It’s a Tech World after All

At the DCI Sales Force Automation Show in San Jose, a wide array of computer-facilitated customer relationship management (CRM) tools showed that software makers have moved swiftly to address more than contact management needs. Industry big gun Microsoft used the show as a forum to announce its latest vendor alliances on the CRM front. Simultaneously, smaller upstarts served up new and interesting solutions to help sales forces focus more on the creative and less on the mundane.

Specifically, Microsoft announced that it has galvanized a cadre of leading CRM software makers to use its forthcoming MS SQL Server 7.0 as the industry standard platform for mobile computing applications. Essentially, the CRM software makers have agreed to ensure that all of their programs are fully compatible with MS SQL Server 7.0.

“SQL Server 7.0 makes it easy for users of sales force automation solutions to provide meaningful information to their customers,” says Holly Henson, group manager for customer management at Microsoft.

“This is because it allows field sales professionals to store the most current corporate data on a laptop with optimal performance.”Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard, another industry heavyweight, unveiled a “smart scanner.” Capable of scanning up to 50 letter-size pages, the HP CapShare 910 can send images of those pages to a PC for emailing or efaxing or to a conventional printer for a hard-copy printout.

The show also offered some interesting new innovations in sales-pitching tools based on expert systems. Pragmatech, for example, rolled out The RFP Machine For The Web – a virtually automatic request-for-proposal generator that draws its responses from an expert systems language processor that responds to every RFP with a unique and appropriately written reply. “Instead of spending a lot of time cutting and pasting old proposals into new ones – a practice prone to error and stale information – sales reps can spend more time cultivating prospects,” says Brook Savage, Pragmatech’s CEO. “We cut the time it takes to respond to RFPs in half.”

By contrast, WisdomWare’s spin on leveraging expert systems materialized as WisdomWare Sales Call Advisor. This program is a new add-on for its sales-coaching software package that enables a salesperson to create a custom-configured call plan by clicking on who they are calling on, what they are trying to sell and who they might be competing against.

Of course, no sales automation show would be complete without new innovations in sales incentive software, and the DCI show was no exception. Case in point: Incentive Systems, which introduced a sales comp program that enables a sales manager to assemble a spectrum of sophisticated incentive programs with varying quotas, goals, rates accelerators, thresholds, caps, bonuses and other features.

Meanwhile, Trilogy released the SC Commission Dashboard, a program that enables salespeople to dial into the home office via the Web and check their up-to-the-minute status of their performance and compensation. “Studies show that salespeople do not understand their compensation plans. They waste from one to three productive days per month tracking their sales credits and commissions, often with imperfect data that is hard to analyze,” says Jens Tellefsen, the software’s product manager. SC Commission Dashboard changes all that, he adds.

Finally, the DCI show also stood witness to some interesting new CRM mergers. KnowledgeBase Marketing, an integrated information marketing solutions company, and Prime Response, a marketing automation solutions provider, announced that they would partner.

“This is a strategic move that will enable us to help our clients establish and maintain more meaningful and profitable one-on-one dialogues with their customers,” says Tim Toben, CEO of KnowledgeBase. “After looking at all the competing campaign management software systems, we found that Prime Vantage (Prime Response’s package) offered the most complete and proven system.”Onyx Software in the meantime announced that it had acquired EnCyc, makers of a leading marketing encyclopedia system (MES) – an online product information database that can include product pictures, descriptions, policies and procedures, competitive write-ups and analyses, product lists, presentations and associated multimedia.

“Our customers told us they wanted capabilities that put their organization’s knowledge resources in the hands of frontline employees,” says Onyx Software CEO Brent Frei. “We responded by buying the best solution on the market.”

Close-Up Analysis
Additional analysis on the new product releases and industry developments from the DCI show:Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, by Microsoft of Redmond, WA: Still in development, the forthcoming software package already has a cadre of CRM software makers developing mobile computing solutions to run on the platform. Aurum Software, GoldMine, Moss Micro, Onyx, Pivotal Software, SalesLogix and Siebel Systems are all part of the alliance. Their goal: to ensure that all important enterprise data remains consistent and accessible to all users – whether they are mobile or in the corporate office.

