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Seal the Deal

Sunday, April 22, 2012 by Harini Prasad

            You have nearly finalized a huge sale. The hard work is done, the customer knows what he wants, and the price has been agreed upon. When you get the signature, it’s payday – but the deal can still fall through. You need to lock it down with a killer proposal, but building it out takes a lot of time: writing a cover letter from scratch, copying in all the customer information and pricing data for the quote, branding it with a customer logo, finding the applicable terms and conditions, adding any visual aids and then double checking to make sure everything’s correct. After the exhausting process is complete, you still run a high risk of error and the quality of the final product leaves the customer mildly impressed at best. Fortunately, BigMachines’ Document Engine is the cure for the common proposal.

            With pre-built templates, proposal tools greatly reduce the time and effort required to build the kind of powerful documents that will give a sale the extra push it needs. One of the most attractive qualities of many modern tools is that building out the templates require little to no technical knowledge; it’s all just point and click. For a company at the top of its game, the issues usually associated with proposal generation are problems of the past. With a comprehensive proposal tool, professional, customized, accurate proposals are a mouse-click away. More importantly, your resources will be freed up to add real value rather than gather data and edit documents, and your customers will be impressed with the speed, accuracy and quality of your work. In business, win-win situations are seldom found, and not taking advantage of them can be costly. Why leave anything to chance?

Social Media Marketing and Success

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 by Harini Prasad

It seems like there is always some new kind of marketing trend each day.  Between tagging, tweeting, commenting, blogging and joining groups, it seems easy for your business to get lost in the jumble of things. As a social media addict, I at times lose hours to my habit/addiction. But social media marketing should not be one of them.  Social media is a great way to get word out about your business and its capabilities.  Whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media outlet, word spreads around and it is a great way to make connections and network with others in your industry. 

As opposed to traditional marketing strategies like advertisements through different forms of standard media, social media marketing is a new-ish method of marketing your business and it is transforming the ways in which we speak today.  With the growth of Internet users and smart phone owners, it is now easier than ever to find information, discuss news and reach a larger audience, all without your checkbook every being disturbed.  According to Dave Evans and Jake McKee, authors of Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement, “A July 2009 Anderson Analytics study found 60% of the Internet population uses social networks and social media sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.”  Over half of users!     

With such a large audience to reach out to, BigMachines has taken the opportunity to use resources like Facebook, Twitter and blogging to inform both prospects and customers about our capabilities, press releases and best practices.  By taking advantage of new social media trends, BigMachines can reach more people than we could have before.  Our clients can not only be up-to-date about news like the annual BigIdeas Conference and new software releases, but they can discuss these topics together as well.  They can also have more access to information about different aspects of our software including Enterprise Resource Planning software, online sales tools and proposal automation. Best of all, our customers can interact with one another and share ideas and best practices. We have found great success with social media not because we are industry geniuses (even though we like to think we are) but because we center all of our offerings on our customers. We let them guide us on topics to even how we shape our product. 

With social media marketing, we can increase sales and provide more information and resources to our customers and prospects.  Social media marketing is the future in building both the knowledge about your business and its success. If you haven’t done so already, join the movement!

Join the Official BigMachines Facebook Page here.

Join one of BigMachines' LinkedIn Forums here.

Join my network of professionals on LinkedIn here.

Tweet with us here.

See what I have to say about the IT and Sales Industry on Twitter here.

March Madness: Win or Go Home

Monday, April 16, 2012 by Harini Prasad

2.6 seconds left.  Down by 1.  A spot in the National Championship on the line.  It all comes down to a full-court pass and making an open shot.  We all remember the epic 1992 East Regional Final game when Duke miraculously came back from a deficit and beat Kentucky in the final seconds of the game.  But that last-second, buzzer-beater shot he took was more than just luck.  It was well-planned.  Every play has been thought out and practiced before being executed on the court.  Without good planning, training, practicing and the right tools, each team would be unable to continue on in the bracket.  With the chance of either going home or staying in the tournament, a team and its members ensure that they are prepared for March and its ensuing madness.  For example, a team must know their opponent’s best zone defense, their sweet spots, their best free throw shooters and how to get past their defense.  A team would not be able to do that without the proper information and resources.  They not only need a coach who knows the ins and outs of how to stay in the tournament and beat your opponent, but each player from the center to the guard needs to be on the same page as well.                                      In keeping up with the spirit of March Madness, BigMachines’ sales team functions in much the same way.  Similar to the basketball coach, Sales Managers must coordinate their team of associates and interns in order to find leads and make contacts.  Ultimately, the manager's goal is to call the plays and close the sale, much like that last-second, buzzer-beater shot that ensured Duke a spot in the championship.  The Sales Associates run out the play and use online sales tools like sales and marketing software, proposal development software, and an order management system to help close the case.  Without the proper resources to research, contact and inform the client of BigMachines’ capabilities, the sales team would end up on the losing side of things like Kentucky. 

