Posted by Commence on April 21, 2010 under Commence News | 
I started my career in the Mortgage industry selling re-financing services. The job was quite structured: call fifty people each day, document my discussions then follow-up with those that were interested as well as any I was unable to reach. The company had no automation, but people learned to manage their daily business using a spiral notebook or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. At the time I had no problem with this because I had a limited perspective on the most efficient ways to capture information, follow-up with potential prospects and keep my product and service in front of prospective buyers. While I was one of the more successful sales people I was beginning to have difficulty organizing customer files, finding information about past telephone conversations, knowing which documents I sent people or didn’t send and following up with those people that asked me to contact them at a later date. I found myself staying in the office later and later each night trying to get myself organized and keeping things from falling through the cracks, but it became an exercise in futility.
This all changed for me a few years later when I joined Commence Corporation, a provider of Customer Relationship Management software. At Commence, I was forced to trade in my spiral notebook and for a sales automation tool and while I was a bit dubious that a sales automation system would help me, after a few weeks of use I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I began capturing every customer and prospect interaction from basic telephone calls, quotes and documents I had sent to e-mail correspondence. I learned to enter follow-up activities on my calendar and set alerts that reminded me to contact people on the dates and times I committed to. Each day new leads with contact information were dispatched to me electronically and an automated sales methodology helped me to manage each opportunity through a structures sales cycle. Best of all, with the simple click of a button I had the ability to view a complete 360 degree view of all current and historical information about my customers and prospects. This was truly unbelievable. I even learned that I could integrate a Smart Phone so that I could have contact information at my disposal and have also begun to utilize the systems mass e-mail feature to help generate more business. I had never imagined that I would attain so much value from this tool.
The CRM system has impacted me both personally and professionally. On a personal level I am more productive than ever. I have access to customer and prospect information anytime and anywhere and I am confident that things are no longer falling through the cracks. On a professional level I have become almost fanatical about the product, which has helped me to serve potential customers more effectively. I continue to utilize my past experience as a vehicle for delivering a powerful testimonial of how CRM software has helped me better manage the sales cycle and improve sales execution. It’s a well known fact that prospects are more likely to buy from someone who believes whole heartedly in the product or service they are selling and my newly found enthusiasm for CRM software has enabled me to gain credibility with potential buyers.
As I talk with new prospects each day I understand and appreciate the reluctance they may have in implementing a Customer Relationship Management solution. I’ve learned that It’s a lot easier to understand their concerns and provide valuable assistance if you have been in a similar position, so I tell my story. Their interest level grows and often turns into a new sale. If you are considering a CRM system give me a call. I am confident that I can help you consolidate data, and improve sales execution so that your team and sell more and sell more easily.
About the author: Steve Fischkin is an Account Manager at Commence Corporation, a leading provider of CRM software which can be deployed in a web-based, cloud-computing environment or on premise. For more information about Commence visit www.commence.com or e-mail Steve at s.fischkin@commence.com
Posted by Commence on April 8, 2010 under CEO Corner |
Is your sales team working on the most qualified opportunities, or chasing tire kickers? Do you even know? Most companies rely on the expertise of their sales representatives to qualify opportunities, but this has proven over and over again to be inefficient and costly. The problem with relying on your sales organization is a lack of consistency. Most sales organizations have people with different levels of experience. The senior people may be good at determining a qualified opportunity from an unqualified one, but even they make mistakes. The people with limited experience are right only 50 percent of the time and the inexperienced ones may place an account on the forecast because the prospect asked for a brochure. My point is this, the amount of time your sales team may be spending following up on poorly qualified opportunities may be costing your business much more than you think.
