Do you ever have too many things that you want to do all at the same time? Copper State Communications, one of our newer clients, recently faced that challenge when they were trying to determine what to do next with regard to further customizing SalesDoc Architect. First, they brainstormed to put together a list of what they wanted to do. Next, they prioritized that list by using a technique called Matched Pairs for Prioritization. The exercise works like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Getting Your Priorities in Order Using the Matched Pairs Technique
November 12th, 2010 by Brian CorsUsing Excel to Identify Duplicate Data
September 28th, 2010 by Brian CorsOne of the features that SalesDoc Architect (our sales document automation software) offers is the ability to easily import data such as product information. When importing product data, however, we require that only one version of each part number exists in the import file. We do this to protect against situations where the part number exists more than once but the associated data differs for each instance of the part number.
When importing a file with duplicate part numbers into SalesDoc Architect, the import process will be halted and an error message will pop up indicating that duplicate part numbers exist. I’m often asked how best to identify and delete the duplicate part rows with Microsoft Excel. Using Excel’s sorting function and IF formula, it’s easy to do, and it’s a three-step process… Read the rest of this entry »
Import Tigerpaw Quotes into SalesDoc Architect
September 21st, 2010 by Brian CorsAs mentioned in an earlier post, we’ve added a third integration between SalesDoc Architect and Tigerpaw. In addition to being able to push contact information from Tigerpaw to SDA and quote information from SDA to Tigerpaw (described in another earlier post), you can now import parts/pricing from a Tigerpaw quote into SalesDoc Architect. All three integrations are available at no additional charge to our clients.
Most of the parts that users will need to quote should be resident in the SDA database or can be imported from a vendor configuration tool such as Mitel’s Sales Workbench or ShoreTel’s QMS configuration tool. In some cases, however, those parts might not exist in either source. The new integration enables SalesDoc Architect clients to use Tigerpaw’s database, which maintains the list of all parts ever sold or quoted by the Tigerpaw software, as another source for parts and pricing information. Read the rest of this entry »
Workflow Elements Added to SalesDoc Architect
September 17th, 2010 by Brian CorsNew this month to SalesDoc Architect is a feature that enables clients to apply rules with regard to the way that they do business. Prior to this new feature, users could create any output (proposals, statements of work, contracts, etc.) even if information was missing or invalid. Now, with the brand-new “OutputStatus” feature, administrators can create rules using Excel formulas to prevent users from being able to generate outputs if information is missing or invalid or certain conditions aren’t met. For example, you can prevent outputs from being generated when…
- A customer name hasn’t been entered
- The job margin is insufficient
- Required inputs have not been selected
- Equipment or services have been misconfigured
The beauty of all this is that you can use Excel formulas to create these rules; you don’t have to be a programmer to implement them. How does it work? Simply create a named range on any tab that is called “OutputStatus”. Next, insert an Excel IF formula into that range that tests for one or more conditions and, if those conditions aren’t met, the error message that you’d like to display to the user when the output is prevented from being generated. When the user tries to generate an output, SalesDoc Architect will sweep through all of the tabs in a quote looking for non-blank OutputStatus named ranges and, when it finds one, will prevent the output from being generated and display the specified error message.
CorsPro and Tigerpaw Team Up Again
September 13th, 2010 by Brian CorsWe’re excited about the upcoming Tigerpaw User Conference that’s taking place October 6-8 in Dallas. We’ll be exhibiting at the show, and I hope that readers who attend will take a few minutes to drop by the booth to say hello.
For those who don’t know, Tigerpaw makes CRM/ERP software that helps technology resellers to increase sales, provide better service, produce bids, order and track materials, manage projects, and bill faster. Our software, SalesDoc Architect, enables companies to auto-configure complex solutions and generate descriptive proposals, scopes of work and other sales documents. Both solutions complement each other well.
Last week, we distributed a news release talking about our relationship. We share numerous mutual clients, and both companies specialize in working with resellers of complex technology solutions.
