Our client, a software integration startup, was acquired by Salesforce, a Fortune 200 CRM software company. Salesforce challenged our client to increase revenue from $1B to $5B in four years. Increasing revenue by 4X in four years is a steep mountain for any organization to climb, but particularly for this scrappy start-up whose growth was fueled by their focus on product and technology versus profitability and scale.
The expectation for our client was to integrate into Salesforce’s operations and reach $5B by 2026. In addition to the revenue goal, our client was expected to fuse its independent practices into Salesforces’ ways of working.
To meet their mandated performance goals, our client would have to make radical changes. What got them to $1B was not going to get them to $5B. Successful organizational change hinges on individuals’ willingness to shift their mindset – an especially difficult task in start-up environments. Entrepreneurs often pour their passions and identities into the company they create – the way they work becomes who they are. For client leaders this shift was indeed personal. They were expected to surrender control, open their practices to collaborate with their parent company, and simultaneously embrace and advocate for the new paradigm that represented the end of their independence.
To help our client become a contributing part of Salesforce’s global enterprise by 2026, Expressworks helped develop a step-by-step roadmap and an organizational strategy that would renovate the prevailing culture and introduce a more intentional focus on discipline and process rigor as a means of driving needed profitability. The design required our client to think and plan in longer than the 12-month horizons it was used to. More significantly, it required our client to formalize its structure and operations, governance and oversight in ways that the organization had not previously needed.
Working with seven teams made up of 70 people leaders over the course of a year, Expressworks developed a four-prong solution comprised of reinforcing components that combined would support the creation of an operating environment able to build the business and support their performance goals.The cross- functional effort featured parallel, yet intertwined activities designed to enable the client to fly the plane while they were building it.
With strong leadership involvement, we created a four-year strategy built on this vision and focused on leader capability to shift to profitability and scale organizational structure.
This roadmap helped executives and team members envision the four-year journey and set specific milestones by year, component, and team. The roadmap also created a means by which to measure progress and reward incremental success.
The creation of a PMO supported strategy execution in its oversight of established standards, implementation practices and a playbook for measurement and governance. This function also included guidance and coaching to help leaders develop the discipline needed to enable execution of the roadmap and systemic adoption.
To help mitigate the enormous toll a major paradigm shift takes on people, structured reinforcing activities were developed to support:
BUSINESS OUTCOMES Expressworks’ holistic strategy and organizational design helped orient leaders to their new reality and gave them the confidence that they could successfully steward their 700 employees through this massive transformation. New operating standards and processes coupled with a comprehensive implementation structure gave leaders the tools to align the organization, drive adoption, and measure and reward behavior as it shifted to support the new vision and its performance goals.Expressworks’ holistic strategy and organizational design helped orient leaders to their new reality and gave them the confidence that they could successfully steward their 700 employees through this massive transformation. New operating standards and processes coupled with a comprehensive implementation structure gave leaders the tools to align the organization, drive adoption, and measure and reward behavior as it shifted to support the new vision and its performance goals.
