Before Kernel
Five-plus data providers feeding a waterfall, with manual work still needed to make account data clean and actionable.
EMEA headcount data 10% less accurate than North America.
15-20% of CRM records were useless, requiring deletion.
Reps researching individual accounts by hand.
Manual maintenance of corporate hierarchy relationships.
Only 50% confidence in the quality of EMEA account books.
Frequent tickets about account disputes.
With Kernel
One entity data spine for Gong's account decisions.
Double-digit improvement in EMEA and APAC coverage.
Duplicates safely removed from the CRM.
Firmographic account research across hundreds of thousands of CRM accounts.
Hierarchy visibility and whitespace mapping for key accounts.
Custom vertical schema deployed across the full CRM.
Kernel account data used for a bottom-up TAM exercise.
Territory-book objection handling reduced from three weeks to three hours.
50% fewer account-dispute tickets.
The challenge
Moving from multiple point solutions to one source of truth
Gong provides a Revenue AI platform for sales teams. As Gong expands internationally, its revenue operations team must decide where to add sales capacity, how to divide territories, and which accounts to put in front of each rep. Those decisions depend on the team's understanding of the companies it could sell to.
Before Kernel, preparing account data for those decisions took manual work across several tools.
"Before Kernel, we had many different point solutions that required manual effort to make sure that they were clean and actionable."
Matt Flotard
VP Revenue Operations
Gong brought that work together around a shared account-data foundation initiative: the entity spine. For Gong, this is a common view of its accounts and the relationships between those companies. It gives the team a basis for planning, from understanding its addressable market to assigning accounts within a territory. Account data also informs Gong's compensation plans.
Rather than build internally, Gong chose to work with external specialists to move quickly on its data strategy. Matt points to Kernel's breadth of data and experience in the field.
"We have great engineers at Gong, but to move quickly and execute on our strategy, we partnered with Kernel."
Matt Flotard
VP Revenue Operations
Kernel is the data spine for the CRM
The decision
Account research at the scale Gong needs
Matt compares Kernel's work to researching an account himself. Gong needs that sort of attention across hundreds of thousands of CRM accounts, including companies that belong to larger organizations. He describes what it means to have that research available across the CRM:
"Kernel is able to do the research on accounts within our CRM that I would do manually, but it's able to do it over hundreds of thousands of accounts."
Matt Flotard
VP Revenue Operations
Kernel matches CRM records to entities using KERN IDs. Gong's team works with account data in its CRM and Snowflake as it prepares territories. The data informs decisions about where to add salespeople and how to cover accounts. Matt points to complex enterprises in particular, where understanding the parent-child relationship helps the team decide which entity to pursue.
Understanding corporate hierarchies within an account
A parent company and one of its subsidiaries may need separate sales coverage. Seeing the parent-child relationships helps Gong decide which accounts to pursue within a larger organization and where it can expand.
Gong uses Kernel's hierarchies alongside firmographics (company details such as revenue, headcount and location) to determine where its likely buying centers sit.
Nick Shatz, RevOps, describes the opportunity:
"Kernel gives us a complete view of entity hierarchies. We can identify areas of whitespace opportunity to use as strategic levers to grow our key accounts."
Kernel provides a complete view of entity hierarchies
After Kernel: less time resolving account disputes
The same account foundation carries into territory planning. Gong can prioritize accounts for the right reps and spend less time on territory-cutting. Matt also reports that account-dispute ticket volume has roughly halved, allowing sellers to spend more time selling and less time raising tickets with RevOps.
The number of seller books rising by 40%, with 50% fewer account-dispute tickets raised
In 2026, Gong finished its annual territory handover using Kernel. The operations team used to spend about three weeks working through objections and troubleshooting once sellers got their books. This time, Gong reported, they completed that work in three hours. They were also handling 40% more sellers and books.
Territory handover process down from 3 weeks to 3 hours with Kernel
Nick connects the planning work to Gong's broader growth:
"Kernel helps us drive ROI through global expansion. We save time on territory-cutting, and it helps us prioritize the right accounts to the right reps."
Planning international and vertical expansion
Getting accurate account data in parts of EMEA and APAC had been difficult for Gong.
"With Kernel, we've been able to improve coverage dramatically."
Poor firmographic data coverage in EMEA vs North America before Kernel
"Kernel is instrumental in how we understand our total addressable market.
It has the global breadth for us to understand potential markets that are traditionally challenging to get accurate account information for."
Gong is also using that information to explore regulated industries beyond its core business. Matt describes having enough account detail to take a more targeted approach to those opportunities:
"Kernel data means we can explore regulated industries outside of our core business today. It gives us the ability to be targeted with our approach."
Matt Flotard
VP Revenue Operations
Impacts and outcomes
What changed:
- One source of truth for account data: Covering entity resolution, hierarchies, and firmographics.
- Increase in global data coverage: Double-digit improvement in account data coverage for EMEA and APAC, fueling international expansion initiatives.
- Territory planning delivered with confidence: Gong was able to release a new territory plan for 40% more sellers, with only three hours spent managing the handover.
- Account data disputes halved: Over a full year, Gong's RevOps team has received 50% fewer account data tickets.
- TAM mapping visibility: Gong can understand the scale and distribution of their total addressable market.
To learn how Kernel can support your business, book a demo today.
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