athenahealthCSMs were manually assigning accounts through Salesforce reporting in a process that consumed 4-5 hours per week for each manager and resulted in imbalanced workloads across teams. With no visibility into capacity or account fit, the manual process had become a significant pain point for leaders who manage a combined 15,000+ accounts annually across one of our business segments.
I began by shadowing the current process to document standard workflows and edge cases. I then built a comprehensive dataset using SQL that pulled account data from Salesforce and organizational hierarchies from Workday. This dataset fed into PowerBI, which I connected to an Excel-based tool I designed to automate the assignment process. The tool used formulas to randomly distribute accounts within carefully defined parameters: routing specialty accounts to qualified teams, directing high-ARR accounts to specific teams, honoring regional assignments, factoring in CSM bandwidth and capacity, resolving data integrity issues through book cleanup, and appropriately off-loading accounts to established teams once they have reached their full ramp & realization period. I created macros and VBA scripts to generate assignments and produce output reports that could be fed directly into Salesforce DataLoader to update accounts.
The tool reduced assignment time from 4-5 hours per week per manager to under 10 minutes per use—a 95% time savings. Workload balance across teams improved measurably, and managers reported significantly higher confidence in account distribution. I rolled the tool out to five CSM managers, and Elizabeth, the Senior Customer Success Manager, said it transformed her team's planning process and gave her visibility she'd never had before. As business needs evolved and required enhancements, our VP of Customer Success allocated additional resources to support the tool, the team, and future iterations—a strong signal of the value and strategic impact this solution delivered.