Commence Corporation has moved beyond traditional Customer Relationship Management software programs that are primarily focused on managing the sales cycle to delivering a solution that enables you to increase the effectiveness of your sales organization and focus on business with the greatest potential. Commence has introduced an automated business process that ranks and scores leads based a set of pre-defined criteria. The criteria consist of a series of questions that are used to automatically score each lead based on the responses entered into the system. The questions are completely customizable and users may create as many as required. (See sample below):
Lead Scoring Questions
The lead qualification questions and rating criteria are determined by sales management and ensure that every new opportunity is ranked according to the criteria. It’s an efficient process that results in a high level of consistency because every opportunity is scored using a standardized set of qualifiers and is no longer dependent on the experience level of the sales representative.
Each lead is then automatically color coded as highly qualified (red), requires additional follow-up (yellow), or not qualified (blue). (See diagram below)
Lead Qualification
The value here is twofold: First, there is no question with regard to where the sales team should be focusing their attention. The leads coded red are the most qualified opportunities based on the company’s lead qualification criteria and need immediate attention. Secondly, sales management can quickly view the most qualified opportunities and assist with the process of moving them toward closure.
Part of the Commence value proposition also comes from an integrated marketing application that is directly tied to the lead qualification system. Yellow and blue coded leads may be placed in an automated drip-marketing program that nurtures each lead with periodic mailings while your team is focused on the most qualified opportunities.
The Commence lead scoring capability provides critical intelligence and has proven to deliver measurable results. It will ensure that your sales team has a laser-sharp focus on the most qualified sales opportunities. With Commence, you’ll shrink the sales cycle and improve your bottom line results. I guarantee it.
About the author: Larry Caretsky is the president of Commence Corporation, a leading provider of CRM software which can be deployed in a web-based, cloud-computing environment or on premise. Caretsky is considered an expert in Customer Relationship Management and has written numerous white papers on the subject, which may be accessed via the company’s web site at www.commence.com.
Posted by Commence on March 8, 2010 under CEO Corner |
As small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) struggle to survive in this economic climate, they are placing a major emphasis on increasing sales. Whether through finding new customers or attempting to increase the volume of purchases by the existing customer base, the attention is on getting the sales organization to be more productive. SMBs, in spite of tough economic times, are investing in technology to enhance the productivity of the sales force and for the most part are implementing Customer Relationship Management tools to make this happen. While this is decidedly a step in the right direction, there may be additional ways to increase sales productivity. This article examines a more effective way of utilizing CRM software to increase customer acquisition and revenue growth.
The Role of Technology
The last several years have brought a radical change in the relationship between the customer and business as a whole. More and more customers are collaborating with businesses and technology is playing a key role in this new collaboration. An increasing percentage of interaction with customers is coming by way of social networks and online communities. These interactions include suggestions for product improvement, requests for help, information requests and even customers assisting their counterparts directly. These customer conversations are driving the need for the business to respond in a timely fashion and to also convince potential customers of their ability to adequately address their needs.
This is driving executives to focus more attention on discovering the “favorite” customer or target market and crafting a marketing message that resonates with that target market. To do this effectively, the business needs to gather and analyze all of the relevant customer data points, In addition to demographic and geographic data, the business needs to understand why customers are buying their products or services and more importantly, what specific language the “favorite” customer is using to describe the buying experience.
The Changing Customer Role
This calls for the establishment of a close collaborative effort between the business and the customer base. Sales and any other part of the organization that is in direct contact with the customer needs to listen closely to the conversation in order to hear what the customer is saying. The data gathered needs to be analyzed so that not only does the business then understand which customers comprise the target market, but also how those customers think and how they communicate.
This effectively achieves two goals. First, it allows the sales force to be immensely more productive by getting them to concentrate on that part of the general marketplace that has these pre-qualified prospects that have the same profile as the “favorite” customer. Secondly, it gives the marketing side of the business the ability to script a marketing message that resonates with the customer since it uses the information gleaned from the customer and can be written in a language that the customer understands.
Even more importantly, with more customers using online communities and social networks, it is essential that the key phrases that the business uses are the same as the key phrases that the customer uses in their posts on Facebook and LinkedIn or in their tweets on Twitter. It also allows the business to search engine optimize its web site because the language and the keywords used are the ones the favorite customers are accustomed to.
