Case Study

Large Enterprise AEs at SAP were often assigned new named accounts each year. Before making a single sales call, they had to work through multiple binders of paper contracts per account to understand purchase history, contract terms, and opportunity landscape. The process took days, required Finance involvement, and compressed Q1 productivity every year without fail.

See also: the Commissions Workflow & Experience case study for another sales enablement example resulting from the same research study.

See also: The ethnographic approach used in this engagement was presented at the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) and informed a peer-reviewed publication on applying observational methods in commercial software contexts.

Company & Position

SAP Americas, Director, Sales Operations (2005-2006)

Details

The engagement grew from the same ethnographic research study behind the Commissions initiative — and benefited from the joint sponsorship of the SVP of Sales Operations and CFO already secured. The solution was conceptually straightforward: digitize the contracts, extract the key information, and surface it in a structured form accessible remotely.

Actions

• Secured joint sponsorship from the SVP of Sales Operations and CFO, building on the relationship established during the Commissions engagement.
• Engaged a vendor to scan and OCR paper contract binders into a searchable digital repository.
• Designed an automated Opportunity Landscape — a structured account summary covering purchase history, contract terms, and open opportunities — accessible via SSO through the Sales & Marketing Intranet.

Outcome & Impact

• What took days now took hours — with little to no Finance involvement required.
• Reps arriving into new Q1 accounts could begin work immediately.
• Contributed to a 20% improvement in overall sales productivity across multiple Sales Operations initiatives.