Configurator Software

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

• 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.

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.

Customer Innovation Awards will be presented for the following categories:

• Big Innovation Award is presented to the BigMachines customer that demonstrates the most innovative use of BigMachines within their company.
• Big Success Award is given to the company that demonstrates a significant return on investment (ROI) from using the BigMachines Selling Platform or demonstrates how BigMachines enabled them to eliminate costly tools and processes in their company.
• Biggest Idea Award recognizes the customer that contributes the most innovative idea to enhance the BigMachines' platform. Ideas are submitted online through the My BigIdea innovation portal on the BigMachines Customer Support Center.

For more information on the Customer Innovation Awards, or to submit a nomination, visit http://www.bigmachines.com/bigideas/big-awards.php

"The Customer Innovation Awards program recognizes excellence within our customer community," said Will Wiegler, Vice President of Marketing at BigMachines. "At BigMachines, we not only deliver innovative software to enable our customers to sell more and sell faster, but we also deliver customer success. At BigIdeas, we take the opportunity to highlight truly inspiring examples of innovation and accomplishment among our customers. The conference offers attendees to hear from many BigMachines customers in a variety of industries, to learn from their achievements, and leave with best practices that they can incorporate into their own business processes."

For more information and to read the full release, visit: http://www.bigmachines.com/third-annual-customer-innovation-awards.php

If you sell directly to other businesses or consumers, you already know how important speed, accuracy and presentation are to close deals.

BigMachines offers a variety of solutions to add speed and accuracy to the quoting and proposal, and order process. Here's how a BigMachines Customer utilizes product configuration, quoting and proposals to sell more and sell faster.

Configure products and services in minutes instead of days using BigMachines Guided Selling, which organizes product specifications as a series of question menus to guide users through the configuration process.

Send custom, validated, configurations on for review and approval via automated workflows. Sales Management, Product Engineers or Finance teams can approve sales quotes on the go via email and eliminate bottlenecks.

Once approved, use BigMachines Document Engine to send a dynamic, personalized sales quote, proposal or contract to customers. Easily add product datasheets, custom terms and conditions, customer logos and more via print, email, or fax in MS Word, Adobe PDF, and/or HTML format.

Need your document signed? BigMachines supports integration of leading electronic signature vendors to provide convenience and fast turnaround for your customers.

When you're ready to submit, use BigMachines to eliminate manual order entry and send approved quotes automatically to back end accounting or ERP systems; orders can even be routed through another approval process as needed with the electronic workflow.

Finally, take advantage of BigMachines Reporting and Analytics to stay on top of the pipeline by generating reports to help you improve quote management, forecasting, and product management.

Now what? Let BigMachines help streamline the renewal process for your existing customers. Quickly and accurately repackage or extend agreements for service and support, software licenses, subscription annuities and more.

In the field and on the go? Generate quotes even when you're offline from the Internet using BigMachines Unplugged. Offline users can configure, price, and generate quotes as well as go online to upload and download quotes to and from a central database.

Ready to extend your reach? BigMachines eCommerce Engine allows you to build a self-service, guided selling and configuration platform for your B2B and B2C customers to shop online.

During the second quarter of 2011, BigMachines also released the newest version of its award-winning SaaS software, BigMachines 11.1, enabling sales teams, channel partners and resellers to easily configure products, generate quotes and proposals, manage complex pricing, generate legal contracts, submit and manage orders more efficiently and securely. With BigMachines 11.1, customers enjoyed real-time upgrades, ensuring that they quickly received the benefits of the new release including a faster, more dynamic user experience, increased flexibility in creating sales documents using the BigMachines Document Engine, and many more enhancements. BigMachines also continued to drive innovation through the accelerated adoption of its My BigIdea web portal, where customers submit and discuss product enhancements and interact directly with the BigMachines product team.

Will Wiegler, Vice President of Marketing at BigMachines shared with me that, "A large contributor to our growth as a business has been our dedication to customer success. In 2011 we have held a series of five Customer Success Forums around the United States, engaging more than 150 customers to share best practices, learn and provide feedback on our product roadmap. As we continue to grow BigMachines, our customers remain the core of our business."

