Guided Selling

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.

• 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

• 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.

BigMachines interactive training classes are designed to teach administrators and users the fundamentals of setting up, customizing and maintaining their BigMachines software solution. Yellow Belt certification classes provide the building blocks for implementing and administering BigMachines, and are a prerequisite for more advanced classes that lead to Blue Belt certification.

“Our customers and partners can feel confident that a BigMachines certified administrator will have the skills required to expertly implement and maintain their BigMachines platform,” stated Tim Handorf, Vice President of Product Management, BigMachines. “Our new training programs ensure that all BigMachines certified administrators achieve the same expertise, whether they take classes in person or online.”

BigMachines customers and partners can choose to take certification classes in the way that best fit their schedules, learning styles and budgets.  Classes are offered at BigMachines’ training centers in the United States and Europe, can be given at a customer’s office or can be taken via the new online learning platform. The new online option allows each customer to learn at his or her own pace, save on travel costs and still receive the same high level of administration training that an in-person class offers.

“Our company makes extensive use of Configuration, Commerce, and the Document Engine for guiding our users to a complete quote,” said Jason Parpart, Systems Administrator, Schenck AccuRate.  “As our company’s BigMachines administrator, comprehensive training in all aspects of BigMachines administration was a must.  After taking the Yellow Belt training, I felt confident in my ability to tweak and maintain our site as it went live.  After completing Blue Belt training, I now feel like I have a vast new set of tools at my disposal to make just about anything possible.  The training team has done an excellent job of putting together a rigorous but well-paced curriculum and they teach it well.  Training up to at least the Yellow Belt level should almost be a requirement for any BigMachines administrator.”

To learn more about BigMachines training or to register for a class, visit www.bigmachines.com/training.  Additional training opportunities are also available at BigIdeas Chicago, October 23 – 25, 2011.  BigIdeas Chicago is one of the largest cloud conferences targeted for B2B sales professionals and offers new insights to help them optimize their sales processes to sell more and sell faster. To learn more, visit www.bigmachines.com/bigideas.

• Fast, dynamic user experience utilizing new AJAX configuration rules enables  dynamic updates without the need to refresh web pages.
• Intuitive drag and drop interface allows for easy reordering of product and part line items during commerce process.
• Streamlined Document Engine administration provides enhanced flexibility in designing document layouts for proposals, contracts and other sales documents.
• New workflow approval delegation options allow approvers to easily delegate  approval authority.
• Simplified document migration for faster deployment and upgrades.
• Expanded access to pricebook data in configuration rules.

PLATO Learning is a leading provider of education technology solutions, offering innovative online courses for kindergarten through adult learners that include reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, and life and job skills. They have more than 50 years of experience in the educational technology market.

PLATO chose to self-implement the BigMachines Selling Platform, replacing their existing quoting and pricing tool. Prior to implementation, members of the PLATO team attended BigMachines Administrator Training, where they learned how to set up and maintain their BigMachines software platform. With guidance from the BigMachines Professional Services team, they were able to implement their new web-based selling solution in under three months.

BigMachines now supports product selection, improved sales proposals and a tiered pricing structure. BigMachines is integrated with PLATO's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system from salesforce.com. BigMachines also automates PLATO's sales tax calculations. In addition, BigMachines is used to automate discount approvals, ensuring pricing controls and accuracy.

"BigMachines has taken our quoting process to a new level and the integration with our CRM and tax software helps this business process run more efficiently," said Mitch Wacker, director of finance operations for PLATO Learning. "By self-implementing, we have enabled our internal team to continuously improve and add features beyond our phase one deployment. The professional training and support we received from the BigMachines team has been great throughout the entire process. In the end, the greatest benefit will be the ability for our sales professionals to deliver higher quality, tailored proposals that will meet or exceed our customers' expectations for contracting requirements and turnaround times."

"We congratulate PLATO on a successful self-implementation of BigMachines," said Shane Anastasi, Senior Vice President, Services and Support, BigMachines. "We have developed our implementation processes using best practices from hundreds of successful BigMachines customers. This streamlined methodology enables customers like PLATO to manage their own self-led implementation. PLATO's success is validation of our methodology, and we look forward to helping more customers sell more and sell faster using BigMachines."