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Scope of Work Content Now Available

December 16th, 2011 by Hazel Lychak

We’ve added Scope of Work content to SalesDoc Architect so that you can significantly reduce margin erosion and set customer expectations by enabling you to provide a detailed Scope of Work document to prospective customers as part of your sales process.

SalesDoc Architect’s Scope of Work (SOW) content lays out the key responsibilities for both you (the seller) and your prospective client in order to ensure a successful sale and profitable implementation. In addition to outlining each party’s commitments, the SOW establishes a project plan, cut-over dates, financing arrangements and a detailed list of equipment and services to be provided. The SOW content is also easily customizable to your company’s specific business practices and sales/implementation workflows.

Resellers who have been using SalesDoc Architect to create SOWs tell us that prospective clients appreciate the professionalism of the scope of work document and level of detail provided to them, building a positive provider-client relationship from the start and setting a solid foundation for future business.

Existing SalesDoc Architect clients received the SOW content automatically when they downloaded and installed the December 2011 software update for SalesDoc Architect.

Getting Your Priorities in Order Using the Matched Pairs Technique

November 12th, 2010 by Brian Cors

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 »

Using Excel to Identify Duplicate Data

September 28th, 2010 by Brian Cors

One 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 Cors

As 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 Cors

New 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 Cors

We’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 »

Avaya, NEC, Toshiba Proposal Content Added to SalesDoc Architect

January 12th, 2010 by Brian Cors

We’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.

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Unlimited DocTypes Increase Document Automation Capabilities

November 16th, 2009 by Brian Cors

Last 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 »

PriceQuote Renamed as SalesDoc Architect

October 20th, 2009 by Brian Cors

We have important news! We are proud to announce the renaming of our flagship product (PriceQuote) to SalesDoc Architect! We’ve also re-launched our website to enhance its value and usability for our clients and prospects.

Why the new name? Over the last several years, PriceQuote has evolved based on client feedback to become more than what PriceQuote had initially provided, which was a pricing and quotation solution. Today, our solution goes above and beyond that by enabling businesses to easily create winning sales proposals, statements of work and other sales documents with just a few mouse clicks, as well as to automatically configure and price complex solutions.

Why SalesDoc Architect? We believe this name better reflects the value that our software solution provides to our clients as sales document automation software. Pricing capabilities – although still important – are just a small part of the overall solution, so the name “PriceQuote” was just too limiting. More importantly, our software helps users to automatically configure complex solutions and build sales documents like proposals and statements of work.

Like an architect, our software enables our clients to put the blueprint in place so that they can generate professional, deal-winning sales documents (like proposals) that are each fully customized for their company, specifically-proposed solution and particular prospect. Unlike an architect, however, SalesDoc Architect configures the solution and builds the outputs within seconds!

Why the new website? In addition to the new product name, we have also re-launched our website at www.corspro.com to provide more value and create more community with our clients, prospects and colleagues. On our new website you can read more about SalesDoc Architect, view a video about the solution, check out what our clients are saying about us, and read several case studies that demonstrate how SalesDoc Architect can positively impact a company’s bottom line.

Please note that, to minimize confusion with new visitors, we’ve updated the old materials on our website to mention “SalesDoc Architect” rather than PriceQuote.

Please feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more about SalesDoc Architect or have any questions. And please, let us know how we can make SalesDoc Architect and our new website even more useful to you.

Creating Opportunity in an Economic Downturn

September 12th, 2009 by Brian Cors

Relative to a year ago, business is slower for our clients, as many of their prospects are delaying purchase decisions or eliminating projects altogether due to the economic downturn.

Despite the downturn, however, many of our clients are not just surviving this downturn, they are taking advantage of the situation to advance their businesses ahead of the competition. They’ve continued to invest in sales, marketing and automation so that they can help their companies to 1) sell more relative to the competition, 2) do more with less through automation, and 3) position themselves to capture a lion’s share of business when the economy recovers (and we know that it eventually will recover).

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