In addition, BigMachines is preparing for its biggest event ever, the BigIdeas Customer Success & Cloud Innovation Conference, taking place in Chicago on October 23-25, 2011. I look forward to meeting more than 500 BigMachines customers, partners, and industry experts during the conference, who will come together to learn about and collaborate on the big ideas that will streamline their sales processes, reduce costs and increase revenues. 

BigMachines today announced that our corporate leadership team is expanding to further support our continued rapid growth. Godard Abel, the company's co-founder and CEO, is moving to the role of senior advisor to the company's Board of Directors, and in conjunction with this move will transition his day-to-day responsibilities to David Bonnette in his capacity as President. The company is also appointing Sean Fallon in the dual role of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Fallon most recently served as CEO of Accero, a leading on-demand human capital management software and solutions provider. With BigMachines' bookings growing at over 100 percent year over year, this expansion rounds out the company's leadership to form a seasoned team with deep experience in managing rapidly growing, global software businesses. You can read our full press release about this news at www.bigmachines.com/bigmachines-expands-leadership-team.php

David Bonnette, President of BigMachines, spent 15 years at Oracle Corporation prior to assuming all customer-facing functions at BigMachines. Bonnette will now assume day-to-day leadership of the entire business. I had the pleasure of speaking with David about the news, here's what he had to say, "My time with BigMachines has further expanded my view of the incredible opportunity that we have to continue to accelerate our growth trajectory. I look forward to working with our deep and experienced team to extend our leading position within the market."

Sean Fallon represents the most recent addition to the BigMachines leadership team. Fallon is a seasoned software executive who has spent the last 12 years of his career in senior leadership positions with enterprise software providers that serve Global 2000 customers. He has held executive positions with Trilogy Software, Brazos Software and Accero. Prior to his role as CEO at Accero, Fallon spent 10 years at Trilogy, a leading provider of enterprise software and technology-based business services, the last six of which were in the role of CFO. Sean oversaw rapid profitable growth of Trilogy's Versata software business while managing Trilogy's global financial operations, making numerous international acquisitions and investments, raising a significant amount of debt capital and completing a tender offer for a publicly-held subsidiary. Fallon started his career in Corporate Finance at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. As COO and CFO, Fallon will lead the Company's finance group and oversee its economic strategy and forecasting and work closely with Bonnette to manage the company's operations.

Godard Abel, having grown the company from a Silicon Valley start-up in 2000 to its current market leadership position, will move to the role of a senior advisor to the Board of Directors. Godard shared these thoughts with me about the news, "I am very proud of the company that BigMachines has become and am grateful to have had the privilege of working side by side with many extremely bright and talented people along the way. David Bonnette has already proven a strong addition to our world-class team, and together we have delivered a record first half performance for the company. Sean Fallon represents another high-caliber executive who we are excited to add, and who will help ensure that we continue to provide the best experience to our current and future customers. The company has an amazing opportunity ahead of it, as demonstrated by its continuing rapid growth, and I look forward to staying involved in the business as an investor and Board advisor."

Finally, Alan Cline, a Principal with Vista Equity Partners and a member of the Board of Directors for BigMachines shared his thoughts about the news, "We are very excited about the growth and evolution of BigMachines over the past decade. Godard's contribution has been outstanding and his continued involvement as an advisor to the Board will be valued by all. The company is having another fantastic year, with record growth and continued success on all fronts. David Bonnette and Sean Fallon represent tremendous additions to the senior leadership team and our ability to attract this caliber of talent is a real testament to the opportunity ahead of BigMachines for years to come."

As the global leader in enabling B2B sales, BigMachines will continue to help companies sell more and sell faster. I look forward to sharing more news with you about BigMachines' award-winning on-demand configurator, pricing and quoting, proposal generator, and B2B eCommerce software solutions, which empower sales across customers' channels by streamlining their sales processes from opportunity to order. I invite you to stay informed by subscribing to our newsletter or RSS-feed for our blog, following us on Twitter or Facebook, and visiting our website regularly for all press announcements and media coverage.