Cloud Enterprise Deals
Context
I joined Cloud Billing specifically to start this project from zero. While it presented a challenge of ‘there’s nothing yet’, it also presented an opportunity to drive this process and to execute it.
I designed a fully working MVP prototype. We were able to validate the design with our internal teams including Sales, Pricing, Legal, Operations and Engineering.
We didn't know right away how many sub tools Mithra will have eventually so we designed it as a hub using cards. Currently there are over 10 tools and growing.
The Challenge
The entire Deal process being offline across >5 teams (legal, pricing, operations, sales, billing eng)
At the same time the sales org was trying to onboard a new salesforce system called Vector, where do we/they fit in?
PM left the team at a critical moment in the design process
Leadership
Worked closely with Eng lead, onboarded and brought new PM up to speed to research and define an MVP experience conducting (internal) users interviews, design iteration, design validation, buy-in from stakeholders and finally implementation.
Research
Over the course of nearly two months I conducted research that included gathering current information from stakeholders I had access to as well as users that I had to proactively reach out and interview by myself.
Mapping existing workflow
Initial understanding of the user journey
2nd iteration of the user journey
3rd iteration of the user journey
User tasks analysis
Desired workflow
When we got to this state, the team (Eng & PM) printed and hanged this poster on their wall, and it served as the go to asset everything Mithra for the first 6 months of the project.
Impact
Launched Mithra 6 months after inception. First week the tool received 2 deals ($8M & $500K).
The goal was to move 60% of all deals into Mithra within 6 months. We accomplished that within 3 months.
At the time, the tool was bringing ~80% of GCP’s revenue which is over $10B.
Eng who used to implement deals spending weeks on that tasks are now spending 0 min (yes ZERO) on this task as it's fully automatic.
MEA (Multi Element Arrangement) AKA Revenue Recognition (Rev-Rec).
An option to incentivize customers with PSO, G-Suite, Support etc. required moving another external workflow into Mithra.
Areas for improvement
Training of the tool started right after launch. The Pricing team noted something they never mentioned to us: ‘Term sheet’.
“You built the Addendum tool, Term sheet is the process before handing the addendum to customers, it doesn’t make sense”.
Quickly iterated with an Eng on the team and built the Term sheet tool. The TS tool had 10% functionality of the original Mithra tool but presented a core feature to provide Multiple Options to customers which the tool was lacking.
Launched the TS tool and the Pricing team quickly adopted the tool.
We also added an option to convert TS to Addendum which the Pricing team saw as a blessing, now they didn’t have to convert it manually.
What is Mithra
Mithra is a Google-internal tool for generating a pricing addendum as part of the Google Cloud contracting process. It is used when large (often $1M - $1B) contracts are signed between Google Cloud and our customers.
Mithra (named after the Zoroastrianism divinity of contracts) is used by Googlers within the GBP organization to configure contracts that our sales team negotiates with customers and then to implement them.
"Training of the tool started right after launch. The Pricing team noted something they never mentioned to us: ‘Term sheet’. "
Live Talk
PM, ENG & myself stood in front of ~100 people and gave a talk on the future of contracting in GCP.