How Ascendion Shortened the Time from Intent to Engagement with OrbitShift
July 18, 2026·5 min read
"The most important thing we wanted to achieve in our GTM strategy was reducing the time from intent to engagement. OrbitShift helps us surface the right signals and engage customers at the right time. We've been able to significantly shorten that timeline."
-Reshma Rahi, VP & Head of GTM Strategy, Ascendion.
About Ascendion
Ascendion is an AI-native, platform-driven software engineering organization that combines engineering excellence with AI to help enterprises improve productivity, accelerate software delivery and reduce time to market. Around one-third of its customers are Fortune 500 organizations.
The Challenge
Ascendion's GTM team was relatively new, giving them the opportunity to build processes from the ground up. The challenge wasn't finding information. Today, AI tools can surface vast amounts of data. The challenge was identifying the right signals early enough to engage customers while they were still thinking about an AI transformation or another strategic initiative. Account planning was also a time-intensive process. Sales teams had to review 10-K documents, account intelligence, board discussions, CEO conversations and strategic initiatives across multiple sources before they had a complete view of an account. This process often took weeks, creating a long gap between understanding an account and reaching out to customers. One of the key priorities for Ascendion's GTM strategy was reducing the time from intent to engagement.
Why OrbitShift
Ascendion wanted a platform that fit into their existing sales rhythm without asking sellers to change the way they worked. The platform also needed to surface relevant, actionable signals that sellers could validate before taking action. Ease of use was an important consideration, as was the ability to validate every insight before taking action. Another key factor was OrbitShift's sales-first approach. Ascendion preferred a sales-first approach over a platform-first approach. OrbitShift was designed around how enterprise sales teams work which made it easier for sellers to incorporate account intelligence into their day-to-day account planning and customer conversations. Integration with Ascendion's existing sales ecosystem was another important consideration. OrbitShift fit well within Ascendion's existing sales ecosystem, making adoption easier across the team.
Implementation & Adoption
Ascendion started with a pilot across 50 strategic accounts instead of rolling the platform out to every customer. The pilot included client partners, client service executives, global client partners and market leaders. The team established a weekly cadence to review account priorities, discuss new signals, validate opportunities and share feedback. Adoption was supported through regular enablement sessions and ongoing access to the OrbitShift team whenever sellers needed help. Ascendion also introduced an "Insights to Action" program to celebrate successful use cases and encourage peer learning across the sales organization. Following the success of the pilot, Ascendion is now expanding OrbitShift to more accounts.
Results
According to Ascendion, one of the biggest impacts has been a shift in the sales team's mindset. Sales teams are now using strategic insights to take a more proactive approach to customer engagement.
The team has seen:
- A significant reduction in account research time.
- Faster movement from customer intent to engagement.
- More focused account plans.
- Pipeline growth across onboarded accounts.
- Faster access to customer meetings.
- 80–90% adoption across mapped sales teams.
For the GTM team, one of the biggest outcomes has been the change in seller behaviour. Instead of spending time gathering information from multiple sources, sellers were able to focus on validating signals, prioritizing the right accounts and engaging customers earlier in the buying journey.