168 contacts• Employee 5 = 194 contacts

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The Impact of ERMResults

• Emails scraped: 725,000+• Appointments scraped: 94,044• Potential Contacts Identified: 1,315• New Contacts Created: 422• Relationship connections created: 3,509

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Employee 1 Employee 2 Employee 3 Employee 4 Employee 5

Before vs. After

Before After Improvement

433% Improvement

530% Improvement

301% Improvement

68% Improvement

48% Improvement

Benefits• Complete, centralized view of contacts• Who knows who? Talking to who?• Optimal pursuit teams• Less collisions • Better cross-practice/office selling• Relationship and pursuit strength

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Benefits of Relationship Intelligence

• Support better go/no-go decisions• Do we have the right relationships in place to

win?• Facilitate cross-practice selling introductions

• Who in our firm knows a client contact and can introduce me?

• Minimize collisions • Has anyone else in the firm been meeting with

or communicating with this contact?• Put together stronger pursuit teams

• Who knows the client contact the best and should lead a pursuit?

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In Summary

• Your firm’s experience and relationships are two of the biggest keys to business development success

• Invest in a centralized experience repository• Find ways to know ‘who knows whom’• Get on the road to greater BD success!

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Q&A Session

• For additional information:• www.aec360.com• www.saglobal.com

Andy Yeomans• 949.395.8343• andyy@saglobal.com