The firm's core capabilities are in marketing, sales and operations. The marketing practice area works with clients to help them understand and develop the capabilities they need to commercialize a new product or service, and to improve the performance of their existing products and services. ZS's offerings include assistance with forecasting (anticipate customer demand), customer insights (know your customer), segmentation (divide and conquer your customers), value proposition (look good for your customer), marketing mix (reach your customer in multiple ways), and marketing performance measurement and optimization (give customers what they want, when they want it).

The sales practice area complements the marketing practice, working with clients to design, implement and manage their sales infrastructure, all to maximize clients' sales effectiveness. Services include go-to-market strategy and sales channel development (how will you sell your product?), sales force design (who will sell your product?), sales force effectiveness (how good are they at selling it?), customer targeting (who will buy your product?), territory management (where will you sell your product?), sales compensation (how will you motivate employees to keep selling your product?) and sales performance management (who is selling how much?).

The operations and technology segment provides the left-brain analytical side to sales and marketing. The firm has long been a leader in using data to drive commercial strategy-its insights in the field go back nearly 35 years. As the volume of data continues to grow and is increasingly being recognized as a critical business issue by clients, ZS has a range of solutions for clients from services such as data science support and business intelligence solutions to mobile technology services and software tools for developing cost-effective sales and marketing operations. The firm also provides analytics process outsourcing services through its ARTIS™ solution, either on an ongoing or temporary basis, to help clients focus on their core business.

A sweet suite

ZS began developing sales- and marketing-specific software in 1983, with the creation of the first personal computer-aided territory mapping system. By 2008, it had created 12 standalone software products, which were then integrated as one unified sales and marketing software platform: the Javelin software suite.

The suite includes three core modules: the "sales planning and execution" module helps design smarter, more profitable sales territories and keep them optimized in the changing market, as well as perfecting sales plans from the field and helping reps manage their accounts with precision. The "incentive compensation" module helps clients to automate sales compensation calculations, establish fair and motivating sales goals, refine them at a local level and systematically define objectives across all levels of sales. Finally, a separate module helps integrate the Javelin suite with existing data systems.