As an Ecommerce Solution Company, we strive to provide a Business to Business Ecommerce Solution that helps you sell more and sell faster.   With the right solution, Duke ended up winning that year and becoming the 1992 champions.  Without that well-executed full-court pass and final second shot, Duke never would have become the National Title holder that year.  It’s something to consider, does your sales team have the right tools and resources to close the sale and win it all?

BigMachines in A Venue Near You!

Friday, April 13, 2012 by Harini Prasad

            

                In a perfect world, there is a forum for everything. With the internet, I suppose the world is moving closer to this opinioned perfection. You can find a forum for everything online, from handbags to power tools. And, of course, anything and everything Star Wars is always in demand. If only these forums could be taken from the virtual world, where you could talk to everyone in person and see how they work…

                Wait! That does exist at BigMachines. Our Customer Success Forums provide the chance to talk about your BigMachines product with other BigMachines users and experts from the company. Having trouble with figuring out how to phrase a certain aspect of your selling process? Maybe Joe Gibroni from Phrasing Experts Inc. will have a solution for you (note: Unfortunately, Joe Gibroni will not be able to attend this year).

The great part about being able to interact with everyone face-to-face is the ability to network. Unlike an online forum where you have to do some serious LinkedIn investigating to find out who anyone is, you get the whole package right in front of you.

In addition to the benefits of everything being physical, there is also the chance to participate in BigMachines product roadmap brainstorming. This is our way of letting you give us as much input as you want regarding our product development. Any and all suggestions are more than welcome.

Save your spot for a 90 minute consultation with a BigMachines expert. Experience a mini Breakthrough Opportunity Analysis (BOA)SM to evaluate your company’s sales configuration processes. The BOA is an onsite workshop conducted by BigMachines experts that helps a company evaluate the need for business changes and identify opportunities to improve and streamline its sales processes. We understand that with time, many factors within a company changes and we want to ensure that your company is utilizing our solution to its fullest potential.

The BigMachines Customer Success Forum is coming to your house this May, that is if you live in Denver or the Bay Area. Check out these dates and places to see if there is a Customer Success Forum by you:

Denver Area – May 3rd, 2012
Hosted by Spectra Logic

Bay Area – May 10th, 2012
Hosted by Brocade

 If you don’t live in these areas, no problem! More forums are being scheduled as we speak.

The New iPad is the New Sales Bag

Monday, April 2, 2012 by Harini Prasad

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that much has changed since my grandfather’s sales days. Back then, he would travel to customers and prospects with a heavy bag of products so he could demonstrate how the product worked and interacted with its various components. Over the years, sales professionals started to move away from this approach – in part due to the back breaking pain it caused. Instead, some started to carry paper catalogs. While not as heavy to carry, these were (and still are) pricey and much more difficult to use for new and existing customers in terms of visualizing how the product actually worked.

Today, sales professionals have a new sales bag – the iPad. With the third generation iPad in the hands of more than three million people, it is having a huge impact on the way we do business – and the sales department is leading their companies through this transformation toward mobility by using the iPad and other tablets as a sales tool while out in the field. Sales professionals are using the iPad while in front of their customers to have a conversation about their products’ features and options, providing an opportunity for product configuration on the spot.

In fact, here at BigMachines, we recently conducted our Second Annual Benchmark Survey, which takes a look at the state of the sales industry today. The findings show that sales mobility is continuously growing with 66.7% of respondents currently using a tablet or mobile device for selling while on the road.  More so, the survey results indicate that face-to-face contact still provides the greatest success with prospects and customers. Taking both those points into consideration, this next statistic shouldn’t be too shocking: a total of 62.5% said their mobile device is important for completing complex sales.