So now, the business has a marketing message that resonates with the customer. The sales force has a sales pitch that is geared towards solving the customer pain and is in a language the customer understands. The customer feels that the business is listening and hearing them and prospects not only find the business, but when engaged by the sales force are easier to bring to a close.
Can current CRM systems play in this arena?
Most current CRM systems are very effective at helping the sales force automate the sales process and manage the sales cycle. The way they do this is by collecting customer and prospect data that the sales force uses to manage sales campaigns, schedule sales calls and keep the sales cycle moving along. To meet the new paradigm of target marketing that requires collaboration with our customers, these CRM systems need new functionality.
Commence Corporation is taking a leadership position in this area and understands that the future of customer relationship management will be centered on the collaboration and partnership with customers. Commence is busy restructuring the data points that their system collects to include the needed demographic and psychographics data that CRM system do not capture today. Commence is also looking closely at interfacing the product with social media applications so that it can collect and analyze all of the different streams of customer conversations that are currently on the web, then use this information to targeting effective marketing campaigns.
As a result of the economic downturn, many SMBs are struggling to justify the capital outlay to upgrade or implement a new CRM system because of cost and business uncertainty. To survive in today’s economy, you need to implement a CRM software solution, but you need to do it for the right reasons. Don’t implement a CRM solution to simply automate the sales process. Growing your business will require the ability to capture, manage and share vital customer information from several data sources and then use the information to gain a competitive edge. Select a CRM software provider that offers a platform that can support the customer collaboration that will need to take place in the future.
About the author: Larry Caretsky is the president of Commence Corporation, a leading provider of CRM software, which can be deployed in a web-based, cloud-computing environment or on premise. Caretsky is considered an expert in Customer Relationship Management and has written numerous white papers on the subject, which may be accessed via the company’s web site at www.commence.com.
Posted by Commence on February 17, 2010 under CEO Corner |
A lot has changed in the past 24 months. Companies have been forced to reduce expenditures; place purchases on hold or buy from a competitor that came in with a better deal. But despite increased competition, reduced budgets and a more stringent buying process, decisions are still being made to purchase products and services. What’s changed is a shift in buying behavior. Decisions that had been traditionally made by middle management or a committee now require approval by a senior executive. Most sales people perceive this as a negative and if you’re team is thinking this way, they may need an attitude adjustment. Here’s why.
Every sales person has experienced how difficult it is to get to the economic buyer. He or she is traditionally buffered by administrators, gatekeepers or committees of people that block your path to the decision maker’s office. The fact that executive management is now engaged in the decision process is the best thing that has happened to sales people in years. It opens up an incredible opportunity for sales professionals to state their case directly to the person who will be making the decision. Not only does this shorten the sales cycle, but it gives them the opportunity to layout the key selling points of your product or service in terms of ROI, which is how executives think.
The Key to Winning More Deals
Selling to an executive can be intimidating and they will expect a lot from you which means you must sell value. They will expect you to take the time to understand their challenges and recommend solutions that will significantly impact their business. Executives look for solutions, not features, and they will respond to sales professionals that can solve their problem. Here are 4 tips for selling to the executive level:
- Let the executive do most of the talking – the more you learn about the prospect’s pain points the better you’ll be prepared to recommend a solution.
- Use examples of how your product or service has addressed similar challenges in the industry. This will demonstrate that you understand the problem and have a solid recommendation or solution.
- Show enthusiasm – if an executive senses your excitement about addressing their problem they will be much more receptive to working with and buying from you.
- Be persistent — it will pay off. Executives of small to mid-size businesses are often crisis managers and can be pulled in several directions. Don’t let them off the hook. Once you’re engaged, get to a decision one way or another.
