Shark Transforms Siemens DI’s Sales Process with Streamlined and Standardised Business Case Creation

Before adopting Shark, Siemens Digital Industries Software struggled with creating business cases due to a lack of standardization. However, Shark streamlined the process, allowing them to quickly develop structured, reusable business cases. This improved the efficiency of their sales process and strengthened their ability to justify the ROI of their solutions.

Standardised
Selling Process
2022
Became Shark Users
Structured
Business Cases
Industry
Software
Country
US
Company Type
Enterprise
Shark is helping us to be more structured in how we organise and prepare business cases and also to standardise the way to do it.
Jose Manzano
Head of Sales – North America
Siemens Digital Industries Software

About Siemens Digital Industries Software

Siemens Digital Industries Software help organisations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware, and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. The Siemens Xcelerator business platform and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimise their design, engineering, and manufacturing processes to turn today's ideas into the sustainable products of the future. From chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries.

Before Shark / The Challenge

Siemens DI provide process modelling simulation solutions for large enterprises within the chemical and life sciences industries. Due to the complex nature of their solutions, the sales cycle is usually long, and the majority of their customers will need to justify the investment as it will significantly change how they are currently doing business. This usually results in internal conversations by their customers ensuring they have the budget to invest, they have the motivation to change, and finally, they have the culture to adopt Siemens solutions. A typical element within this process would also be to develop a business case.

Before getting started with Shark, Siemens did not have a common or standardised process for creating business cases, which meant that when a customer asked for one to justify their solutions it was a challenge, and new methodologies were constantly being developed. After seeing the success that the UK team were having using Shark with their customers, Jose wanted to find out more to see if it could solve the issues that they were currently having.

The Solution

Following some familiarisation sessions with the UK team, Jose and his team were up and running with Shark.  Within a couple of hours, they had prepared business cases that were ready to be shared with customers so they could go through the Siemens investment together.

In the first day I had a real case that I was able to share with my customer and navigate together to show all the potential savings they're going to have by adopting our solutions; how the investment looks, how their financials look for, ROI, payback. All the things supposedly we think our customers or prospects know, but often they don't.

<div class="blockquote-author">Jose Manzano, Head of Sales - North America at Siemens Digital Industries Software.</div>

Shark has helped Siemens to be more structured in the way they organise and prepare business cases. Now, when a request for a business case comes in, the team know how to handle it and what they need to do. It has also helped to standardise their response to business case requests as they have industry use cases and templates that can be re-used for relevant customers, making the whole process easier and more efficient for the sales team.

Finally, Shark helps Siemens to justify the cost of their solutions as the conversation is taken away from being just about price. They can now easily and visually demonstrate the benefits and ROI of their solutions, so pricing becomes a secondary discussion.

Meet the Expert

Name:
Jose Manzano
Position:
Head of Sales – North America
Company:
Siemens Digital Industries Software

What is your favourite Shark Feature?

I like all the options we have for defining the savings. You have the groups of categories of savings and then all the pre-defined savings options. This helps us to think about the areas we are going to see savings with a prospect or customer. It also helps us to capture everything, because if you try to come with what you have in your mind, you're going to miss something. Using Shark, you can go through the benefits one by one. My customers are going to have savings here or there, and in some cases, we have options where the customer will actually make more money, not only savings in labour or other areas. So, this is what I like because it helps to have a comprehensive business case.

What are the reasons you recommend Shark Finesse?

I would recommend Shark because it is easy to use. It's really delivering what you need if you have to prove the financials of an investment. And that's the case for many of my clients. It's also a way to increase or improve the customer experience because when they get to the point of asking you for a business case, they get something which is very professional. So normally they are impressed with what Shark Finesse can do.

What we do

At Shark Finesse we have developed an enterprise-grade cloud application to help businesses standardise and simplify their value engagements across the entire customer journey.

Shark, a business value engagement platform used by 1000’s of customer-facing teams globally (e.g. pre-sales, sales, value teams, and customer success) is easy to use, intuitive and usable directly with the customer to negotiate the likely business returns from investing in a solution.

By adopting the Shark approach you will fundamentally transform conversations with new and existing customers, close more business, and differentiate from the competition.