Here are just a few instances as to why the iPad is enhancing the face-to-face interaction between the sales rep and customers and prospects:

  • It provides easy access to critical data on-the-go. The more information a sales rep has about a particular customer or prospect going into a meeting, the greater the chance ofclosing a deal.
  • It enables quick and professional price quotes on the spot. With the proper applications, an entire proposal can be generated in front of the customer and terms quickly negotiated.
  • It adds an extra degree of transparency to the deal, which customers appreciate. As quotes and proposals are generated in plain sight, they have full visibility into what is being negotiated throughout the process.
  • While closing deals faster is an obvious plus for sales reps, it is also advantageous to the client. The faster a customer is delivered the product or service it needs, the better off it will be.
  • The iPad can minimize, or even eliminate, the confusion that often accompanies complex orders. It is equipped with adequate software applications for pricing and quoting in real-time, enabling sales rep to walk a customer through an entire order in-person, all while allowing the rep to easily explain and iterate through all of the options available right in front of the customer.

It’s pretty incredible how this new, lightweight sales bag is revolutionizing the way the sales professionals do their jobs better while on the road – ultimately leading to increased productivity and an improved bottom line.

So, tell me, is your organization rolling out the iPad to the sales force? What does your sales bag look like?

 

Tim Handorf

VP of Product Management

Please Participate in the 2nd Annual BigMachines Annual Benchmark Survey

Monday, February 13, 2012 by Debbie Maher
Please take the BigMachines Benchmark SurveyBigMachines would like to invite you to participate in our 2nd annual Benchmark Survey. This survey allows us to gauge some of the current industry trends and pain points, while helping us to get a clearer picture of the direction companies like yours are headed this year.

Please take a few moments and complete this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5GW7MQJ

Last year's survey results underscored the struggles the sales industry faced on a daily basis including a disconnect between sales and marketing teams and lag time from quote to close. What trends will be revealed this year?

The complete results from last year's survey can be found at http://blogs.bigmachines.com/blog/guided-selling/bigmachines-2011-benchmark-survey .


On behalf of the BigMachines Marketing Department, thanks in advance for your help!

BigMachines Software Achieves Oracle Database Ready Status

Thursday, February 9, 2012 by Configuration Expert
This is a re-post from www.bigmachines.com:BigMachines Achieves Oracle Database Ready Status

BigMachines announced that its BigMachines 11 release has achieved Oracle Database Ready status through Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), demonstrating that BigMachines has fully tested and supports its product on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2. BigMachines is a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork.

Oracle Database Ready is part of the Oracle Exastack Ready program, which allows partners such as BigMachines to be recognized by Oracle for developing, testing and tuning their applications on the latest component products of Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud engineered systems. Oracle Database 11g offers BigMachines industry leading performance, reliability and scalability to power the most demanding business critical applications. It also helps customers save money by lowering storage usage, reducing administration tasks, and enabling consolidation onto secure private database cloud environments.

BigMachines software streamlines the sales process and provides solutions for product configuration, pricing, quoting, proposal generation and B2B ecommerce. BigMachines’ Oracle Database Ready status helps ensure that joint Oracle and BigMachines customers will leverage proven technology and quickly receive benefits of an integrated, joint solution including reduced time to implement, seamless user experience and rapid return on investment.


View the entire press release on our website.

For additional information on using BigMachines sales enablement software with Oracle, please visit http://www.bigmachines.com/oracle.php

Giraffa Factory and BigMachines Partner to Expand Cloud Computing Solution to Japanese Market

Monday, January 23, 2012 by Debbie Maher
This is a re-post from www.bigmachines.com:
Giraffa Factory and BigMachines announce partnership
BigMachines recently announced a partnership between its Japanese subsidiary, BigMachines, Co., Ltd., and Giraffa Factory, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. This partnership will expand the availability of BigMachines' award-winning sales solutions to meet the growing demand for accurate configuration, quote generation and sales process management in the Japanese cloud computing market.

Giraffa Factory, a salesforce.com consulting partner and BigMachines customer, is a rapidly growing company that signed more than 30 new customers in Japan within the first half of 2011. Giraffa will offer and implement BigMachines’ cloud-based selling software to fulfill the configuration, quoting and proposal generation needs of its growing customer base, which encompasses a wide variety of industry verticals. As a BigMachines customer, Giraffa will also use BigMachines SaaS solution for its own configuration and quote generation needs.


Visit www.bigmachines.com for additional information and to read the complete press release.

BigMachines Announces Release of BigMachines 12 Software

Friday, January 13, 2012 by Configuration Expert
BigMBigMachines 12 Sales Softwareachines recently announced the release of BigMachines 12, the latest version of the company's award-winning SaaS selling solution. BigMachines software assists sales teams, channel partners and resellers in product configuration, pricing and quoting, proposal generation and B2B ecommerce.

