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New Multi-site Functionality in Version 8

November 8th, 2012 by Hazel Lychak

The new SalesDoc Architect version 8 is a major software release that was released on November 13th and delivers unprecedented functionality for generating multi-site proposals and other sales documents. Users are able to auto-generate multiple quote files from manufacturer/vendor imports, summarize data across multiple sites and create customized tables and schedule templates to generate stand-out multi-site solution proposals and other sales documents. The increased automation significantly cuts the time it takes to generate multi-site proposals, and the increased automation ensures more accuracy. The wow factor is twofold: for SalesDoc Architect users, generating multi-site proposals has never been faster, easier, and more accurate. Second, users can provide prospective clients with a comprehensive proposal, presented in a professional format that summarizes equipment and services for the entire solution by site.

In addition to new multi-site features and automation, Version 8 provides compatibility with the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office, new functionality that streamlines the new user setup and content update processes, and includes new output options and automation.

Find out more! Read the news release and go to our SalesDoc Architect update summary and What’s New in Version 8 web pages for a summary of the changes and enhancements. And check our video archives page (a one-time registration on the website is required) on November 19 to view the recordings from our SalesDoc Architect Version 8 webinars.

Top Benefits of Integrating Tigerpaw CRM with SalesDoc Architect

September 4th, 2012 by Hazel Lychak

If you’re investigating whether or not to complement Tigerpaw with SalesDoc Architect to improve your document generation capabilities – particularly proposals and scopes of work – you want to make sure that the benefits far outweigh the costs of investing in the SalesDoc Architect solution. Are there compelling benefits that will impact the bottom line, you ask? Is it worth my company’s time and attention? The answer is YES.

Take a look at the significant benefits gained by several CorsPro clients who chose to pair SalesDoc Architect with their Tigerpaw CRM system for a TOTAL Solution to generate better proposals, scopes of work and other sales AND create sales-to-service delivery workflow efficiencies, ultimately translating into higher sales and lower costs.

Benefit #1: You Can Save Time and Provide a Faster Customer Response

Integration between CRM and quote/proposal generation through SalesDoc Architect means that users can start a quote in Tigerpaw and then merge the customer information directly into SalesDoc Architect without re-keying any data. This functionality equates to BIG time savings for our mutual clients:

Site Services, Inc. (SSI): “Being able to start a quote in Tigerpaw and then merge the customer information directly into SalesDoc Architect is amazing — it saves us so much time…. Our process is more efficient, so we’re able to create more proposals, and get them to customers more quickly as well.”

VoIPMyBiz.com: “SalesDoc Architect encourages our sales reps to enter their leads into Tigerpaw because once they do that first step, they can simply pull the information into SalesDoc Architect to begin a quote Read the rest of this entry »

Webinar: Using SDA Within Your Sales Qualification and Discovery Process

August 24th, 2012 by Hazel Lychak

On August 30, CorsPro hosted a webinar on how to incorporate your sales qualification and discovery process into SalesDoc Architect. During the webinar, we showed how you can use SDA to collect qualification and discovery information that drives solutions, enables you to reflect that information back to the prospect for discussion and approval, and allows you to create compelling proposals and scopes of work that fit the prospect like a glove. We also demonstrated how some of SDA’s newest features – including dynamic tables and bulleted lists – can be used in your qualification and discovery process. You can VIEW A RECORDING of this webinar by going to our video archives.

Quoting a VIPedge Solution Using SalesDoc Architect

August 1st, 2012 by Amy Thomas

On July 10, 2012, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. announced the release of VIPedge, a cloud-based business telephone solution that gives users the same features, functionality, quality, service and reliability of other Toshiba’s telephone systems, but all in the cloud! With the release of this new solution from Toshiba, we at CorsPro went to work to make sure that our Toshiba dealer clients are able to easily quote these solutions with SalesDoc Architect.

Dealers can use SalesDoc Architect now to propose VIPedge solutions in order to deliver a robust and content-rich proposal that highlights all the benefits of VIPedge! You can also use SDA to create proposals for the traditional (non-Cloud) solutions and the new Cloud-based solutions so that prospects can compare the two options.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dynamic Bulleted Lists Added to SalesDoc Architect

July 30th, 2012 by Brian Cors

A bulleted list is a great way to communicate information in a concise, compelling and visually attractive way. Bulleted lists can be used to capture and communicate all kinds of information, including…

Key customer objectives and requirements
A high-level definition of the proposed solution
Site survey findings
Implementation steps
Scope of work elements (i.e., what’s included and not included in a solution)

SalesDoc Architect has incorporated bulleted lists for quite some time, but it has been a bit cumbersome to set up. In the past, administrators had to set up a variable for each and every bullet point, and set up each variable to insert a line return after every bullet.

The new dynamic bulleted list functionality makes it much easier to incorporate bulleted lists that include only the bullets in a particular list that you want to include. For example, if you have a list of 25 possible key customer objectives and requirements and a SalesDoc Architect user selects 10 of those items for a particular proposal, then only those items will be inserted into the bulleted list that appears in the Microsoft Word proposal output.