About the author: Larry Caretsky is the CEO of Commence Corporation , a leading provider of Customer Manager and sales process automation software for small to mid-size businesses. Caretsky has authored several white papers on the subject of sales process management, lead scoring and using CRM software to improve sales execution. For more information see www.commence.com or call 1-877-COMMENCE.
Posted by Commence on February 3, 2010 under CEO Corner |
Commence Corporation helps small to midsize businesses tackle the CRM challenge
Picking a CRM software vendor is tough. It’s even tougher when you’re part of the small to midsize market, where technology budgets are limited and horror stories of complex, drawn-out CRM projects abound. While the watchword of midmarket CRM buyers was once something akin to the President’s “irrational exuberance,” today it is “caution,” as companies demand solutions that are affordable, easy to implement and easy to use and that deliver a quick return on investment.
“The CRM industry has been plagued by vendors offering overly complex solutions to solve basic business problems. This has resulted in a low adoption rate and failed customer expectations,” says Larry Caretsky, president and CEO of Commence Corporation. “The concern for most businesses today is not a lack of technology, but rather how they can leverage technology to improve their internal processes and, ultimately, their bottom line.”
Caretsky should know. His company has been in business for 22 years and has witnessed all the trends in customer relationship management. And with that kind of experience, Caretsky figured out long ago that rapidly deployable, cost-effective CRM solutions – even when they weren’t in vogue – were the only way for customers to quickly and affordably reap the benefits of their investment.
Commence Corporation has taken a unique approach to meeting the key objectives of most small to midsize businesses – namely, by streamlining internal business processes, improving sales processes and delighting customers. The company starts with the fundamental knowledge that most mid-market customers must first address the problem of data capture, data consolidation and data sharing.
Typically, vital customer information is spread throughout these organizations in contact management software, back office systems and Excel spreadsheets. “Employees spend a significant amount of time trying to determine where or who in the organization has the information they need to address customer inquiries,” says Caretsky. “Management recognizes this problem and realizes that in order to increase sales and become a more efficient sales and service organization they must get the right information into the hands of the right people, at the right time.”
The Commence CRM software does just that. Customer information, captured from multiple channels, is stored in a unified database where it is immediately available to all authorized personnel through two product features: a digital dashboard and a multiview capability. “This enables them to be constantly aware of account activity and take proactive steps to ensure customer satisfaction,” says Caretsky.
At the same time, Commence helps companies increase sales using a sales process template that is built into the system. Preset sales stages allow the sales team to begin classifying new sales opportunities from the beginning. The product also offers sales teams the ability to utilize a structured sales methodology for lead scoring and evaluating each sales opportunity. And it helps make sales reps more productive by providing a tool to automate routine tasks. “It’s like having an administrative assistant working directly for you,” says Caretsky.
Building brand recognition via the use of direct mail and email marketing campaigns is also incorporated in Commence CRM as a component of the marketing software module. By scheduling repetitive marketing campaigns small to mid-size businesses can be assured that their company, product or service is in front of prospective buyers at all times.
“Today’s basis for business growth is the successful management of long-term relationships with customers on a one-to-one level,” says Caretsky. “When the customer becomes the center of your business, customer-centric strategies, processes and technology solutions can unlock the value of these relationships.”
Posted by Commence on January 8, 2010 under CEO Corner |
Sure it’s tough out there. There is no doubt about it. In today’s environment no matter what you are selling there are dozens of competitors calling on your prospects and making similar claims. So how can you differentiate yourself from the pack? I have some recommendations.
As an executive of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software firm I understand competition. There are literally hundreds of CRM vendors from contact management software and sales force automation software providers to vertically based CRM providers all pitching their solution as the best, the easiest and the cheapest. Some make claims that their product is better than ours, others are offering lower prices and some will do almost anything to win business. Yet despite all of this, our sales team is winning more business based on a few simple tips that may help you.
Lets assume for a moment that you have a new qualified opportunity:
- The prospect has a need for your company’s product or service,
- They have a short decision timeframe,
- There is a budget in place,
- You are dealing with a decision maker.