Customers will benefit from enhancements and new features in BigMachines 12 including:
  • The improved Migration Management Center allows customers to easily transfer changes between their BigMachines test and production sites. Customers can easily compare changes between two BigMachines instances, filter results, and select specific components to update. The new migration management center allows for greater visibility of changes and speeds up the migration process.
  • BigMachines’ new Configuration Layout Editor allows customers to create complex configuration and search layouts with an easy to use drag-and-drop editor for pixel perfect control of the page layout. The results are web pages are easier to design, faster to load, and allow for richer functionality.
  • BigMachines updated Commerce Rules Wizard now provides customers with a centralized location to create and edit all commerce rules.  The new functionality adds more flexibility in the BigMachines commerce process and improves the user experience by providing a more scalable, standardized way to create hiding attributes, constraints and validations within BigMachines.

Additional information can be found at www.bigmachines.com. Customers can view the BigMachines 12 release notes and learn more about scheduled upgrades by visiting support.bigmachines.com.

Mobile Solutions - Not Just for the Birds

Thursday, December 29, 2011 by Debbie Maher
Red-tailed hawkLast winter, our Deerfield office was treated to a special visitor, Bueto jamaicensis, commonly known as a Red-tailed hawk. Now, for a lot of us office dwellers, a huge hawk just outside the window is a pretty big deal.  For about an hour, the hawk obligingly posed on a branch. A parade ensued of various people with their cell phone cameras taking pictures of the visitor. Being the owner of a "not so smart phone" at the time, I had to borrow the company camera.  But as you can see, it wasn't quite up for the task of focusing on something only 5 feet away.  I also was not familiar enough with the settings to really get a great picture.

So what's the moral of my story, aside from the fact that it doesn't take much to amuse people in the middle of the workday?

Be prepared for anything.  If you're a bird watcher like me who is always looking up, you don't know when the next photo opportunity will come.  It pays to travel with a decent camera at all times. If I had been prepared and equipped with a camera on my phone, I would have already been familiar with all of the settings, and would have come out of that experience with a photographic memory to be proud of.
Mobile Selling Solutions are easily accessible via tablet or smart phone
The same principal can be applied to sales. With the growing trend of mobile sales solutions, sales reps have no reason to be unprepared to meet customer demands. Companies have more options than ever to equip their reps with mobile selling tools to keep up with their customers' needs.  Whether it is a SaaS quoting solution accessible on a tablet or discount approval capabilities available on a cell phone, a rep should always be able to sell while engaging in valuable face to face customer interaction.

If you're in sales, you never know where the next big opportunity will show up.  In an airport and have just met a potential client who has the need for an immediate software quote? A mobile quoting solution would enable you to produce a quote on the fly via your iPad.  Maybe you'll run into a crazy bird watcher like me who has a burning desire to buy an amazing, state of the art digital SLR  who wants to purchase as soon as possible (or as soon as she gets a raise)?  With an on-demand sales solution, you can push out a quote faster than you can say Bueto jamaicensis.

Dragonfly picture - or a mobile solution success storyI've since joined the rest of world and purchased a smart phone a few months after my unfortunate picture experience.  As you can see, while not a bird photo, I definitely did not miss out on the next opportunity for a great nature shot!

How about you? What are your plans for equipping yourself or your sales team with mobile selling tools to take advantage of that next big opportunity?



BigMachines Announces New Senior Vice President of Products to Drive Continued Growth, Innovation and Customer Success

Friday, December 23, 2011 by Debbie Maher
BigMachines is pleased to announce the recent hiring of John Pulling into the position of Senior Vice President of Products. In this capacity, Pulling will lead both the product management and product development teams. John’s extensive background and success further strengthens BigMachines' market-leading position of delivering success to more than 250 of the world’s leading companies, and his addition underscores BigMachines’ continued commitment to building world-class products that drive unmatched customer success.

“We are pleased to add John Pulling’s proven leadership and experience in product strategy, product development and operations to the BigMachines team,” said David Bonnette, President, BigMachines. “In 2011, BigMachines achieved extraordinary growth in new bookings, revenue, and profitability, adding more than 50 marquee customers.  As we grow, we continue to invest in building the finest leadership team in the industry. Our mission is to deliver unmatched customer success through our best practices and standardized products, and John will provide the leadership to ensure that we continue to build and deliver products that provide rapid ROI and material business impact to our growing customer base worldwide.”

