According to the State of Sales Enablement Report, organizations utilizing enablement tools are 52% more likely to engage in formal collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders. So, how can you effectively collaborate across the business to drive transformation?
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win podcast. I’m your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully.
Here to discuss this topic is Lauren Richardson, senior vice president of sales transformation operations at NTT Data. Thank you for joining us. Lauren. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role.
Lauren Richardson: Hi, Shawnna, it great to be on the podcast series today. Thank you so much. I am senior vice president of sales operations transformation and in this role we are driving transformation across NTT, especially for the selling community. I’ve been at NTT now 10 years, and prior to that I was at Microsoft, I was at Nandos, and I also had a wonderful opportunity to run my own business for about 10 years.
This has really put me in a fantastic position in a generalist role to drive transformation in an integration of a company this size.
SS: Well, Lauren, we’re excited to have you here on the podcast as well, so thank you so much for taking the time to join us. In your role as a sales transformation operations leader, what are key initiatives that you’re focused on driving this year, and how are you bringing these transformations to life through your strategic programs?
LR: It’s an interesting one, Shawnna. Our journey with NTT Holdings has over the last five years, been taking the companies outside of Japan and then been integrating them or merging them into one organization. So in the last year, we integrated NTT Data, NTT Data Services and Entity Limited. Now in the integration, you can imagine the transformation that would have to drive is more one of standardization, simplification, and really bringing this organization to operate as one.
So when we look at sales transformation, we are running projects like one CRM, one revenue enablement platform, one sales performance management tool. So these are the projects that we are focusing on because we need to drive the simplification before we can truly drive innovation and transformation for the organization.
SS: I love that. In your opinion, what is the strategic advantage of an enablement platform in supporting the success of your sales transformation initiatives?
LR: It’s absolutely critical. So when we launched the one enablement platform in October, 2024, it was the only platform that, regardless of your legacy company, you could access through single sign-on, which meant there was only one place a seller could go to to find out around our one portfolio offering.
There was only one place that they could go to for training. They could go for information, they could go for change management. Absolutely critical from our Salesforce team to have this one stop that it doesn’t matter if you’re in Americas, if you’re in Taiwan, if you’re in Australia, you could access Highspot, for example, to be able to find out what is our one portfolio, what are we doing in industry? What is the training that is available for me to learn about our new portfolio? So absolutely critical to drive one repository, one change management, and one enablement tool.
SS: Amazing. Now, in the introduction, we talked about the importance of stakeholder relationships. Now I know that that is one of your strengths in building really meaningful long-term stakeholder relationships. How do you foster these relationships at all levels of the business to drive your transformation initiatives forward?
LR: Yes, I absolutely love stakeholder management. For me, it’s about building trust and at every level of the organization trust is foundational. I have three things that I look at.
First is listen and learn. How to make sure that you truly listening from their perspective, what are the challenges that they are facing and learn from that conversation.
The second one for me is around response. So if somebody is contacting me or trying to set up a meeting with me, or sending me an email, or trying to communicate with me, ensuring that I respond immediately or within a 24 hour period to be able to get the trust that I’m going to actually listen and learn.
And then finally is around integrity and kindness. I think acting with integrity in everything that you do, whether it’s a crazy transformational project, it takes nothing to have integrity and treat people with kindness. And I think with those three things comes to the core, building that trust, whether you’re an executive member, whether you are part of the project delivery team, if you have those elements in place and they trust you and they believe in you, you can drive the transformation for this organization.
SS: I like those three principles. How have these strong stakeholder relationships helped you optimize and innovate your transformation initiatives?
LR: I think for us was around simplification in a lot of the integration moments with this organization. I. We didn’t necessarily have the mandate to deliver on something.
I’ll give you an example. Highspot was a legacy tool that we used for for limited, and in creating this one NTT data in the tool wasn’t used across the organization and we didn’t have the mandate to operationalize it across the organization and our CEO said to us. Lauren, if you can get the Americas to buy into Highspot, you’ll have the mandate for that to be a tier one enablement platform.
But I had to use influence. And with the influence of that, I was working with people I’d never worked with before and I had to build that trust so that when I made the statement, I really believed that this is the right way to go for the organization. They believed in me and they believed that influence is the right thing to do.
So, absolutely key to success. If the stakeholder believes in you, you can drive anything, but you’ve gotta follow through on that trust. You’ve gotta deliver on your promise. And that’s how I approached it for this initiative.
SS: Amazing. I absolutely love that Lauren. Now, NTT data operates with a pretty complex business structure across 50 countries. How do you maintain consistency in your strategy while still adapting to the unique needs of the different stakeholders in your global teams?
LR: It’s a challenging one, because the client is owned at the edge by the edge. It gives them a lot of autonomy to adjust to what the client would need in country. But I strongly believe that without simplification and standardization. You will not scale for growth and their edge or the countries rely on us to make sure that there is one tool, that there is one process, that the operational heartbeat of the company is sound. In order to be able to focus on the client. So I think it’s really understanding that would a group function be responsible for the edge, but also making sure that we are making their life easier through the operational standardization that we are driving, and that the growth strategy can come a lot easier at the edge if those foundational layers are in place.
