I wasn't there at the start of the program, but I have an understanding since we were beginning with the implementation of ReferenceEdge around the time I began on the team. That gave me a sense of what initiatives were behind bringing on ReferenceEdge. To give you a little background, we track many different types of data for our Customer Advocates, such as number of enrollees in our program, topics they're interested in, number of activities they’ve completed, etc. We were taking in a lot of this data and tracking it entirely on spreadsheets and that was eating up a lot of our time. So, from an operational standpoint, we really needed a system that was going to help us with that time that was being consumed as well as improve on efficiencies around how our program tracks data. When our program first launched, we saw a good amount of growth, which is a good problem to have, but more growth equals more data to be maintained—so there was definitely a need to implement a system that could help us out with that.

I would say our main stakeholders would be the Sales and Events Marketing teams mainly stemming from sales reference and speaker requests that I help fulfill—and that's all taken in through ReferenceEdge. We support Product Marketing with sourcing speakers for their webinars as well as securing customers for case studies, etc. So, anytime that they're looking to set something like that up, we also support that organization through ReferenceEdge. Customer Success as well—things like setting up customer-to-customer calls. If they want to learn a little more about a specific use case, just bounce ideas off of another customer, that's another thing that we help out with. So, I would say Sales, Marketing, and CS are the main three.

I'd say the first challenge that we were experiencing really was around the time taken to easily search advocate data, as well as calculating the revenue influenced from the activities that were supported by our advocates.Another challenge that we were facing was the fact that we were previously leaning heavily on our most reliable advocates for reference calls, marketing activities, things like that. The problem with that is it could translate to fatigue for the advocates.A third one I would mention is—we were previously using a Google form to intake reference requests. That was not intuitive for our users to follow; it took quite a bit of time for them to get through that form and they'd be jumping from system to system.

At a high-growth tech company, change is definitely something that we're used to and try to be prepared for at all times. One thing I've noticed since launch: we've now implemented a new streamlined system to intake requests and fulfill references. So, our request process, it can be initiated directly from a Salesforce opportunity and it's much easier to complete; whereas before we used a Google form. So, the requester would be jumping from system to system and it didn't make a lot of sense. Now, we have a much more streamlined system for intaking those requests. We can see how often advocates are being requested to avoid, like I said, that reference fatigue. And given that all the data lives in and flows through Salesforce, we also save time by leveraging the reporting and the dashboards when pulling our data for our quarterly board report.Our quarterly board reports allow us to showcase all of the awesome stats and things that we've accomplished on a quarter-by-quarter basis to our board based on how our program's performed. So each quarter, we report on several different types of advocate data, whether it be enrollment data from our advocate base, revenue influenced from the activities that they've supported us with, registration and attendee metrics from the events that we put on. These are all important pieces of data for us to report every quarter, obviously, because it goes to the board. That's why we wanted to bring on the platform in the first place, to streamline those processes.

Before bringing on ReferenceEdge, it was a headache for users to jump from platform to platform to submit a request. It was even more of a headache for someone like myself, someone who's administering the software and intaking these requests. It was pretty chaotic with our initial processes. By bringing on ReferenceEdge and having reporting and dashboards sit in one place, our request form is done straight through Salesforce itself—so these are all things that make it easy to intake a lot of different requests at a high volume.Also, pulling data for the board reports at the end of each quarter is a tall task, and there's a lot of data to pull with a huge need for the data to be accurate, so doing that manually was time-consuming; it took a lot of mental energy. Being able to pull those numbers up now at the snap of a finger is definitely saving me time.