For more information and the most up-to-date BigMachines news, please visit
http://www.bigmachines.com/press_releases.php

Designing With the User Experience in Mind

Thursday, December 22, 2011 by Will Wiegler
Our BigIdeas 2011 Customer and Cloud Computing Conference wrapped up in Chicago in October. Although a few months have passed, we continue to revisit the outcomes from the event to understand what was most valuable and interesting to those who attended so we can make future events even better. At BigIdeas we asked each attendee to rate the sessions they attended (there were more than 30 individual sessions offered) and provide feedback.

Among the top rated sessions was a presentation called User Experience Design Principles. We offered a similar session for the first time at BigIdeas 2010 and it was extremely popular last year as well. The session presented proven design and user experience (UX) principles and was delivered by our own in-house UX experts.

User experience design pertains to both the architecture and interaction models that affect the user. This includes all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used.

A positive user experience typically leads to happy users. Happy users result in better customer relationships, which mean that they are likely to continue to be your customers and also they are more likely to evangelize your product.

What makes a good user experience? You might be tempted to think “I’ll know it when I see it” but in reality, you can apply some basic principles to drive a better experience for your users.

Here are 3 principles for starters:
  1. Know your user.
    Know your user profile and demographics
    What is the profile and demographics of a typical user of your product? What knowledge do they already have when approaching your product? How technical are they? Who are you developing your product for? Can you picture your users? It can be helpful to post photos of actual users in your office or workspace to remind yourself whom you are developing for.


  2. Your product decisions should be based around your usProduct decisions should be based around user needs and ways they use your productsers needs and the ways they use your product.

    This seems obvious, but it is often ignored. Many products are designed around what the product designer/engineer thinks the user should do with the product, rather than on what the user actually wants to accomplish. Most products are developed to help a user solve a problem or accomplish a task. Don’t lose sight of that. To be successful, you need to know your user and help them accomplish their goals in a simple and efficient way.


  3. Keep it simple.
    Keep it Simple
    Break down your information into manageable pieces. Your product might have a lot to offer, but when you expose it all at once, it can often be confusing and overwhelming.
Does your company follow these principles? Maybe you have others to share. I would love to hear your own experiences about products and services that you have used that offer great and not-so-great user experiences. What lessons have you learned from them?

What Can Your Company Learn from the Rolling Stones?

Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Will Wiegler
I recently read that the Rolling Stones will be celebrating their 50th year as a band next year. Fifty years! How many rock bands are still performing after half a century? How many businesses are still performing fifty years after their launch?

Concert CrowdThe Rolling Stones formed the band in 1962 with the goal of performing and evangelizing their favorite music, which was Chicago-style blues. Over the years, they have evolved from being a derivative cover band to being arguably among the world’s greatest rock stars and admired musicians. Along the way they have persevered through a number of significant challenges, many of which they could never have imagined. The public’s taste in music has evolved and changed many times from early blues/rock through disco, punk, grunge, and more. The band members had their own personal challenges as well including substance abuse, death of a key member, and high profile personality clashes.  And then there’s the sheer challenge of working with the same core group of people year after year, decade after decade. Yet, they are still one of the world’s best known and most successful music groups ever. keys to success

What are the keys to their success and what can we learn from them?

I believe that part of what makes them great is that they never stopped doing what they love. That’s what drove them to form a band in the first place. They probably never imagined they would be multi-millionaires as a result of their pursuit, but they poured their heart and soul into their vision. Through the years, they understood the importance of what they created and never let that go. They built an enduring business (yes, rock bands are businesses) and have continued to deliver what their customers want year after year, decade after decade. And they also innovated along the way and developed differentiators that set them apart from the rest.

Rolling StonesLike many great businesses, they didn’t invent everything themselves. They borrowed from others that preceded them and from their peers. They got their ideas for their initial sound (Rolling Stones version 1.0) from the great bluesmen that recorded on Chicago’s Chess record label, then they innovated and incorporated other influences to make it their own. Mick Jagger is well known for his unique stage-strutting style, but he learned many of his signature stage moves by watching Tina Turner and others, borrowing what worked and then repackaging them into his own style. 

Isn’t that the way many of our businesses develop? Many companies start by looking around at how things are done, get an inspiration to innovate beyond the status quo, and build from there. And the ones that are truly successful are the ones that never stop. They remember the passion that drove them to start in the first place, and they keep pushing forward.
50th Anniversary
I commend any business that reaches the 50-year mark. No one gets to that point because it’s easy. They get there because they just don’t stop. They persevere.

