Customer Success Tips: Executive Sponsorship and Value to Leadership

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3 cost-saving, strategy-driving tactics that will hook your leadership team 

Are the decision makers within your organization sold on the value of Adobe Workfront – can they clearly see how work being done directly connects and impacts company goals, strategies and initiatives? Or are you wanting to get executive buy-in to help drive work management maturity across your organization?

To help gain the trust of leadership and prove to them that Workfront is worth the investment, we've identified the following three tactics to help show the value of Workfront and build buy-in from your leadership.  

TACTIC #1

Time is money—leverage status dashboards to nix the meetings and give team members back time in their day to focus on strategy and execution.

Just like FCB shared in their customer story, reducing the time spent planning and attending meetings meant an increase in productivity and quicker decision-making due to real-time, accessible data.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS WIN 

1. Learn how to migrate from meetings to digital dashboards in the article, Status Reports, and then in your own instance, build a Project Health Report using the guidelines here. 
2. Schedule a meeting with stakeholders to understand what data they need to see in real-time and configure a dashboard to surface those needs. Take an agile approach focusing on one team at a time to make this effort manageable, allowing you to implement any learnings as you go.  

TACTIC #2

Understand, measure and deliver on the why. Business impact that will guarantee leadership sponsorship and buy-in. 

Make sure your leadership knows the positive impact that the implementation of Workfront has delivered. Understanding what Workfront was purchased to solve for is critical to validating the success of the platform. If you aren’t sure, that’s okay – we’ve come up with a list of questions you can review to start brainstorming or you can check out the Forrester report to learn how Workfront can provide a 285% ROI over three years with a payback period of less than three months!

Once you’ve defined the why, make sure that you are capturing those metrics inside of Workfront using custom forms, reports, and dashboards, so that you can show your leadership the value of driving work management maturity in real-time and get their sponsorship as you spearhead this initiative.  

HOW TO PRESENT THE DATA IN AN EASY-TO-READ, RELATABLE WAY 

1. Read through the blog, Shine a Spotlight on Your Workfront Success to make sure that you are fully prepared with the data, strategic goals and a well-defined plan to deliver to your leaders.  
2. Prepare your presentation and establish a regular schedule of business reviews with leadership, so you can deliver data that supports the value and success of Workfront.

TACTIC #3

Empower leaders to make data-driven decisions by surfacing KPIs and meaningful metrics. 

Leaders need insight into work performance indicators (WPIs) to understand how the organization is operating and to determine where to focus time and attention. This information will help them drive the business forward and allow them to make well-informed strategic business decisions – an opportunity that they may not have had before implementing a system of record.

HOW TO LEVEL UP YOUR LEADERSHIP 

1. Watch the Measuring Performance with KPIs (transcript only) Ask the Expert webinar and complete the self-guided KPI dashboards learning path to learn what key performance indicators, or KPIs, are and how are they defined, how to pair those KPIs to your Workfront instance and what reports or custom fields are key for measuring KPIs. 
2. Kick-start the KPI dashboard from the KPI learning path into your Workfront instance and update each report to show relevant data for your organization. Run it past a few key stakeholders for feedback and iterate before presenting it to the larger leadership group.  

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What’s next?  

Be forward-thinking – What is the current state of your organization and what do your leaders envision the future state to be? Read this blog to learn how to create a roadmap to growth and maturity, and partner with your leaders to map a strategic plan towards the maturity of work management, the motivation of your team, operational growth and overall success.

Then, share your success story with others so they can learn from the best! You know more than you think and with that knowledge, opportunities are endless, and rewards are infinite!  

Have questions? Connect with other like-minded system administrators and ask a question on the Workfront Community. For application troubleshooting or technical assistance, please contact Customer Support at 844-306-HELP (US) or by submitting a case on Experience League Support.