Our products are also integrated with each other. For the past year or so, users have been able to push contact information from Tigerpaw into SalesDoc Architect and, once the customer has signed off on a proposal, push quote information back into Tigerpaw. In this month’s SDA release, users will be able to export part/pricing information from quotes they’ve done in Tigerpaw and import that information into SDA. Read the rest of this entry »
GreatAmerica Dealer Council Meeting
September 9th, 2010 by Brian CorsIn early August, I was privileged to be invited to GreatAmerica’s annual Dealer Council Meeting. The focus of the meeting was to provide a forum for dealers to share best practices with each other, and to invite dealers and other companies to present best practices on a particular topic. I was invited to talk about best practices with regard to our specialty, proposals and sales documents.
What struck me most about the visit to GreatAmerica’s headquarters was the company culture that I experienced. GreatAmerica is very much organized around customer-focused teams. Instead of co-locating employees by function, different functions were interspersed within teams that were co-located by customer geography. The other aspect of the culture that struck me was GreatAmerica’s willingness to “go the extra” mile for their customers, dealers and partners and to design programs and develop solutions that are not “one size fits all.” The result of this approach is that GreatAmerica offers truly unique solutions that help their customers, dealers and partners to stand out in a very competitive marketplace. Read the rest of this entry »
Avaya, NEC, Toshiba Proposal Content Added to SalesDoc Architect
January 12th, 2010 by Brian CorsWe’ve just made it even easier for clients to implement and maintain the SalesDoc Architect document library by making proposal content for Avaya, NEC and Toshiba solutions available to our clients (see our news release). Rather than having clients manually add that proposal content to their document library – document section by document section – we are able to provide that content to them en masse, and maintain it for them on an ongoing basis.
The question that we’re asked most frequently by prospective clients is: how long does it take to implement SalesDoc Architect? My answer is: not very long, especially if you’re willing to start out with a good but less-than-perfect solution. It’s still a big improvement over what’s been done in the past, and the initial solution can be perfected and improved over time. Unlike other enterprise software solutions that require a huge project to “get everything right” for the initial implementation, with SalesDoc Architect you can start small and grow from there.
Coordinating Calendars with AirSet
December 8th, 2009 by Brian CorsAwhile back, I posted an article about AirSet, the free online calendar-sharing service. My wife and I have been using that service for a few years now and, with our busy lives (including a teenager and a pre-teen), I don’t know how we’d survive without it.
After having tried unsuccessfully to manage shared calendars for CorsPro within our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, we’ve recently switched to managing our calendars using AirSet. After just a few days, I’m here to tell you that it works great, and it provides an ideal blending of managing BOTH your personal calendar and your work calendar without feeling like you’re giving up the privacy of your personal life for all of your business associates to see.
Figure 1
The key to managing calendars in AirSet is the concept of being able to view multiple calendars and sub-calendars all at once, and to tag others as participants in events so that the events appear in their calendars. For example, my personal calendar for November 19th looked like Figure 1. The event descriptions are a bit cut off so that they can fit neatly into the calendar day’s square, but you can easily see the full details of each event simply by floating your mouse over the event.
Unlimited DocTypes Increase Document Automation Capabilities
November 16th, 2009 by Brian CorsLast month, with the renaming of our document automation software from PriceQuote to SalesDoc Architect (SDA), one of the great features that we added was the ability to create an unlimited number of document types (or “DocTypes”) that you can use to categorize document sections in the document library. When document outputs are generated, SDA uses the DocType you’ve selected for the particular output to filter the document sections that are included in the final output Word document.
Let’s say you want to generate a proposal. By choosing to output only doc sections with DocType = “Proposal”, SDA will filter the output to include only those doc sections in the final output document. This makes it very easy to create new types of outputs simply by creating a new DocType, then tagging the doc sections you want to include in the new output with the new DocType.
Unlimited DocTypes become even more helpful when they are used in combination with other means of configuring the document sections that will appear on the outputs. For example, let’s assume that you have associated part numbers with doc sections in the SalesDoc Architect database as follows… Read the rest of this entry »