Archive for May, 2019

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IT Auditing…for Targeted Marketing

May 23, 2019

Has this call or email conversation happened to you?

IT Partner: “Would you be interested in this amazing new product?”

Customer: “Sure, what is it?”

IT Partner: “Gimmix X120. It’s the best.”

Customer: “Yes, I know they’re fantastic; we’ve got five in the office already. It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that we have no need for any more right now, I thought you’d know that.”

It’s common. Shotgun blast marketing from a CRM tool that has almost the right amount of information to be effective. Presenting solutions to a customer works better if you know what they already have, so what might be relevant to them. You can either identify the opportunity or look at technology that’s in situ to see if there’s something complementary or revolutionary to move a customer’s IT forwards.  Promoting an Add-on for Office 365? Then target customers WITH or migrating TO Office 365.

If you’re an IT Vendor that sells through the Channel, wouldn’t you have more confidence if the IT Partner said: “We have 300 customers, and we have identified 50 of them as best to target for this campaign.” Sending marketing communications to an irrelevant target audience is not recommended.  An additional 250 pointless or even frustrating marketing messages isn’t in anyone’s interest.

The rub is: CRM tools aren’t built as audit tools. That’s why one IT Partner engaged with us to build one, optimized for IT, to plug-in to their CRM tool:

Click to access Highlander%20Case%20Study%20final.pdf

Another benefit of using a CRM plug-in – if your organization knows what IT is deployed in a customer, when your sales person sails off into the sunset, your pipeline doesn’t sail off too.

If the potential of an IT Audit plug-in is of interest, and you would like to find out more, please email: marketing@channelcentral.net 

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, configurator, CPQ, CPQ Software, Marketing, Product Management, Quote Software, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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BI Reports: Delivering Value to Businesses

May 13, 2019

BI Reporting to Measure and Manage your Business
channelcentral launched monthly BI Reporting earlier this year for all its CPQ customers. The reports are in graphical and text format, focussing on key metrics of customer utilization of our CPQ applications. Feedback from customers has been very positive.

The key benefits include:

  • Providing evidence of the Return on Investment (ROI) from the CPQ application;
  • Sharing insights;
  • Enabling customers to make informed decisions quickly.

What’s new?
channelcentral has provided reporting to customers since launching in 2007, however this has now transformed from ‘data’ to ‘information’.  Three key aspects of reporting have changed with the introduction of BI reporting:

  • The addition of graphical presentation.
  • Time – instead of single-month data tables, it’s now shown in a chart covering six rolling months.
  • Geographical groupings – so companies who operate across borders can see consolidated reports. Although this can be done with data reports, it’s more difficult to interpret.

Using value to make decisions
The real value of this reporting, along with any data that feeds into a company’s management information system is:

  • Timeliness – timing is critical if intervention is required, to resolve an issue or to improve engagement.
  • Presentation – information that is simple, easy to digest and enables decisions to be made quickly is truly valuable to a business.
  • Accuracy – the data presented is an accurate reflection of usage and values, so the customer can either see the value the application is adding, or if intervention is required to drive up utilization, regardless of whether the user is a staff member or a customer.

The story behind the data and its potential
Although the reporting is presented concisely, customers can be provided with the data feeding the BI Dashboard, to look into and understand ‘why the numbers are what they are’.  Furthermore, other than pitch rate, there is further potential use of the product data.  Our BI reporting metrics could include most popular systems or breakdown of user functions (sales/technical) if required.

Be aware of missing BI metrics
BI Reporting should be comprehensive.  Reporting should include actual figures for the numbers of quotes and value of quoting, in addition to percentages. Beware of missing metrics or very round number growth – this could be a sign of a low utilization ‘cover up’.  Any low utilization should be highlighted to a customer; to use the data to drive Sales (to use and promote) and Marketing (to drive customer breadth). channelcentral does not add ‘spin’ to customer BI reporting.  With added commentary we consider that marketing. Without commentary we consider it reporting.

The growth of BI Reporting
According to forecasts by analyst Markets and Markets, the global Business Intelligence (BI) market is estimated to grow from USD 17.09 Billion in 2016 to USD 26.88 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.5%. The short-to-medium term for BI reporting certainly looks bright, and channelcentral certainly intends for its customers to benefit from the growth.

Everyone’s a winner
Sharing useful business information can lead to higher customer loyalty, more profit and ultimately strengthen a company’s competitive advantage.

Want to find out more about channelcentral’s BI Reporting?  https://www.channelcentral.net/bi-reporting.asp

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, configurator, CPQ, CPQ Software, Marketing, Product Management, Quote Software, ROI, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Whose Quote is it anyway? A New Evolution in CPQ Collaboration.

May 8, 2019

If you are doing a quote for a customer, is it your quote to them, or their quote from you? Actually it’s both, but traditional workflows don’t manage this well.

Many communication tools (Slack, Teams, Basecamp) are designed around collaboration. CPQ solutions generally aren’t: Sales send a quote to a customer via email, customer reviews the quote offline, requests changes via email, re-quotes, moves to final version and then purchases. It’s email. It’s disjointed. It’s the sort of experience that some of the communications tools listed try to displace.

CPQ Collaboration

channelcentral is interested in the concept of quote sharing. It’s not just about the application and the infrastructure; a key enablement ingredient is how the tool is integrated into a customer’s eCommerce environment.
We’re part way there:

  1. Our applications support quote versioning.
  2. We’ve added workflows to allow quote recipients to launch quotes from emails, even if that quote didn’t originate from your supplier.
  3. Hosts can quote in the context of their customers already.
  4. We have web services available to query our “quote store” and open quotes.

So it’s within touching distance to send a quote to a prospect as a link, mutually comment and edit the quote spawning new versions (within the same CPQ application), and then select a final quote to proceed to the procurement workflow. It subtly changes the dynamic between Sales and Customer: you’re a team working to achieve the best outcome. Subtly? Substantially in fact.

If this evolution of CPQ is of interest to you, please contact us: marketing@channelcentral.net

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, configurator, CPQ, CPQ Software | Leave a Comment »