In SalesDoc Architect, bulleted lists that are pushed into Microsoft Word originate as a column of cells within an Excel-based SalesDoc Architect quote file. A big advantage of this approach is that bullet content can be calculated using Microsoft Excel formulas. For example, we might set up an Excel table where the SDA user can type in the quantity of certain elements that are being provided as part of a proposed solution, and the quantity is inserted within the text of the bullet content. Here’s how it might look in Excel with some of the quantities typed in by the user…

SalesDoc Architect can even auto-calculate the quantities based on what it detects has been configured within the quote using what are called Item Categories, which can count, for example, the total number of phone sets in a configured solution (for an explanation of how Item Categories can be used, please see the Architect Manager help files or user guide).

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Dynamic Tables Added to SalesDoc Architect

July 30th, 2012 by Brian Cors

For quite some time, SalesDoc Architect has been able to push ranges of cells (i.e., tables) from Excel into Microsoft Word-based outputs like proposals and statements of work. Our clients have used tables pulled from a range of cells in the Excel quote file to communicate return on investment (ROI) calculations, site locations, leasing options, managed services offerings and other information in a visually attractive way, enabling them to communicate proposed solutions more effectively and win more deals versus the competition.

What’s new this month is the ability to push “dynamic” tables that are based on ranges of cells from SDA’s Excel-based quote files into Word-based outputs. In contrast to “fixed” tables that clients have been able to generate in the past, “dynamic” tables enable you to include only the rows that you want to include within a table that is pushed to Word. Depending on how you set up the rows in Excel, SDA will exclude certain rows in the table that is output to Word.

For example, let’s say your company has a process that involves 10 possible implementation steps, but all of the steps don’t apply to every project. In the SDA quote Excel file, you might set up a range of cells that looks like this…

Read the rest of this entry »

CorsPro is Booth #504 at the 2012 Mitel BPC on June 19-20

June 6th, 2012 by Hazel Lychak

For the second straight year, CorsPro will be exhibiting at the Mitel Business Partner Conference on June 19-20 in San Diego. We’re booth #504, and we hope you’ll stop by so that we can show you what’s new with SalesDoc Architect and how easily you can configure, quote and propose Mitel-based solutions that include all required elements, such as services, associated peripheral products and support plans for your turnkey solutions.

Did you know? Mitel has approved the use of MDF funds at a 50% rate to help resellers pay for SalesDoc Architect, making it even easier and more affordable for you to generate Mitel-based solution proposals and win more Mitel business!

As a prelude to the conference, Read the rest of this entry »

Creating Excel Forms and Reports

May 1st, 2012 by Brian Cors

SalesDoc Architect makes it easy to add Excel-based forms, reports and other outputs that pull information from SDA quote files. The outputs are created using Excel, which means that you can take advantage of all the features and functions within Excel – including formulas, formatting and graphics – to quickly create attractive and useful outputs.

Creating an Excel-based form, report or other output is a three-step process: Read the rest of this entry »

The Evolving Use of MDF Funds

April 4th, 2012 by Amy Thomas

Many vendor partners (resellers) have available MDF or Coop funds through their vendors. In fact these funds are typically ranked as one of the most popular for vendors, but are they as popular among the resellers?

In the past, these funds have primarily been used for training and traditional marketing activities for partners, with the “approved” use of the funds being somewhat limited. In addition, partners are not often aware of the MDF programs the vendors offer or what funds they have available for use. This has resulted in funds going unused or programs being unsuccessful.

According to a recent blog posting by Channel Champion, the 5 most effective reimbursable activities from MDF have been training, demo equipment, events, trade shows and incentive programs. If an MDF program is carried out effectively, these funded activities have proven to be successful in the past. They key factor for continued success however is flexibility – being open to new uses of the funds for activities that have proven to add value to vendor partners.

Read the rest of this entry »

Incorporate Customer-Specific Pricing into Quotes

March 22nd, 2012 by Brian Cors

Do you have customers with whom you’ve signed long-term contracts to provide specific products and services at agreed-to pricing?

SalesDoc Architect makes it easy to incorporate customer-specific pricing into quotes for situations where the seller is contractually obligated to provide specific items at agreed-to pricing. You can also incorporate customer-specific costing, such as when a manufacturer provides lower costing to the reseller to support the lower pricing that the reseller provides to a specific end customer.

An SDA user can incorporate customer-specific pricing and costing into a specific quote by connecting to an external price list in a properly formatted Excel file. The SDA user simply browses for the file by clicking the Architect button, then “Connect to external price list”.

The Excel file containing the price/cost list must be placed in the user’s Data folder (usually c:\CorsPro\PQuote\Data) and must contain the following named Excel ranges*:

PriceListName: this is the name of the price list that is referenced on SDA’s Pricing tab.
VersionDate: the last update date of the price list that is referenced on SDA’s Pricing tab.
PartNumber: this named range should be a single cell range in the part number column, one row above the first part number.
UnitSell: this OPTIONAL named range should be a single cell range in the unit sell column, one row above the unit sell price for the first part number.
UnitCost: this OPTIONAL named range should be a single cell range in the unit cost column, one row above the unit cost for the first part number.

As mentioned above, UnitSell and UnitCost are each optional. Usually, only UnitSell is used in the external price list file. However, in cases where the manufacturer provides customer-specific costing to the reseller, UnitCost can also be used.

Below is a sample of how the external price list file might look…

For situations where the customer-specific pricing must be referenced by multiple SDA users, Architect managers/administrators can push out customer-specific price lists to all users via the normal SDA updates process by placing the external price list Excel file in the SDA server’s Data folder.

* For further information on named Excel ranges, see Excel’s help topic “About labels and names in formulas”

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