Decision
Change the timing
We shifted investment and program timing so pipeline creation was better aligned to when the business needed it.
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Commercial judgment · From reporting to action
When Marketing and the Business Disagree.
A healthy pipeline total can hide weak conversion, uneven timing, aging opportunities, and inconsistent performance across products or markets. My responsibility was to understand the business behind the number and help the organization act on it.
What raised the question
The total was healthy. The result still needed an explanation.
OpenText finished FY22 with approximately $3.7 billion in open pipeline against a $3.5 billion goal. Marketing had sourced approximately $1.1 billion of that pipeline.
Those were meaningful company results, but they did not tell us whether every part of the revenue system was working. I wanted to know if opportunities were arriving in the right quarter, whether Sales accepted and progressed them, and whether different sources, products, business units, and geographies were producing the same quality.
A dashboard can be accurate and still be incomplete. When the wider business result raises a different question, curiosity is more useful than defending the report.
I treated pipeline as a leading indicator, not the destination. We needed to understand what happened after creation, including acceptance, qualification, progression, timing, close rates, and sales win revenue.
That changed the management question. Instead of asking only whether Marketing created enough pipeline, we asked whether the whole system was creating the commercial movement the business needed, when it needed it.
How I approached it
Look beneath the total before choosing the action.
The same aggregate result can come from very different operating conditions. I used four questions to find the part of the system that needed attention.
- Are Sales teams accepting and progressing the opportunities Marketing creates?
- Where are conversion and opportunity aging getting stronger or weaker?
- Do source, product, geography, and business unit reveal a different performance story?
- What can we still change, and who needs to act?
My responsibility: I helped identify the mismatch, brought together the teams that controlled different parts of the system, and made sure the diagnosis led to clear decisions and follow-through.
What we changed
Turn the performance view into operating decisions.
After a difficult second quarter, we changed timing, commitment, definitions, and the way recovery actions were managed.
Decision
Build commitment first
We required Sales buy-in before launching sales plays so the account motion, follow-up, and progression plan were clear from the start.
Decision
Use one language
We brought Marketing, Sales Operations, Revenue Operations, Finance, and business leaders into recurring reviews built on common definitions.
Decision
Manage the recovery
We assigned actions against gaps in source, product, geography, and stage, then checked whether those actions changed progression.
We also aligned targets and incentives more closely to verified contribution. Recurring reviews made gaps visible early enough to reallocate investment, change a program, adjust timing, strengthen follow-up, or let go of an assumption that was no longer helping the business.
The results came from the broader OpenText commercial system. My contribution was helping the organization see where the story did not line up, bringing the right teams into the diagnosis, and turning that understanding into action.
What I took from it
The dashboard has to explain the business, not compete with it.
Executive accountability begins when the top-line metric stops being a sufficient explanation. Marketing leaders need a view that connects creation to acceptance, progression, timing, conversion, and revenue.
The goal is not to make Marketing responsible for every commercial outcome. It is to make Marketing responsible for understanding its contribution, creating a shared view, and helping the wider revenue system change course while there is still time.
Connected perspective: How I Build an Integrated Demand Engine
Related leadership story: Making the Investment Decision Before Every Answer Was Clear