Turning Math into Cash

Five years ago, Brenda Dietrich started to investigate how IBM's 40,000 salespeople could learn to rely a little more on math than on their gut instincts. In particular, Dietrich, who heads the company's 200-person worldwide team of math researchers, was asked to see if math could help man...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTechnology review (1998) Vol. 113; no. 2; pp. 58 - 61
Main Author Bulkeley, William M
Format Magazine Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Technology Review, Inc 01.03.2010
Subjects
Business analytics
Business services
Computer industry
Customer satisfaction
Customers
Information technology
Innovations
Manufacturing
Mathematical models
Mathematicians
Optimization
Quotas
Sales
Sales management
Sales quotas
Salespeople
Software
Teams
Turning
United States > US
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Summary:Five years ago, Brenda Dietrich started to investigate how IBM's 40,000 salespeople could learn to rely a little more on math than on their gut instincts. In particular, Dietrich, who heads the company's 200-person worldwide team of math researchers, was asked to see if math could help managers do a better job of setting sales quotas. The mathematicians collected several years' worth of data about every sale IBM made around the world. To spot opportunities the sales teams didn't recognize, the researchers collected external data on IT spending patterns by industry and combined that information with the internal sales data. So the mathematicians advised the sales department to shift its staff around, taking less productive salespeople off the big teams and putting them on teams that had been too small. Sales in the latter accounts quickly grew. The company drew a more general lesson from the experience: it came to believe that its mathematicians' innovations were something for which other businesses would pay handsomely.
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ISSN:1099-274X
2158-9186