Life is good! Now let’s go and win this business:
Tip 1. Preparation: Schedule a pre-approach appointment for the sole purpose of finding out the critical business issues in advance of your next call or appointment. This is the time to learn about their challenges and show them you are committed to understanding their business requirements and helping to address them. Too many sales people make the mistake of asking questions during their presentation or demonstration, which often frustrates the prospect and reduces the effectiveness of the call.
Tip 2. Research: The prospect has told you their needs, but before you make that next call to schedule your presentation or demonstrate your product, do some research about the company to learn about their specific industry and any critical business issues that affect companies just like theirs. This will help you to develop a flow for how you wish to present or demonstrate your product or service as an effective solution for their business. It’s also important to remember that any intelligent prospect will know if you have really taken the time to understand their business challenges or not.
Tip 3. The Presentation/Demonstration: Focus on their critical business issues right away with specific examples of how your product or service will address them. That’s what the prospect is interested in and if you wait too long, you run the risk of losing their attention and the potential for their business.
Tip 4. Sell Value but Know When to Stop: You probably have a lot of things about your product or service that will provide additional value to your prospect, but if you have successfully addressed their core business requirements then it’s time to stop selling. Sales representatives all too often frustrate or irritate prospects by over selling. Your product or service does not have to do twenty different things. It just has to solve one or two critical needs.
Tip 5. Know Your Competition: You know the prospect is shopping around and there is nothing you can do about it — or is there? Very often there will be a bottleneck in a competitive product that your solution addresses very well, but if you are unaware of this you will lose the opportunity to gain a competitive edge. In the famous book The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu, he states, “know they enemy and you shall not fear the outcome of any battle”.
Posted by Commence on November 12, 2009 under CEO Corner |
I read an interesting article that compared the success rate of accounting software implementations to that of CRM solutions within a sales organization. The results were intriguing. While accounting software implementations seem to enjoy a high level of success, this is not the case for sales automation systems. The article went on to compare and outline the differences between the two areas and while it did not provide any specific recommendations, if you’re a small to mid-size business the information below may make you think differently about the importance of implementing a sales methodology or structure within your sales organization.
Outlined below is a brief summary of the article.
Accounting departments are traditionally known for having mature well-documented business processes, perhaps because the federal government requires them. Sales organizations are traditionally void of structure and process, which often results in inaccurate forecast and sales with lower profitability then desired.
Accounting departments have mature people. This is not to say that sales people are not mature, but accountants are traditionally degreed and well trained on the principles of accounting while sales people often come from different walks of life with different levels of education and sales experience.
Accounting systems have also been around for decades and have a mature set of features that have been designed to address a specific set of rules and guidelines. Sales systems while mature must be flexible enough to support a variety of unique sales functions within multiple sales channels. This often makes these systems overly complex and hard to use.
This brief analysis would indicate that mature business processes, mature people, and mature solutions drive the operational success of your accounting department. If this is indeed true, shouldn’t we be emulating this within our sales organization?
Small to mid-size businesses that have a CRM initiative should make sure that they add the ability to have a flexible sales methodology to their functional criteria list.
CRM vendors like Commence Corporation offer fully integrated solutions for contact management, lead management, sales management as well as consulting services that help businesses deploy proven sales methodologies or create custom programs to match unique selling requirements. The flexibility of web based solutions like Commence coupled with high level sales expertise can help make your sales organization as efficient as your accounting department.
Commence CRM Home Page
Commence CRM Opportunity Form
Posted by Commence on October 27, 2009 under CEO Corner |
Any high-growth business strategy must begin with a consistent and disciplined sales process that is easily understood across the sales organization. Salespeople and their managers need to use the same vocabulary, and view selling opportunities as having sequential stages that must be completed before a suspect becomes a prospect, and a prospect becomes a customer. Following a consistent process reduces the anxiety and uncertainty common among both salespeople and sales managers because everyone knows what is expected and needed for every sales pursuit. Having definite requirements and policies on when and how to give a demonstration, prepare a proposal, or send a sample helps the sales force proactively control the sales process versus simply reacting to requests from potentially unqualified prospects. Better preparation, deeper research, and clearer goals for each stage of the selling process will result in a more effective sales team and better business results.
