The Telemarketing Company delivers sustained, strategically targeted new business drive for Hitachi Consulting

Hitachi Consulting, now part of Hitachi Vantara, is the professional services organisation within Hitachi Ltd. It is a global technology leader employing around 300,000 people worldwide, across operations in EMEA, North and South America, Australia and Asia.

The business specialises in the design and delivery of digital solutions, both for Hitachi companies and for the general market, with a particular focus on industrial sectors.



The business creates solutions that help maximise operational efficiency and deliver measurable, sustainable business results across their four core areas of competence; Enterprise Applications, Digital Solutions, Managed Services and Project Management and Change. It helps  customers innovate faster, establish new revenue streams, and respond to global dynamics with insight and agility.

Campaign objective and project background

A small in-house team at Hitachi was employed to generate new business appointments. In order to be able to ramp the capacity of this team up and down in line with market need, Hitachi decided to outsource additional appointment setting function to a specialist agency, which could support a sustained, strategically targeted drive for new business.

The overall goal was to identify opportunities for Hitachi’s Enterprise Applications (Oracle) practice and schedule appointments with senior decision makers in large manufacturing organisations. A number of agencies with a specialist technology sector focus were evaluated and, after some consideration, the client engaged The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) based on their deep experience both in the sector and in engaging with senior decision makers at enterprise level. An initial 8 week pilot was agreed with the objective of generating 10 high quality appointments with qualified decision makers.

Project execution

As part of the brief, TTMC was tasked to source a database of UK manufacturing companies with a turnover of £300 million and above. Target decision makers in organisations of this size spanned multiple functions and included senior executives in finance, supply chain and IT.  In addition, Hitachi provided a list of accounts which they wanted to strategically target and this was loaded as a focus list to enable separate reporting. The main market for Hitachi Consulting within EMEA is the UK, but their work for UK clients often requires that they are deployed across multiple European locations. A key part of the brief was therefore to identify the relevant decision makers across the whole of each target organisation’s footprint, networking and enhancing data to inform a picture of both the Decision Making Unit (DMU) in each account and the supply chain in the UK and mainland Europe.

A lead caller was appointed with experience in communicating complex technology propositions and the skills to identify and engage senior individuals within large organisations. Decision maker details including job titles, direct dials and personal email, as well as insight into interests and challenges, would be captured during calling to build a cleansed and fully profiled database of qualified decision makers. Given the diverse interests of each function, it was critical that callers moved quickly up the learning curve in terms their ability to understand and position the client’s proposition and tailor their message for each individual audience. Voice of the Customer insights gathered through direct conversations would enable Hitachi Consulting to validate their proposition and messaging and test assumptions about their position in the market or the presence of competitors within key accounts.

A thorough brief and ongoing coaching supported by shared call recordings ensured the team quickly built their knowledge and confidence in handling objections, understanding interests and pain points, and positioning relevant benefits. A close working relationship between client and agency included a direct relationship between the lead caller and Hitachi’s Business Development Director. This provided a solid feedback loop as calling gained momentum, so knowledge could be easily transferred between teams and the message evolved for each audience and campaign performance honed.

This close collaboration was also supported by client access to TTMC’s online reporting portal, TTMC Connect, which allowed the Hitachi team live access to all results and performance data. Access to the portal was extended to a wider team as the campaign matured to ensure that all senior stakeholders had information on results and campaign performance in real-time. With strong communication and regular feedback, TTMC was able to refine the calling strategy to maximise value to the client, for example, scheduling phone appointments, where appropriate.

Results

The initial pilot exceeded target within just six weeks of calling and was extended by a further four weeks as a result.

A total of 11 appointments were generated from 65 decision maker calls, averaging one appointment for every 23 hours of calling. In addition, Hitachi benefitted from a fully cleansed, profiled database with a total of 1614 updated fields, as well as a pipeline of future potential opportunities.

Given the success of the initial engagement, Hitachi now intends to run an ongoing campaign with TTMC and is discussing opening up further streams of work.