On Demand Sales

                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 3^rd, 2012
Hosted by Spectra Logic

Bay Area – May 10^th, 2012
Hosted by Brocade

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

• 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.

Oracle OpenWorld is all about exploring technology: how to get more out of what you have, how to prepare for what's coming next, and how to choose from and use an ever-growing collection of choices to develop just the system you need for your business. The new skills, new connections, and new ideas for extending the value of your company's IT investments more than justify the time and expense required for a week of unparalleled learning.

OpenWorld is a great chance to learn how the BigMachines selling platform can help you to streamline sales processes whether you sell direct, through channel resellers, or via eCommerce.  This is also an opportunity to speak to the BigMachines team about our solutions for Oracle users, view demos, meet some of our current customers, or discuss partnering opportunities.

Find BigMachines in the CRM On Demand Pavilion in Moscone West, booth 3837, October 2-6, where we'll demo our award-winning product configuration, pricing, quoting and proposal, and eCommerce solutions. As a member of the Oracle Inner Circle, BigMachines is part of a select group of best-of-breed partners that have demonstrated significant value driven by proven customer success, traction with Oracle's sales organization, and synergy with Oracle CRM On Demand's current and future direction. Learn more and register.

Unable to make the event? Join us for a live product demo on September 22!

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.

"Sell more, and sell it more quickly" is the mantra for many an industry. But if there's one impediment to rapid selling, it's product complexity. Buy a PC online today, for example, and you may have to navigate through 500 core options — some top-level, others stemming from choices you make — not to mention an array of accessories and add-ons.

To tame this product complexity and proliferation for salespeople and customers, and to streamline proposal generation and price quotes for products, many companies work with Innoveer to integrate a "product configurator" with their CRM system. Top candidates for such technology include anyone selling goods that come in various shapes, sizes, bundles, and with "similar but different" names and SKUs — from businesses in the high-technology and manufacturing sectors to over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and even financial services.

To discuss how and when to use a configurator, I spoke with Melanie Gipp, Director of Marketing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at configurator developer (and Innoveer partner) BigMachines.

Which industries typically have the biggest product configuration challenges?

Gipp: Industries in which companies have products that are very complex or have very large product catalogs. We started in the manufacturing industry, but now we have customers in the high-technology, software services, telecommunications and even finance, amongst others.

For example, BigMachines is being used by Kodak to configure the large, commercial printers it sells, as well as the services associated with them. Kodak has integrated BigMachines with its Oracle CRM On Demand software, which enables in-house salespeople to more easily create quotes and close sales.

Other businesses are using BigMachines more for e-commerce purposes. For example, AGCO — a manufacturer of tractors and farm equipment — has opened its systems to distributors. So, dealers that want to buy an AGCO tractor can configure it through the AGCO website and order that system. That’s a relatively new use case for us.

If companies aren't using a configurator such as BigMachines, what are they doing?

Most often, we replace Microsoft Excel and Word. And that's shocking to hear — how these really large corporations have binders with price books that never get updated. Furthermore, every salesperson creates their own proposals, there's no standard corporate design even on them. Plus prices may be wrong, product descriptions inaccurate, and products incorrectly configured.

During a configurator implementation, do you face resistance from salespeople?

Sometimes, but that resistance comes with any new system that you’re implementing. Our goal is to design the BigMachines application for salespeople, and make it — and their life — as efficient as possible. That’s so they can more quickly produce accurate quotes and give better data to sales managers for planning and forecasting. That, of course, gives managers better control of their sales team. All of which can create friction, obviously. But these are the same challenges that a regular CRM implementation would bring, no doubt.

How much time does BigMachines buy salespeople?

BigMachines customer Siemens reports that they were able to reduce the time required to generate a quote by 65%, and at the same time increase quote volume by 25%. Other advantages for the sales person are the ability to more easily create an error-free quote, and the guided selling process, which eases their workload and allows less experienced staff members to create valid quotes.

Likewise, one of our customers that develops financial software, Bottomline Technologies, found that using BigMachines increased sales productivity by 25%. After 18 months, it also led to a two-thirds reduction in the company’s 90-day debt, meaning that the company was more quickly invoicing customers, and thus getting paid. Likewise, it saw an 85% reduction in accrued revenue, which does wonders for cash flow.

Learn More

What's the number-one challenge when implementing product configurators? As with implementing CRM software, it's to ensure that users not only adopt the new software, but embrace it. Accordingly, when implementing a configurator, balance management requirements (price enforcement, standardized reporting) with must-have capabilities for salespeople (faster and easier quotes and sales, easy pricing).

Meanwhile, while product configurators help organizations streamline and automate their product configuration and pricing, many companies also stand to benefit by cleaning house. Namely, they should always clamp down, aggressively, on creating new product names, options, bundles, SKUs and configurations. Master our related, top tips for controlling product proliferation.

