One of the misconceptions about SalesDoc Architect is that it takes hours and hours to implement it to the point of actually being able to use the software to configure solutions and generate proposals, statements of work and other output documents.  A few months ago, a newer client (while they were still considering SalesDoc Architect) asked us: “Won’t it take hundreds of hours to implement what you’re showing me today?”

We’re happy to report that it took a small fraction of that time to get the client up and running.  Typically, it takes 5-15 hours to get a new client to the point where they can productively generate differentiated proposals and statements of work and immediately start saving time because of automation.  For most of our projects, SalesDoc Architect saves the time expended on initially setting it up within the first month of use.

The thing that scares people most about proceeding ahead with new enterprise-wide software – even more than the cost of the software itself – is the time and associated disruption to implement it.  That’s why over the past several years we have continuously introduced new features and functions that make it easier and easier to set up and maintain SalesDoc Architect.

First, we make it easy to “start small” (and quickly), then grow your level of automation and functionality over time.  Relative to other software solutions where you have to fully map out the work flows to make sure that you are fundamentally implementing the solution the right way, with SalesDoc Architect you can start by automating solution configuration and proposal generation, then overlay other processes, outputs and features over time.

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We’ve added several new user types and deployment options to SalesDoc Architect release 5.0, making SalesDoc Architect  more flexible, easy to use and easy to update than ever before.  Now you have several user type options to choose from…

• Stand-alone users who are always disconnected from the network.
• Stand-alone users who have occasional network access to a shared drive so that SalesDoc Architect can check for data and application updates.
• Network users who are always connected to a shared drive on the LAN and access data from that shared drive.
• Combo users who are sometimes connected to a shared drive on the LAN and sometimes need to be able to work “offline” (disconnected) from the shared drive.

You can change your user type by clicking the SalesDoc Architect button, then Setup, then “Network setup”.

Stand-alone users are not connected to a shared network drive.  For these users, SalesDoc Architect data and application updates are manually emailed to these users, who then double-click on the update files to install the updates.

Stand-alone users who have occasional network access to a shared drive gain the benefit of automatically being informed of SalesDoc Architect data and application updates.  On occasion, SalesDoc Architect will attempt to access the shared drive and determine if updates are available.  If they are, the user will be prompted to download and install them.

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SalesDoc Architect is now compatible with Office 2007 and Microsoft’s Vista operating system.

SalesDoc Architect end users with Office 2007 will see only one variation from previous versions of Office: the SalesDoc Architect toolbar must be accessed by clicking the “Add-Ins” tab within Excel.  Other than that, SalesDoc Architect works exactly the same.

For SalesDoc Architect Managers, we’ve made the conscious decision to save all Word documents within SalesDoc Architect’s document library in the legacy Word “doc” format rather than in the new “docx” format that Microsoft has just released.  We can’t see any features or functionality lost by sticking with the “doc” format, and our clients gain the advantage of not having to deal with compatibility issues between users who have different versions of Microsoft Office.

As far as Vista is concerned, we recommend installing SalesDoc Architect into a folder different than “Program Files” (we’d suggest you install it to a top-level “CorsPro” folder by simply deleting the “Program Files” part of the folder path during the setup process).  The user installing SalesDoc Architect should have full admin rights to the machine, or at least full admin rights to the installation folder.