They have given me lots of good feedback on the new processes we've put in place. I think they understood that it wasn't the most intuitive process before, so it's been great hearing from those stakeholders things like: "Really appreciate those user guides that are dedicated to using ReferenceEdge." We got on top of that change management where they were using one system and now, they have to migrate to a new one, but they still need to get through their day-to-day processes. So, they really appreciate the thoughtfulness around the change management, guiding them through a new system, as well as not having to jump from form to form. They can just go straight from their Salesforce opportunity and submit a request that helps them tee up the best matches for references through filtering. So, the feedback from our internal stakeholders has been good. They really express their gratitude for having a new process that's easy to follow. We're a company where there’s a lot of change happening very fast, and it requires us all to be on our toes and ready for anything. Since our Sales team leans on references as a mechanism to support closing their deals, we really wanted to make sure that our internal stakeholders were ready for that type of change and prepared to still continue with their day-to-day with no headaches.Overall, the buy-in from our stakeholders—whether it be Sales, Marketing, or CS—I've been really pleased with that. Everybody is being very mindful of following the process to submit a reference request. Before, it used to be a lot of just sending out a one-off email to the Advocacy team or shooting me a Slack message directly. The way we look at black market references, it's almost impossible to fully eliminate. There'll always be those couple of reps that go rogue and, if they have personal connections and their own network that they leverage for references, sometimes that's impossible to capture. But now most everybody is following the new process and doing it well, so that’s been great to see.

I definitely value having better efficiencies. When a sales rep needs to submit a reference request and they're not quite sure who the best reference would be, the first part of the process allows them to take a look at our current advocate enrollment with filters at the top of the page that allow them to narrow down who might be a good fit. So, they can narrow based on what activity the advocate is willing to participate in; they can narrow based on the segment that they work in, as well as the different product offerings that we have. It really lets requesters get granular to surface the right reference. So from my perspective, that cuts down on the time needed; they're able to self-service to help source a reference that works for them.Also, the aspect of being native to Salesforce—that's huge. So, not working across all these different systems. It definitely saves time, the fact that we're under one umbrella. To pull data, we were exclusively working out of spreadsheets and there was a lot of manually counting and doing Excel calculations. Now, we're able to get out from under that and we're seeing a lot of progress there. That's been super valuable—not being so time-bound with serving up those numbers.When it comes to pulling data for our board, there're a lot of numbers and a need to make sure that those numbers are accurate. And it’s definitely hard to track them all easily, so that's what's been great about the dashboard capability in ReferenceEdge. Tammy, our Account Director, was great at helping us set those up and giving us a vision: "Okay, you can customize it this way—you can configure a report so it's showing a quarter-over-quarter basis, but also an all-time basis.” So we were able to get really granular and customize our dashboards based on what our board report requires and it's very appealing-looking; it's very easy to read.Also, to track our requests, we use Ref Workspace. We find it to be really easy on the eyes, an intuitive piece of the platform. When it comes to updating the status of a reference request in real time, RefWorkspace has been really nice to use. Let's say I get a response back from an advocate who I had asked to be a reference, they agree to be a reference, and we know what date the call will be completed. I can easily go in, update that status, and put in the call data including what the call outcome was, when it happened, etc. So RefWorkspace has been really nice to use.

A few different ways. One would be enrollment growth of our advocate community. We track that on both the account side but also the contact side. The Customer Advocacy Program is a high priority for Seismic and we've got a lot of eyes on it to make sure that there’s steady growth and the advocates are getting real value from their participation in general, but also on a quarter-over-quarter basis, and how much growth are we seeing across customers with different products that we offer. ReferenceEdge definitely helps us capture those different areas of growth, which is nice.Also, revenue influenced—that's a big one. It's a way for us to show how legit our program is. Being able to report on impressive revenue influenced numbers shows the impact that we have on getting those active deals over the finish line. So that's a big one. We also track event registration and attendee data. So, the events that we put on are a huge benefit to our customer advocates, allowing them to learn more and enhance their experience. We want to make sure that those events and webinars are relevant, that they're meaningful and helpful. A big indicator of that is the data on registration and attendees; we want to see steady growth.

It's been great. I've really enjoyed the experience. Everybody I've worked with at Point of Reference has been super available to help, really quick to respond, regardless of the time of day that I reach out, so I always appreciate that. Tammy, our account director, is so great; she's always here for us through any problems that we might be facing, but also helping us reach success. She’s so knowledgeable about the platform, as well as her other customers. So that helps us realize the success that we wanted by bringing on the platform. So it's been a great experience. We really enjoy working with Tammy as well as everybody else at Point of Reference.