Sales enablement and beyond with Seismic – Unlocking synergies with marketing technology

Published on June 25, 2024 by Nihir Fleming

Marketing and marketing operations have traditionally functioned independently while playing a pivotal role in enabling sales and client-servicing teams to acquire new business and retain clients. While this approach has worked to a certain extent, it introduced a number of challenges such as limited collaboration, misaligned objectives, time and cost inefficiencies and inconsistent delivery to clients.

Today's business landscape necessitates a centralised sales-enablement platform to break down organisational silos, enhance internal and external collaboration and deliver results with greater time efficiencies. Seismic is one such platform that unlocks possibilities, capabilities and ROI.

However, adopting a sales-enablement tool is not an easy process and requires careful consideration.

Emerging trends in marketing operations and sales enablement

The sector has undergone significant changes, with greater emphasis now on client-centricity, virtual selling and speed to market. These changes have been driven by technology, transforming expectations and organisational culture. Sales enablement has also evolved, becoming more advanced and solution-driven, due to the latest tech stacks. Automation and integration have been key in enabling firms to manage customisation and scale, while data analytics provide a better understanding of client interactions.

How has sales enablement evolved? Firms no longer wish to operate in silos and are looking at a far more singular, well-rounded and holistic tool to perform multiple jobs and do these well. Seismic fits the bill.

Seismic offers a range of capabilities to automate content, create customised and compliant content, engage with social media and centralise internal training. This platform helps firms meet the challenges of centralising content, streamlining maintenance and support, coordinating between different teams and providing customisation and personalisation capabilities. It is the ideal tool to keep all these functionalities in check.

Comments on Seismic by leaders of global asset and wealth management firms

Acuity Knowledge Partners hosted a webinar on Seismic recently that included industry experts both on the panel and as attendees. We also conducted a survey to understand where world-leading organisations are in their sales-enablement journeys, so as to ascertain which functionality of the Seismic tool is most commonly used and the key challenges they face in increasing the use of Seismic within the organisation.

We found that close to 80% of the respondents use Seismic, while many others are considering its use. We also found that the most frequently used Seismic functionality is its LiveDocs feature, closely followed by its use as a document repository. It was not surprising that most organisations are underutilising the tool because of limited bandwidth.

For more insights from the recently conducted webinar, please visit (https://www.acuitykp.com/our-events/unlocking-synergies-with-marketing-technology/)

Seismic – for centralisation, collaboration and efficiencies in the sales-enablement value chain

Key considerations when purchasing a sales-enablement tool:

Implementation: Considerations such as the kinds of problems it solves, how it can support business growth, the level of efficiency it enables the organisation to acquire, how different stakeholders and processes may be affected and how well it fits into the current tech stack.

Support: Considerations such as the level of technical knowledge required to effectively deploy the tool and whether the organisation has the resources required to increase user capabilities once the tool is implemented.

Reporting: Considerations such as the type of analytics and reporting the tool provides and to what extent it provides room for integration.

Such considerations would help understand whether the benefits justify the cost.

Seismic has enabled businesses to enhance customisation and personalisation so as to support stakeholders more effectively. The main advantage relates to content automation: teams feel more confident and free to manage content in ways they feel are appropriate, and it also minimises the time required, resource utilisation and manual intervention.

Challenges and key lessons learnt

The biggest challenge has been transmission from legacy settings/processes to the latest upgrades of the tool in a way that ensures minimal impact. Other challenges are user adoption and resistance to change. To mitigate these, it is essential that businesses have early access to the tool, have a comprehensive testing plan in place and engage stakeholders to ensure all parties are on the same page.

Asset managers also face the risk of not having a development environment to test and roll out improvements; this means that they have to work in a real-time working environment, even for testing purposes.

Some asset managers use Seismic solely as a content repository or for document version control, not getting the maximum benefit of a tool with significant potential.

How to get the maximum benefit

Seismic’s features such as LiveDocs and LiveInsights boost the user experience significantly.

LiveDocs was referred to as a “game changer” in our webinar. It is highly versatile – able to be used as static content or highly customised content when preparing presentations. This flexibility enables solving a number of challenges quickly, and at scale. LiveDocs can significantly improve efficiency and reduce the time spent on maintenance of content, including strategy presentations and factsheets. Content can be updated and the changes shared across multiple documents simultaneously.

LiveInsights is Seismic’s out-of-the-box reporting capability. It can generate adoption and usage metrics and track what content is being used, how much and by whom.

Acuity Knowledge Partners’ Seismic support

We are an official partner with Seismic. Our 70+ Seismic specialists, including an experienced and senior layer of SMEs and managers, support more than 15 clients, providing access to industry best practices and a technology pool. We have also implemented LiveDocs for over 5,000 documents. We ensure a smooth and transparent line of communication, time-zone coverage and efficient project management –from configuration, deployment and integration to maintenance.

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