Upcoming Webinar: The Business Case for On-Demand Sales Performance Management Analytics

The Business Case for On-Demand Sales Performance Management Analytics with Xactly and THINKStrategies

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Register to learn more:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/415893690

CRM applications have revolutionized the selling process, organizing pre-sales data that reps and management need to manage the sales pipeline. But what about “post-sales” data? There is a ton of information produced at the time of sale that is effectively orphaned—information on what a customer actually bought, the final price, the commission paid, the territory where it was sold, etc. This is data that, if collected and cleansed, can be used to increase sales performance and maximize profits going forward.

In this Webinar, Xactly’s Karen Steele and THINKStrategies’ Jeff Kaplan will discuss how post-sales analytics can provide new and strategic insight into an organization’s selling patterns, commission spend, product performance, sales rep and team performance, and sales plan effectiveness. They will examine how post-sales data—traditionally scattered across a variety of disparate systems including ERP, HR, and Payroll—can be now be integrated and analyzed with an eye towards enhancing business strategies, changing sales rep behaviors, and super-charging sales organizations.

Participants will take away:

• Best practices for integrating and analyzing post-sales data to optimize sales performance.
• An understanding of how post-sales data can be leveraged daily by reps within their CRM applications to maximize profits – for the company and for themselves.
• A view of the broad scope of business processes that benefit from post-sales analytics – from sales compensation management to territory and quota management to pricing management and sales forecasting/planning.

Speakers:

Karen Steele, Vice President of Marketing, Xactly Corporation
Karen Steele is responsible for managing all aspects of Xactly's worldwide marketing.

Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director, THINKstrategies
Jeff Kaplan is the founder and managing director of THINKstrategies (www.thinkstrategies.com), a strategic consulting firm that helps IT enterprise decision-makers with their sourcing strategies; solution providers with their marketing strategies; and venture firms with their investment strategies.

Register to learn more:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/415893690

Podcast - Common SaaS Misconceptions

Everyone says different things about SaaS, with disagreements going down to the basic definition of what qualifies software as a service. Christopher Cabrera recently spoke with Krissi Danielsson at ebizQ about common SaaS misconceptions. Listen to the podcast below, or read the transcript.

Download file

Buyer Beware: “Hosted On-Demand” Is No More Than a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Reeling from tight IT budgets and the consequent popularity of new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, many enterprise software vendors are casting around for ways to dress up their own offerings and perhaps cash in on the cachet of SaaS and on-demand delivery. What several have come up with is the “hosted on-demand” label, which in reality is nothing more than draping the tired old enterprise software wolf in ill-fitting sheep’s clothing. As I’ve said before, enterprise software by any name, hosted or otherwise, is not a substitute for true on-demand. Software vendors taking this re-labeling route are doing a colossal disservice to customers, whether those customers buy into the name game or not.

So, what does “hosted on-demand” have to offer? Disappointments, mostly. What these vendors are doing is simply providing the same old premise-based software in a hosted environment, coupled with a seemingly substantial—but not nearly substantial enough—price break. And under the fleece is the same old ravening wolf. Hosted or not, these are still expensive solutions to implement, and shaving 30 percent or even 40 percent off the typically enormous up-front implementation cost doesn’t change that fact—and there’s still the monthly fees for accessing the hosted software to contend with. These are also typically complicated and inflexible solutions and just because they are now off-premise doesn’t necessarily change that fact.

What may well change, however, is a customer’s support priority. With two models to support—on-premise and hosted—there’s an almost invariable dilution of resources. Which customers do you think a traditional enterprise software company is most likely to make its top priority? And for that matter, what about new functionality, version control, reliability and scalability? On-premise and “hosted on-demand” implementations are identical in that each customer is a discrete box, or technology platform—it’s just that in a hosted implementation, that box has been moved off-site. But with a true on-demand solution, all customers share the exact-same platform. Just as they all share the same low cost-base, they all benefit equally from more rapid introduction of new functionality as well as from identically robust version control, data security, disaster recovery and scalability. In numbers, there is strength.

So buyer beware. Don’t be misled by labels. If you want on-demand, go with pure on-demand solutions, 100 percent purpose built to deliver the full benefits of SaaS. Avoid the nasty shock of being fleeced, and let the wolves go howl.