Al Arun: Centralizing CRM tools into a Single Pane of Glass for Customer Success

In a recent edition of Aviso’s Revenue Navigators Series, we had the opportunity to discuss with Al Arun how Revenue AI and a centralized CRM platform approach are transforming the customer adoption process. Arun is the Chief Customer Officer of Ivanti, an IT asset and management software solutions organization. This article is the second part of a four blog post series diving into how Al Arun and his team implemented Aviso’s revenue solutions to support the success and growth of Ivanti. In this segment of his interview with Aviso, Arun explains Ivanti’s decision to adopt Aviso’s “single pane of glass technology” and how it stands out against other CRM tools on the market.

Aviso: How did your journey with Aviso AI start, and why are you excited about Aviso? Arun opened his response to this question explaining two fundamental driving factors that trigger a buying decision in an individual in a business context: fear and greed. Whether it be the ‘fear’ of making the wrong business decision or the ‘greed’ for investing in a tool that provides ‘ growth and scale. Sales reps need to understand and identify these factors during a sales process. In part of Arun’s reasoning for choosing Aviso, he stated, “Technology is great, the software is awesome, but at the end of the day, people’s relationships are the most important aspect of how anyone does business.” Initially, Arun had heard about Aviso through old connections from previous jobs and was curious about what Aviso had to offer. Arun pointed out, “What made Aviso stand out was their continuous chain of engagement from different parts of Aviso’s organization, whether it was the c-level executives, sales team members, or professional services representatives.” This thorough and streamlined communication established a relationship based on trust. Any customer is searching for a software vendor to truly understand the needs of their business and their willingness to be adaptable and partner to create a customized solution. Aviso was able to do this in every stage of the engagement. “I had the pleasure of working with Trevor, Dave Watson, and Ravi, three people who played three different roles very well. They helped put the emphasis on the urgency of making the right decision. They talked to us about the types of capabilities we were looking for. When we needed to talk to references, or when we needed to be able to understand what the architecture was, they were able to pull the right people in.” - Al Arun.

Aviso: How does Aviso’s product architecture compare to other vendors you evaluated? Given the acquisitive nature of Ivanti, one of the issues business leaders had constantly been dealing with was - the speed at which IT teams could adopt and integrate new technologies available in the field. Through Aviso, Ivanti was able to bring their ERP and CRM systems together to help sales reps in different business units collaborate and become more successful. Aviso offered the simplicity of gathering, analyzing, and forecasting data to ensure revenue growth. For Arun and Ivanti, this took the weight off their IT teams and the confusion of sales reps from consolidating and making decisions with CRM data. Arun further pointed, “Being able to analyze and make sense of all of these disparate types of data (emails, voice-related content, calendars, etc.) helped us [sales and leadership teams] to better understand the probability of a deal closing. To be able to forecast in a simple way that made sense for different business units and types of stakeholders was at our superpower with Aviso.”

Aviso: Why are other vendors not able to do a single pane of glass like Aviso? For Ivanti’s experience with other vendors in the industry that promise success with their single pane of glass, their customers are expected to provide specific data types to fit their style of CRM philosophy. Rather than the software vendor providing a system that adapts to their customer’s data types and needs, Arun found that other vendors (like Clari and People.ai) had an opposite approach, of customers needing to adjust their inputs to fit into a tool. This reason was one of the key factors that held Ivanti back from pursuing other CRM and revenue intelligence alternatives. Arun stated, “The Aviso technology and toolset gave us [Invani sales team] that edge and business outcomes that we were looking for, which made it easy for us to pick [Aviso].” Revenue AI goes farther beyond just making accurate sales predictions by justifying acquisitions and growth to investors. Additionally, irrespective of the industry, it is essential for every company to obtain a centralized CRM solution that can connect and analyze various data types. Ivanti chose Aviso as the single pane of glass solution, which supported their growth requirements for the next 3-5 years. In Arun’s final Revenue Navigator Series blog post, we dive into the customer experience, the role of a CCO, and the future of revenue intelligence in the modern era of technology. If you are interested in following Ivanti’s decision to go with Aviso’s single pane of glass, please sign up` here. You can also read other customers' success stories here.