A standard approach to pursuing and tracking opportunities is a smart way to assure that all sales activities are aligned with organizational goals and the overall direction of sales management. Consistency also reduces the amount of non-value added sales activities such as drafting letters, writing reports, and having lengthy phone calls to determine what stage is next in a sales opportunity. Having standard terminology saves time and minimizes confusion.
Sales managers benefit from standardized processes because it is also easier to determine how each salesperson is performing. Opportunities that are stalled in one stage can be identified and resolved. Salespeople benefit from standardization because they waste less time determining what information is missing and what the next step should be in the workflow. Sales appointments become more productive because they are only conducted when qualified as part of a planned sequence of events.
The high level steps to implement a sales process are:
- Document your sales process
- Design your implementation
- Train your sales team
- Support the implementation
Some companies adopt branded systems such as Sandler, Solution Selling, Dale Carnegie or others. Others develop their own systems with distinct terminology; perhaps a hybrid of popular systems or a mix of the techniques used by the company’s most successful sales performers.
A standard sales process allows companies to more easily analyze events and make sense of trends. As a regional sales manager at a mid-sized organization observed, “The only way to discover what’s working and what’s not is to measure the individual steps of the sales process. If you know the percentages of prospects that proceed through each stage of the process, you accurately predict how many sales will close in the future, based upon the current pipeline. You can also compare the performance of team members and take appropriate action, like additional coaching, in order to ensure that the team remains productive.”
Applying Best Practices to Sales
Most organizations are not strangers to processes, systems, and re-engineering. For example, in the manufacturing industry, plants and warehouses couldn’t operate profitably without them and no business manager would let accounting and purchasing departments improvise. The more complex the task, it’s more likely that the effective principles and processeses for successfully completing that task have been defined and codified. In other words, much of the business world is already highly process-driven, systematized, and automated.
Yet, oftentimes, the sales department hasn’t been automated. For example, in a recent study of distributor respondents, eighty-eight percent indicated that they do not have a documented, formal sales process. Given that sales is fundamental and represents a large expense item, it was quite surprising that written sales processes were non-existent for the majority of the study participants. Without such a document to provide a consistent road map, executives have no choice but to depend on the creativity, work ethic and luck of individual sales reps and their managers.
Organizations without a documented sales process often exhibit several common symptoms, such as a disconnected and manual approach to selling and a lengthy cycle time to find prospects, get quotes out the door, and close orders. This may in turn lead to irritated prospects, who expect a rapid response to their inquiries or request for a proposal. . In addition, top sales employees may become annoyed. They want to sell, not figure out the best way to put prospects in the pipeline, create quotes, enter orders and track shipments delivered. Other symptoms of process deficiencies include abundant and costly errors, evidenced by expedited orders and high volumes of returns, and inadequate margin on too many quotes, resulting in deflated profitability. This may lead to stagnant sales from the most important customers and cause engineering and other departments to be pulled into disarray when the sales team gets a request for proposal or learns about a bid opportunity.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many executives voice issues similar to these, yet the remedy seems to be incredibly difficult. Sales teams are often extremely autonomous, and management struggles to avoid “big brother” accusations and micromanaging. Despite these legitimate concerns, it is not that difficult to successfully implement a standard sales process.
When reviewing the various sales methodologies and processes available, make sure your final selection is repeatable, predictable, and scalable. What you want is a sales process that is simply enough that, over time, it will become second nature to the sales staff. Also, make sure that it isn’t too complicated, or the sales team will not use it.