SS: Absolutely. Now, along with the large global reach, your programs also support different role types across the business, from client managers to solution architects and more. What are your best practices for developing programs that really resonate with each role?
LR: It’s a topic that’s very close to my heart because I really believe that we need a persona driven strategy. So when we designed the revenue enablement framework – the framework that would inform how we build Highspot for NTT data in. We had a persona first lens to that. And for us it’s around creating how do you make sure that the persona has the right information at their fingertips.
In the moment that matters the most. So if it’s a solution architect and he’s preparing for an RFP moment, well, how does he get his hands on that content or training or information or insights or data in the moment that matters in that RFP? If I’m a client manager and I’m preparing for A QBR, how do I find the information that helps me prepare for that QBR?
So for when we designed the revenue enablement framework, we selected four primary personas and we did the tagging and the connection of to the material and the training within Highspot, through that persona, identifying that the moment that matters the most for them. And we did a number of interviews across the organization to make sure that we understood their moments.
What are those top five, those top eight moments that mean so much to you? And how do we make sure that we can connect you to that moment at the time that it matters with a client? So for us, it’s absolutely critical. Persona driven mapping. Persona driven journeys is where the maturity of the organization will come through in our enablement platform.
SS: Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Lauren, to shift gears a little bit, I know that you are a data-driven leader. How do you use data to inform and enhance your strategic programs to drive your transformation efforts and deliver on business goals?
LR: I think data is, is there’s so much data. It’s it, it can actually work against you if you are not asking the right question.
So when I look at the data, I definitely look with a lens of looking backwards, help me see trends that are happening, help describe a moment for me so I can see the insights against that trend. Then once I have the historic view, what’s happening, I start to look at the predictive. Where are we going with this?
How do we forecast? How do we use machine learning to be able to anticipate where we’re gonna be going? And then once we’ve looked at the predictive, then I’ll probably look at how we then use the insights against that to prescribe to the organization how we should address where we are going. So it’ll be the three words for me, you know, describe, to be able to predict and then be able to, uh, look backwards in terms of describing. So, describe, predict and prescribe would be the three words for me.
SS: I love that. Since launching Highspot, what results have you seen and are there any key wins or notable business outcomes you can share?
LR: So we launched HighSpot for Entity Data Inc in October. First and foremost, we’ve got Americas on board.
So you would’ve remembered I said the CEO Lauren get Americas and, and you’ve got a tier one platform. We now have it as a tier one platform for entity entity dating, which means it’s part of our, our digital blueprint and absolutely supported by our IT organization. I think where it came to life for me was when we designed this framework, persona driven framework, and we started to see our pre-sales solution architects, 30% of the data that was being, or the downloads were coming from that audience, which means that we had designed it correctly.
And that was really exciting for me. It’s since October 34,000 downloads, we’ve had over 500,000 views. We. I also had to shown it just as a indication a lot of our co countries had changed their go-to market strategy from portfolio led to industry led. And we partnered with primarily, which is one of Highspot partners that has immediately activated in Highspot.
And in one month we noted a thousand. Courses were completed, which means that the seven and a half thousand people that have license to Highspot, we were getting activation after activation in the first three months where people were going and consuming this data. So really exciting for me to see how much traction we had.
It drove a huge, uh, change management plan, but really good traction. And I think where the rubber hits the road is, yes, we have seven and a half thousand people that are actively using Highspot, but we have a delivery organization that don’t have the license yet to Highspot, and the requests, those are 10, 20,000 people.
The quests coming in. Please, please, please can we have access to this content, to this training, to these insights, to this analytics. So the forecast is also bright, which is really fantastic. So I’m really excited about what we’ve delivered. The feedback has been incredible. The stats are there and um, I think we are gonna start to see the functionality of Highspot being consumed a lot more in our maturity phase, but also looking at how do we start to spread the license model across the organization.
SS: Lauren, it’s absolutely amazing what you’ve done at NTT Data, I have to say. Absolutely amazing. I have one last question for you, Lauren, if you don’t mind. To close, if you were able to offer one piece of advice to other leaders looking to drive impactful sales transformation efforts, what would it be?
LR: For me? Listening to that, we have to be persona led. What does our audience need from us as enablers? They need to drive productivity. They’re complaining to us that they spend so much of their time in administrative talks, whether it’s compulsory training, whether it’s completing their time sheets or their submissions, or preparing for the client engagements.
How do we make their lives easier so they’re productive? Where, where they need to be and that is selling for the organization. So whether we are looking at AI, if we are looking at personalization of our content, if we are looking at how do we make sure that we are optimizing the functionality of everything they do, whether it’s in CRM, whether it’s in high spots, whether it’s in the training, make sure you know what your audience’s pain is.
What is the opportunity that you designed to address that pain? Our pain was, I’m spending too much time in admin. Our solution is to drive productivity through simplification and transformation and innovation through AI.
SS: Amazing advice. Lauren. Thank you again so much for joining us today. I greatly appreciate your time.
LR: Thank you so much for having me.
SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for our insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.