One of our great technology rock stars, Steve Jobs, said this in an interview in 1995: “I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

I think this is true for rock bands and for business.  What drives you to persevere?

BigIdeas 2011: Of BigMachines’ Quantum Leap – Part 2

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 by Debbie Maher

BigMachines was recently featured in an article by P.J. Jakovljevic of Technology Evaluation Centers. P.J. recently had the opportunity to attended BigIdeas Chicago, the annual BigMachines customer and cloud computing conference.

In part one of his two-part series, P.J. describes his impressions of the conference, summarizes some of the new BigMachines Selling Platform features, and examines company’s future direction. Click Here to Read Part One

In part two of his article, P.J. summarizes key themes explored at BigIdeas during presentations by BigMachines' partners Oracle, salesforce.com, and InsideView and features a Q&A session with BigMachines' President David Bonnette and VP of Marketing Will Wiegler.


Excerpt from part two of P.J. Jakovljevic’s two-part series on BigMachines:

BigMachines’ Leaders Speak Out
 
Towards the end of the event I had the chance to meet with David Bonnette, BigMachines’ newly inaugurated president, and Will Wiegler, VP of Marketing. My provocative questions and their frank answers were as follows:
 
PJ: What is your exit strategy? Is configure price quote (CPQ)/quote to order (Q2O) sustainable as a standalone market in light of recent acquisitions in your space (most recently Webcom by Callidus Software)?
 
DB: Given that I have just started at the company, we are not yet thinking about the end game for BigMachines, and I will rather talk about our growth strategy. The main pillar of our projected stellar growth for next couple of years is to do more in the CPQ market in terms of selling to new customers and new industries. There is still plenty of arable land in this space, and we are the leader: our revenues equal the combined revenues of our competitors. Also, we currently have the following three engines – (direct) sales, channel, and e-commerce – and there are abundant cross-selling opportunities to existing customers as well.
 
Over time, we plan to broaden our functional footprint by enabling customers to further generate and protect their revenue. The latter aspect can be done by contract management, asset-based renewals management, upgrades, etc. Many issues and considerations take place in sales and engineering departments before the configuration and quoting take place. For now, we will develop those adjacent functionalities internally, but you can never know whether, say, in two years time our approach to acquisitions might change.


Click here to read the complete article.

BigMachines 12 Preview at BigIdeas

Monday, November 14, 2011 by Prathibha Ramasubramanian
BigMachines' breakthrough innovation is on display in its brand new release, BigMachines 12, the latest version of the company’s flagship, award-winning SaaS platform. A sneak peek of the BETA version of the new release generated much interest and appreciation at BigIdeas, the annual BigMachines Customer and Cloud conference held October 23 – 25, 2011 in Chicago.
BigMachines 12 Preview at BigIdeas Conference
BigMachines 12 enriches the end user experience by allowing sales teams, channel partners and resellers to easily configure products, manage complex pricing, and generate quotes and proposals more efficiently and securely. The powerful online administration feature enhancements in BigMachines 12 will help admin users easily set up visually rich configuration pages, enhance the quoting experience for their end users and seamlessly migrate data from their staging and test environments to their production setups.

New features delivered in BigMachines 12 are the result of extensive industry research combined with customer input. BigMachines encourages active community participation in the form of: Current BigMachines customers will benefit from enhancements and new features in BigMachines 12 include the following:
  • Intuitive drag and drop interface allows for high quality UX layouts of configuration pages.
  • New AJAX commerce rules enable dynamic updates without the need to refresh pages, resulting in a rich end-user quoting experience
  • One stop migration center administration provides enhanced ability to compare data between local and remote instances as well as seamlessly migrate data
  • Enhanced step administration user interface simplifies management of workflow set ups
BigMachines BETA is scheduled to be available November 18th, 2011. Additional information can be found on the BigMachines Support Center.



BigIdeas 2011: Of BigMachines’ Quantum Leap – Part 1

Friday, November 11, 2011 by Debbie Maher
BigMachines was recently featured in an article by P.J. Jakovljevic of Technology Evaluation Centers. P.J. recently had the opportunity to attended BigIdeas Chicago for the first time.  BigIdeas is the annual BigMachines conference where customers, partners and industry experts gathered to examine the latest solutions and best practices to increase sales and improve their business processes.