The elements of a sales process typically include:
When smart organizations are designing a sales process implementation, they focus on change management, not sales training. By implementing a formalized sales process, businesses are fundamentally changing the way people do their jobs on a daily basis. There will be natural resistance. To develop a change management plan, make sure you can answer the following questions:
Follow the Leader
One of the best ways to make sure implementations “stick” is to have the management involved. One recent study found that when sales training is reinforced by management, the sales skills taught during training produced a 15% permanent increase in productivity.
Management needs to be involved in more than a cosmetic fashion. A senior member of the management team needs to attend the training, and this same manager should inspect the sales activities for a period of time to make sure they continuously are consistent with the new sales introduced during the training.
At the end of the day, the challenge with adopting a new sales process is getting everyone to follow it. Sales management must lead by example in sales meetings and on sales calls. An automated workflow reinforced by a CRM system that quickly prompts a salesperson to enter required information before moving to the next sales stage is invaluable. Standard reports and online visibility into the sales pipeline can help monitor the progress of opportunities over time so that both the salesperson and the sales manager can spot when an opportunity is stalled.
As one sales leader summed up his company’s recipe for success: “Our company can’t grow consistently unless the sales process is repeatable, not arbitrary. For us, it is a condition of employment – you have to embrace the standards, follow the processes and use the CRM system.”
Author Larry Caretsky is the CEO of Tinton Falls, N.J.-based Commence Corporation.
Tags: CRM, Information Management, OnDemand, process management, project management, Reports, SaaS, sales, Sales Effectiveness, sales force automation, sales forecasting, social networking, software
Posted by Commence on under Commence News |
-FREE Software Up-Grade Offered to Existing Customers-
TINTON FALLS, N.J., (October 15, 2009) – Commence Corporation, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions, today announced that it is extending its managed services offering to existing desktop customers and offering a complimentary software upgrade with its new hosting service.
“Today’s economic crisis has created an environment whereby companies are finding it difficult to upgrade and maintain their own IT infrastructure,” said Larry Caretsky, president of Commence Corporation. “Some have been forced to reduce their IT staff, making the management of their systems even more challenging. As a result, these businesses may now be working with older, fragile hardware or unsupported software and they are rightfully concerned about the impact this will have on their business.”
Commence Corporation has created a unique Managed Service designed to address this business challenge for existing customers. The service places the role of managing and maintaining the Commence Server hardware and software with Commence Corporation. It provides customers with the use of state-of-the-art high-speed server hardware at Commence Corporation’s data center as well as 24/7 management of the system by trained engineers. Customers are also entitled to a free software upgrade and continued upgrades for as long as they remain on the service. This ensures that they are always working with the highest quality server hardware and the latest version of the software.
Abhijit Joshi, president of White Hedge Inc., recently switched over to the service and is pleased with the outcome. “As a small company I did not have the resources to purchase the equipment and staff necessary to manage and maintain my Commence system,” said Joshi. “In addition, keeping up with the latest product releases became difficult. By outsourcing this function to Commence I freed up time and resources to dedicate to growing my business while Commence manages and maintains the hardware and software.”
Joshi, is not alone, several dozen new companies are already utilizing Commence’s managed service. For more information contact Commence sales at 1-877 – COMMENCE.
More About Commence Corporation
Founded in 1988, Commence develops and delivers a diverse suite of award-winning CRM products that integrate people, processes and technology. Delivered via the popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) model or implemented as on premised licensed software, Commence CRM solutions are used by thousands of companies to streamline sales and customer service front end business processes. As a result, Commence clients increase workforce productivity, generate positive customer interactions, and reduce cost. More information about Commence can be accessed at www.commence.com
Posted by Commence on October 2, 2009 under Commence News |
| Commence Corporation Introduces Enhanced CRM Reports Library — Commence OnDemand Reports Available with Just a Click of the Mouse |
Commence Corporation, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM ) software solutions designed specifically for small- to mid-size businesses, today announced enhancements to its reports library in the newest version of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM solution, Commence OnDemand. Read more of this article »