• Start with your customer
  • Understand their evaluation and buying journey
  • Map your demand gen efforts, content and sales to their journey and it's phases
  • Identify your ideal customer profiles (ICP) with associated value props, differentiation, succinct messaging and tailored offers
• Develop an overall content strategy
  • Mapped to your ICPs
  • Broken down to the phase of their buyer's journey & key stakeholders
  • Think easily digestible content chunks
• Decide on the automation/tools that you will need to use
  • Integration between the tools is paramount
  • Skills necessary to use the tools
  • Recognize that the tools are useless without the right content and themes
• Develop a 'rolling thunder' series of demand gen campaigns
  • Recognize that there is always some trial and error involved
  • Be 'professionally' provocative
  • Steady stream of outbound campaigns, themes, targets and offers
  • Remove all barriers to execute optimally
• Measure often and report regularly
  • Shared accountability (cross functionally)
  • Service level agreements
  • Reward over achievement
  • Refine based on real time results

1. Provide product datasheets, descriptions and details from within an online product catalog. Your customers want information and no matter the time of day, day of the week, or busy schedule of your field reps, the information your customers and prospects need to make the decision to buy can be readily available via eCommerce web sites.
2. Link prospects to multimedia marketing materials. Remember that YouTube video the marketing team created? It's time to give more exposure to a one-time campaign and provide relevant media files from directly within your sales toolkit.
3. Include warranty information where it is most likely to be read. Whether you choose to include warranty information with product descriptions and datasheets, or provide it from within an eCommerce shopping cart, you can ensure your customers are aware of the terms and conditions associated with their purchase.
4. Let happy customers do the selling for you with user reviews and product ratings similar to Amazon.com's thriving review community. Have you ever bought something with less than a 3-star rating? Your prospects don't want to either.
5. Integrate with social networks and promote social sharing and user communities.
6. Enable auto-suggest search for prospects who may not know what they need. This widely adopted tool allows users to start typing a phrase while related product searches are suggested.
7. Empower prospects with Guided Selling. Create survey-like questionnaires for customers to provide requirements, needs, and budget to return best-fit solutions.
8. Provide product comparisons to engage prospects in the evaluation process and allow them to understand the benefits of multiple models or service packages.
9. Include recommended items to increase average order value, and ensure customers never place an order without full knowledge of the parts needed to receive maximum benefits.
10. Automate the renewal process with self-service options for eCommerce users. Besides the traditional shopping cart functionality, eCommerce portals can integrate directly to ERP and CRM systems to enable customers to renew, reorder, and renegotiate contract terms as well as process payments online

BigMachines is the global leader in enabling B2B sales, helping companies sell more and sell faster. Our award-winning on-demand configurator, pricing and quoting, proposal generator, and B2B eCommerce software solutions empower sales across customers’ channels by streamlining their sales processes from opportunity to order.

As a software company, BigMachines recognizes that our assets are our people. High energy, innovative thinkers who care equally about doing great work and developing a culture around our core values:

• Customer Success Equals our Success
• Integrity in Everything We Do
• Teamwork Amplifies our Individual Excellence

So when the Illinois Technology Association reached out to us with a way to help prepare students for success in college and technology-rich career, we said yes!

Chicago Tech Academy was created through joint efforts from the Chicago Mayor’s Office, Department of IT, and the Illinois Technology Association to prepare students to become the next generation of tech leaders and entrepreneurs. Students at Chicago Tech are chosen by lottery, no test scores or financial statements are needed. Instead, students are presented with a rigorous curriculum with double periods of Math and English and lots of interaction with teachers to bring students from all levels up to grade level and then ahead.

In additional to providing a donation, BigMachines team members also donate their time to work with the students. Beginning this month, a formalized mentoring program will help Chicago Tech Academy students connect their classroom lessons to real-world opportunities, career paths and experiences.

Other companies and entrepreneurs can help BigMachines and Chicago Tech Academy to configure a new generation of leaders by:

• Donating funds for the tech opportunities program
• Hosting a field trip to your company
• Hosting a team of students for job shadowing for a day
• Identifying a project that Chicago Tech Academy students can work on, using their skills to solve a real business problem
• Volunteering as a mentor

According to Alan Cline, a Principal with Vista Equity Partners and a member of the Board of Directors for BigMachines, "David brings to BigMachines a strong track record of customer-facing leadership, world-class execution and an innate understanding of the needs of our marketplace. He has demonstrated the ability to be successful through a powerful combination of business and technology expertise, energetic leadership and a proven ability to drive growth."

"I'm excited to be joining BigMachines at this point in the company's growth," said David Bonnette, President of BigMachines. "The company has delivered over 50 percent compound annual growth on the strength of its market leading SaaS selling platform, exceptionally talented employees and strong, blue-chip customer base. I look forward to working with this exceptional team and our customers to further accelerate the growth and success of our business."

A formal press release of the news is available on our website: http://www.bigmachines.com/bigmachines-appoints-industry-veteran-as-president.php