In part one of his two-part series, P.J. describes his impressions of the conference, summarizes some of the new BigMachines selling platform features, and examines company’s future direction.


Excerpt from part one of P.J. Jakovljevic’s two-part series on BigMachines:

[David] Bonnette pledged to invest heavily in research and development (R&D) and innovation, as opposed to the current skimping political sentiment in the United States (US) politics of only obsessing about cutting to the bone (which is not conducive to growth and innovation, to put it mildly). To that end, do-it-yourself (DIY) administration capabilities, enterprise agility, out of the box (OOTB) modules, intuitive user experience, and performance/scalability/security are the 2012 roadmap themes for BigMachines.

Currently, over 70 percent of customers are on the current BigMachines 11 release, and the idea is to bolster that number by making it easier and less disruptive for customers to upgrade and be current. One breakout session presented the BigMachines Implementation Framework, which is based on more than 10 years of experience and developed to help customers achieve success more quickly. The session outlined the following key factors to a successful BigMachines implementation:
  • Follow best industry practices and processes (as much as possible); this approach allows companies to think small and incremental rather than in a “big bang” manner
  • Take ownership – BigMachines should be like buying a car and not a limo with a chauffeur; for some customers that still require some handholding (chauffeuring), BigMachines offers packaged Admin Services, but the idea is for the majority of customers to be self-sufficient.
  • Supportability and scalability of the product
  • Constant interaction between customers and BigMachines’ project team members

Click here to read the complete article.




Sales Mobility: What Your Sales Reps and Customers Need

Thursday, November 10, 2011 by Harini Prasad
TMCnet recently featured an article by Tim Handorf, BigMachines' Vice President of Product Management, titled Sales Mobility: What Your Sales Reps and Customers Need .  In this article, Tim explores the emerging trend of mobile sales and the role tablets play in the selling process.


Excerpt from Sales Mobility: What Your Sales Reps and Customers Need:

There are a number of factors contributing to the emerging trend of mobile sales. At BigMachines, we recently conducted a survey to determine which factors were most critical and what we might be able to expect from mobile options down the road. The findings point to two primary issues: empowering sales reps with tools that work for them and streamlining the sales cycle for the client or prospect. 

Tablet
Of the enterprises surveyed, half either currently use tablets for sales or plan to implement them in the near future. The primary reason for this is that tablets are easier to use and more portable than laptops. For those of us that spend the bulk of our time traveling, the less we have to pack and carry around, the better. Laptops are certainly lightweight and don’t take up much space, but in this case, less is more. As a recent Gartner report points out, sales of all PCs are virtually flat, while tablet sales are booming.

Tablets also provide easy access to critical data on-the-go. More than 80 percent of respondents said they plan to use tablets in sales specifically for this reason. The more information a sales rep has about a particular client or prospect going into a meeting, the greater chance for closing a deal.


Read the entire article to learn more about trends in Sales Mobility.

BigMachines 2012 Product Roadmap Themes

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 by Tim Handorf
BigIdeas conference time is my favorite time of year. I love hearing from our customers and enjoy watching them interact and learn from each other. At this year’s conference, I had the opportunity to present the BigMachines 2012 product roadmap themes. Our roadmap themes are the primary areas that BigMachines is focusing its development effort on over the next year.

The themes we presented were:
  • DIY (Do It Yourself) Admin – We will make it even easier and more intuitive to be a BigMachines administrator.
  • Out of the box modules – We will launch new product modules that allow our customers to quickly implement and capture the value of new BigMachines functionality.
  • Enterprise Agility – BigMachines will enable our users to work in a fast and flexible manner.
Surrounding all of these themes is BigMachines commitment to User Experience, Security, Scalability and Performance.

BigMachines 2012 Roadmap Themes

The Roadmap themes are developed by collaborating with our customers and partners to understand the key elements that will ensure our joint success. We used the BigIdeas conference as another opportunity to collaborate with our community on the future of BigMachines. The response was overwhelming and I am thankful to all of our community members for partnering and innovating with us. However, now that BigIdeas is behind us, I encourage all of us to continue collaborating. If you are a member of the BigMachines community, continue interacting with each other via the various opportunities BigMachines provides including: My BigIdea, Customer Success Forums, interviews with Product Managers, and of course the next BigIdeas in Europe and North America.


Thanks to all of our 400+ community members who participated. I hope to see you all next year and I look forward to innovating with you in 2012.

