Ascent Session Abstracts

• Key to Survival: Sales Intelligence
  Steve Silver, Senior Research Director, Sirius Decisions
  Today, sales is moving at light speed. Still, only 15% of companies have adopted data-driven best practices, and most B2B technology companies struggle with how to fully leverage machine learning and AI to provide actionable sales insights and intelligence. Data is key to success and we need to properly adopt AI to deal with the amount of data that is out there.
• Rethinking Sales Forecasts with AI
  Michael Lock, CEO, Aviso
  Sales has changed and become a data-driven activity. Managing sales success requires a platform that can ingest, organize and showcase data in a useful way. The answer is a Forecasting and Sales Visibility Platform.
• Aviso Product Announcement
  Michael Lock, CEO, Aviso
  Mangesh Pimpalkhare, VP of Product, Aviso
  Aviso will unveil industry-leading, AI-driven functionality in six new areas. Aviso's new functionality is designed to drive value across the sales organization and meet the needs of sales executives, managers, reps, and sales operations leaders. New features will help sales organizaitons gain unparalleled visibility, take control of quarterly performance, and gain total confidence in the forecast, pipeline and ultimate results.
• Partner Announcement Panel
  Nichole Giamona, Director, Product Management, Xactly
  Chris Badger, Alliance Partnerships, Clearslide
  Prakash Balebail, CEO, Estuate
  Ian Michiels, Practice Area Lead, Customer Engagement, Slalom
  Erin Franz, Technology Alliances Manager, Looker
  With the opening of the Aviso API, learn how you can take the value of your forecasting and sales visibility platform to the next level and improve your sales tech stack with direct access to six complimentary, top notch innovators. Hear from foundational members of our partner program including Xactly, ClearSlide, and Slalom, and learn how you can drive sales performance by leveraging additional reporting capabilities, new analytics, access to sales compensation data, and content that drives engagement.
• Sales Operations Panel
  Robert Merrill, Head of Global Sales Operations, FireEye
  Tim Sjobeck, Vice President of Sales Operations, Talend
  Mudit Garg, VP, Global Sales Operations and Strategy, 8x8
  Rob Booth, VP of WW Sales Operations & Sales Enablement, Silver Peak Systems
  Bill Dolby, Senior Director Sales Operations, RingCentral
  Sales operations executives face increasing pressure to deliver accurate, up-to-the-minute data to sales leadership, the CFO, sales teams, marketing teams and product groups. Using traditional sales forecasting methodologies and CRM is unable to deal with complex sales organizations, multiple product types and geographies, diverse customers and industries, etc. These sales operations leaders are using the Aviso Forecasting and Sales visibility platform to manage the sales forecast, pipeline and sales productivity.
• Special Guest Speaker
  Ken Jennings
  Ken Jennings was used to winning big on the quiz show Jeopardy!--until 2011, when IBM developed a question-answering supercomputer to challenge him. His lopsided defeat at the robotic hands of "Watson" forced him to rethink the relationship between man and machine. He now knows better than anyone the power of cognitive computing--but he also saw firsthand how helpless artificial intelligence can be when it's not being guided by human ingenuity.
• Sales Leadership Fireside Chat
  Shawn Farshchi, President and CEO, Aryaka Networks
  Marc Diouane, President, Zuora
  Evan Ellis, President and COO, Xactly
  We all agree that data can help sales leaders achieve their goals. This session is to explore real-world experiences by some of the valley’s top leaders, and to get a deeper understanding of how they’re adopting technology advancements including AI and understand the effect of these changes on their organizations and their businesses.