Cognos, an IBM company and the world leader in business intelligence and performance management, has announced that Aon, the leading provider of global risk management and consulting services, has chosen to implement IBM Cognos 8 BI for Salesforce.

Aon, one of the world’s largest publicly traded insurance brokers, is using the Cognos solution to gain greater visibility of its sales and marketing pipeline. The technology’s unique ability to allow brokers, account managers, and customer service representatives to access both current and historical in-house data, as well as data held in Salesforce Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM, is critical to providing the insight Aon needs to manage overall sales performance, globally. The company needed to be able to report on sales campaign and opportunity data, and communicate this better throughout the business to all decision-makers. As a result, it introduced a single sales and marketing platform across the company to provide consistent and standardised processes. Through the Cognos reporting function, staff have access to up-to-date reports, so they can ensure the sales process is delivered in the most efficient manner possible and make effective business decisions. This also allows them to rank the customer-facing sales staff, helping them increase their selling potential and better service Aon customers.

Aon now uses a ‘Revenue Engine’, which combines data from IBM Cognos 8 BI, Salesforce.com and other in-house systems. This will build customer relationships and drive revenue through continuous improvements to the sales and marketing process in response to customer needs.

“By implementing IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence with our global Salesforce environment, Aon is driving performance at every stage of the sales and marketing process,” said Joseph M. Demmler, Managing Director, Sales and Marketing at Aon.

“For Aon, this is a cultural change and the ability to report globally based on standard metrics is driving organic growth and our return on marketing investment, as well as user adoption of Salesforce.”

Demmler spoke on this topic at the salesforce.com annual customer event, Dreamforce.

Aon evaluated a number of performance management offerings before choosing IBM Cognos 8 BI. It felt the collaboration between IBM Cognos 8 BI and Salesforce offered the most customised solution to meet its needs and to allow for future growth.

“Every company knows how critical the sales and marketing pipeline is, and Aon identified the challenge that multiple data sources bring when making informed business decisions,” said Leah MacMillan, Vice President of BI Product Marketing at Cognos, an IBM company. “The steps Aon has taken to report consistently against Salesforce to improve visibility of leads and help customers will really serve to optimise its business performance.”