BigMachines Showcases Product Roadmap and Customer Success at BigIdeas 2011 Chicago

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by Debbie Maher
Annual conference focused on customer innovation, best practices and product enhancements to drive business value using BigMachines

BigMachines today announced it concluded the 7th annual BigIdeas conference in Chicago, one of the largest cloud innovation conferences to date. More than 400 attendees participated in the two and a half-day event at the Swissôtel Chicago from October 23-25, sharing best practices for increasing productivity and generating high value by streamlining their sales processes.

BigMachines President David Bonnette led the conference with a strong keynote presentation emphasizing the company’s mission to deliver unmatched customer success, with a commitment to becoming more prescriptive, predictable and focused on out-of-the-box products to help bring innovation back to its customers’ businesses. These themes carried throughout the conference presentations, along with sessions showcasing customers’ innovations and successes, demonstrating how they have increased productivity and generated measurable business value through the adoption of BigMachines software and other cloud-based solutions. Featured speaker Kaihan Krippendorff, a blogger for Fast Company who has been featured in Business Week and Harvard Business Review, and author of three business strategy books, inspired attendees on how to out-think the competition. Additional keynote speakers included Peter Gaylord, Director of Product Marketing, salesforce.com Sales Cloud, Justin Shriber, Regional Vice President, Oracle SaaS Applications Group, and Frederic Kerrest, President and Co-Founder, Okta.

BigMachines 12, the latest version of the company’s flagship on-demand software, was also previewed at the conference, delivering an enhanced user experience, easy administration and enterprise agility as key enhancements to the sales automation platform. With more than 40 new enhancements, BigMachines 12 incorporates 75 percent of customers’ input and ideas gathered over the past year, along with new innovations that help customers sell more and sell faster.

Recognizing excellence within the BigMachines customer community, the winners of the third annual Customer Innovation Awards were announced acknowledging the innovative ways these companies utilize the BigMachines’ sales quoting and proposal software. Award winners include: 
  • Terremark as the recipient of the Big Innovation Award for demonstrating innovation in their use of BigMachines within their company;
  • Brocade as the recipient of the Big Success Award for demonstrating a significant ROI from using BigMachines;
  • Sergey Heyphets with Acme Packet, honored with the Biggest Idea Award for contributing the most innovative idea to enhance BigMachines’ product as voted by other BigMachines customers; and
  • Jason Parpart with Schenck AccuRate, honored as Administrator of the Year for his skills and knowledge as well as his exemplary teamwork within his company and with the BigMachines team.
“The continued success of our BigIdeas conferences is a true indicator of the value it delivers to our customers, prospects and partners across the BigMachines community year after year. BigIdeas provides an opportunity for collaboration among attendees and the BigMachines team, and for uncovering valuable insights that can be brought back to their companies to drive more revenue and increase growth,” said David Bonnette. “It’s a tremendous event to experience and we look forward to helping our customers deliver value based on what was shared and learned at BigIdeas and through the BigMachines 12 enhancements that will drive future success and innovation.”


For the latest BigMachines news, visit http://www.bigmachines.com/press_releases.php.

BigMachines, a Maker of Cloud-based Sales Software, Sees Big Things Ahead

Monday, October 31, 2011 by Debbie Maher
Crain's Chicago Business recently published a Q & A session between BigMachines President David Bonnette and Crain’s reporter Steve Hendershot. In the article "Silicon City: BigMachines, a Maker of Cloud-based Sales Software, Sees Big Things Ahead", David highlights the tremendous growth that BigMachines has seen over the last year and plans for the company’s future expansion.

Excerpt from “Silicon City: BigMachines, a Maker of Cloud-based Sales Software, Sees Big Things Ahead:


Crain's: What's your formula for breaking out?

DB: Survival in software comes down to two things, scale and standards. That's how this industry is made up. Those companies that scale well, like an Oracle, get to establish standards. That puts a lot of pressure on companies that don't have the scale to set standards and can't make the investments to create standardized products.
 
BigMachines grew nearly 100% in the first half of this year — we're extraordinarily healthy. So we could just keep doing what we've been doing. Or we could go try to break out. And that's what we're doing. We're making that investment into our products and our processes so that we're scale- and growth-ready. We've made all our processes, from how we address clients to how we support and retain them, scalable and repeatable. So now, when we take on a lot of really big clients, we're ready for that, and we're ready in a way that's repeatable, not just a one-off for one particular big client.



To read the entire article, visit the Crain’s Chicago Business Website.