Mobile and remote users will be able to make changes to data offline and synchronize those changes automatically when they connect to the corporate network. For information, call 425/882-8080 or visit www.microsoft.com.

HP CapShare 910, from Hewlett-Packard of Greeley, CO: A kind of smart-scanner, the CapShare 910 can capture up to 50 letter-size pages and send images of those pages to a PC for emailing or efaxing or to a conventional printer for a hard-copy printout. CapShare can recreate a document in as little as six seconds and can send page images via an infrared wireless beam of light or via cable.

Page images beamed to a PC are opened as a PDF file – a widely used imaging format popularized by Adobe. The page images can be manipulated in the Adobe Acrobat Reader, as well as in the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. The demo at the DCI show worked without a hitch and, at 12.5 ounces, the CapShare 910 offered a welcome alternative to the salesperson who would rather not lug around a laptop. For information, call 877/473-6772 or visit www.capshare.hp.com.

The RFP Machine For The Web, by Pragmatech of Amherst, NH: An innovative request-for-proposal generator that features an expert system language processor at its core. The software-based product automatically responds to RFPs by reading each RFP question, searching its knowledge base for the most appropriate answer and inserting those answers into a proposal document. Before transmission back over the Net, the proposal can be viewed and edited for further clarity by a salesperson.

Neat and tidy, the program takes up only 300K of disk space on a PC. Plus, the software connects directly to the Internet or an intranet directory from within MS Word – meaning that salespeople do not need to become familiar with working a Web-browser. Call 603/672-8941 for more information, or visit www.rfpmachine.com.

Sales Call Advisor, from WisdomWare of Falls Church, VA: Perfect for bringing a new salesperson up to speed on company best practices, Sales Call Advisor is based on an expert system that contains knowledge based on the collected experience and wisdom of every member of the sales organization. By clicking on a customer name, a product or service to sell and a perceived competitor, the new salesperson receives information from the database about the customer’s needs, the best sales tack to take and key questions for the salesperson to ask on the call. For information, call 703/534-8900 or visit www.WisdomWare.com.

3Incentive, by Incentive Systems of Burlington, MA: This is a soup-to-nuts software program for designing, creating, maintaining and administering a highly customized sales comp plan. Using a spreadsheet approach, sales managers create their own custom plans.

All aspects of the plan are linked directly to the formulas used to calculate them, so a user can click on a field to see the logic behind it. Plus, the program is accessible via the Web, enabling salespeople to help themselves to comp-related transactions, while not being privy to data that a sales manager wants to keep confidential. Call 781/685-0100 or visit www.incentivesystems.com for more information.

The SC Commission Dashboard, by Trilogy of Austin, TX: This program enables salespeople to dial into the home office via the Web and check their up-to-the-minute status on their performance and compensation. Essentially, its an add-on to Trilogy’s SC Commission program that enables sales managers to quickly design, process and communicate sophisticated commissions and other sales incentive programs. For more information, call 512/794-5900 or visit www.trilogy.com.

KnowledgeBase Marketing/ Prime Response Merger: The new company will offer an integrated solution that can automate one-to-one communications with customer bases up to the tens of millions. Under terms of the agreement, clients can use Prime Vantage to access and manage data housed in KnowledgeBase Marketing’s Decision Mart, DynaIQS or other data warehouses and repositories. Prime Vantage will function as a critical application for managing database marketing programs. The end result: Users will better manage, control and monitor communications with customers. Call 303/382-5985 or visit www.prime-response.com.

3Onyx’s Acquisition of EnCyc: By acquiring EnCyc, Onyx will combine a traditional marketing encyclopedia system with new sales productivity tools, a Web interface for collateral and other content delivery, and mobile usability. Essentially, sales forces will be able to track, analyze and record information from an employee or partner at any time through Onyx’s Customer Center interface. For information, call 425/451-8060 or visit www.onyx.com.