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Case Study

How Carbon Black Reached 95% Forecast Accuracy and Enhanced Revenue Confidence with Clari

Company Size: Enterprise

Products Used

Forecast

19%

YoY Revenue Grow

95%

Forecast Accuracy

Table of Contents

Carbon Black develops cloud-native endpoint security software to prevent malicious files from attacking an organization.

Carbon Black was delivering up and to the right results, but each quarter was a herculean lift to predict and report revenue. Scattered sales processes and deals coming in at the end of the quarter left the team in a scramble to report results to the board of directors each quarter.

With a fast-approaching IPO, Carbon Black rebuilt its sales playbook from the ground up to increase accuracy in its forecast and deliver results with confidence.

Challenge

Unclean Data and Lack of Process Led to Unpredictable Revenue

Challenges

Lack of clean data and process rigor resulted in unpredictable revenue results.
Operating with static data resulted in projections that weren’t close to actual results.
Lack of visibility made it difficult to focus the executives’ time on the right deals.

Goals

Create a predictable operating rhythm to get a complete and accurate read on the quarter.
Reduce the margin of error to deliver results with more accuracy and confidence.
Gain a holistic view of pipeline to focus the team’s time on deals at risk, or with the greatest likelihood to close.

"We’re on a strong SaaS journey and anticipate significant growth next year. Predictable results with Clari play a big role in our strategy to invest and grow with confidence."

Daniel Carpenter

Former SVP Revenue Excellence & Operations at Carbon Black

Solution

Revamped sales process, trustworthy data and visibility into the pipeline

Life with Clari

With Clari, Carbon Black has significantly reduced forecast error and is consistently landing within 5% of Clari’s week 2 projection. Predictable projections help the company execute quickly and take calculated risks with confidence.

100% adoption of new sales methodology

Ambiguity is no longer a word in the sales process. Deal data is tracked in the same way across teams that creates a consistent process when rolling up their number.

Always-on deal inspection

Forecast calls are conducted every week in Clari. Revenue operation leaders now have a data-driven way to spot risk and drive sales motions to mitigate risk for current and future quarters.

Laser focus on top deals

Executives can now prioritize their time on top—or at-risk—deals based on data versus intuition.

Looking Ahead

With a revamped sales process, trustworthy data and visibility into their pipeline, Carbon Black successfully went public, and have maintained 19% year-over-year revenue growth. The revenue team is now well-positioned to deliver accurate predictions with confidence quarter after quarter.

"Forecast meetings used to revolve around: Is this the latest Excel spreadsheet? Why is this deal size not the same in CRM? How confident are you this will close in 3 weeks? All that ambiguity has gone away with Clari."