The 10 Most Disruptive CRM Solution Providers 2018

www.insightssuccess.com October 2018

THE

MOST

DisruptIve

CRM Solution Providers

2018 Digi-Talk Digital Transformation - Shifting the Gears of Energy Sector

Editor’s Pick The Impressive Impact of Organic Networking Rory J. Cutaia Founder, Chairman & CEO

Assisting Businesses Achieve Their Sales & Marketing Goals

www.insightssuccess.com October 2018

THE

Leveraging CRM for Awakening the Reverence in Businesses

C

MOST

DisruptIve

CRM Solution Providers 2018

Digi-Talk Digital Transformation - Shifting the Gears of Energy Sector

Editor’s Pick The Impressive Impact of Organic Networking Rory J. Cutaia Founder, Chairman & CEO

Assisting Businesses Achieve Their Sales & Marketing Goals

ustomer is king in a world of business. In the commercial world we live in, the importance of improving the trust of existing customers and expanding business is absolutely essential. The progress of any business is dependent on serving as many customers as possible.

The better businesses can manage the relationships with their customers the more successful businesses will become. Without customers businesses are of no use. Happy Customers are the pillars on which businesses thrive. Businesses have to accomplish the trust of customers by being productive and efficient in delivering services that add value to the lives of customers. This is easier said than done. That is where the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) comes into picture, to figure out how to offer best possible services to the customers and earn their trust and manage relationship with them.

CRM is a strategy to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to develop deeper relationships with them. Having loyal customers and solid relationships with them is an essential condition for maximum sales and maximum business growth.

The software used in CRM consolidates the information of the customer and their documents into a single form of database so their business will become easier for them to handle. The advancement of CRM technology, with the right management, helps delivering what the customer needs. CRM runs with the goals of business owners to improve their business relationships, assist the retention of the customers and the growth of the driving sales.

The essence of CRM is an all in one type centralized system which effectively manages, collects and directs customer information, sales processes and marketing activities of organization, and enhancing customer experience. CRM awakens the awe and reverence among customers for businesses by contributing value to the lives of the customers.

CRM modifies their business operations to ensure that customers are served in the best possible way.

Essentially, CRM helps businesses to recognize the value of its customers and to build on improved customer relations.

Competent CRM adapts according to the changing times and it does whatever it takes to add value to the customers and in turn earn the trust and confidence of customers. The value CRM adds to the industry and businesses is priceless. The more the businesses take advantage of an efficient CRM the more businesses are benefitted in general because of the precious service that CRM offers to the customers of businesses. Therefore using CRM in any organization for the successful businesses is prerequisite for any organization.

Considering CRM’s vital importance in the world of business, Insights Success has curated the list of “The 10 Most Disruptive CRM Solution Providers 2018” which have added value to the solutions of various organizations and helped them to offer best possible services to their customers.

Featuring as our Cover Story, nFusz is a SaaS applications developer and services provider, marketing cloud-based, interactive video business software products, offered on a subscription basis.

This issue highlights the efforts of some disruptive companies including Avertra, a global integration services, product development and consultancy organization focused on the energy and utilities industry; Capitan specializes in developing and applying organizational workflow solutions and services for a variety of constructional, industrial & commercial organizations; Cirrus Shield is the plug and play, extensible CRM to manage businesses; Pipelinersales Inc. is the next-generation CRM software that uses unique visual tools to help salespeople interact with and improve their sales pipeline; Salpo Technologies a platform connecting people, data, processes and systems to achieve desired goals; SPI Software which excels at solutions for key players in the furniture business; Voicent Communications, a US-based company aspires to eliminate the communication gap between companies and its management.

The magazine also features worth read articles from some industry leaders and our in-house editorial team. Don’t miss them as well.

Let’s flip, shall we?

Kedar Kulkarni

Contents Cover Story

nFusz

Assisting Businesses Achieve Their Sales & Marketing Goals

08 18

Points to Remember Before Investing in a CRM Software

24 Editor’s Pick The Impressive Impact of Organic Networking

32

46

Digi-Talk Digital TransformationShifting the Gears of Energy Sector

The Future of CRM is in your Inbox

Articles

Avertra:

20

Disrupting Utilities Industry Globally

Cirrus Shield:

28

The Next-Generation CRM Platform

Pipelinersales:

36

A Valuable Sales Enablement Tool

SPI Software:

42

Data for the Furniture Business

Capitรกn:

Solidifying Innovative Manufacturing Processes

22

Commence Corporation:

Leading Provider of Customer Relationship Management Software

Salpo Technologies:

Pushing the Boundaries

30

38

Voicent:

The Effortless CRM Powered by Communication Tools

44

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Executive Editor Assistant Editors Contributing Editors Visualiser Art & Design Director Associate Designer Co-designer

Pooja M. Bansal Anish Miller Kedar Kulkarni Jenny Fernandes Abhishaj Sajeev Hitesh Dhamani Bhushan Kadam David King Amol Kamble Nagesh Tembhekar Sapana Shinde

Art & Picture Editors Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Alan, Vishal Sales Executives David, Kevin, Mark, Manish Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialists Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategists Alina Sege, Shubham, Vishal SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge, Gemson, Prasad Research Analyst Patrick James Circulation Managers Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com

October, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

nFusz:

Assisting Businesses Achieve Their Sales & Marketing Goals

‘‘

nFusz’s notifiCRM application creates new customer engagement while other CRMs only track existing customer engagement.

Rory J. Cutaia Founder, Chairman & CEO

I

n today’s business environment, competition for customers has never been greater. In order to compete for customers effectively, businesses need an edge.

They need to distinguish themselves from the competition by adopting a strategy that not only allows them to standout, but does so in a way that is engaging. Gone are the days when businesses could communicate their value proposition through lengthy, detailed emails, letters, brochures, or through cold calling. To engage customers today, you need to communicate with them in the way that they prefer to consume information – not just your information – but all information. And that’s through video.

Video has become the preferred method of consuming information, including sales and marketing information. In fact, businesses that are not using video in their sales and marketing are truly missing out. Yet, the customer relationship management (CRM) software programs on the market today don’t utilize video in their platforms – that is, all except one: notifiCRM by nFusz, Inc.

An Interactive Video-based CRM Platform nFusz’s flagship product, notifiCRM, is a CRM application that is distinguishable from other CRM programs, as it not only incorporates and leverages the power of video, but takes it to an entirely new level. notifiCRM utilizes interactive video as the primary means of communication between sales and marketing professionals and their respective customers and prospects. notifiCRM allows its users to create, distribute, and post interactive videos that contain on-screen interactive icons, buttons, and other elements, that when clicked, allow their customers and prospects to respond to its users’ call to action in real-time, in the video, while the video is playing, without leaving or stopping the video. Users can even add interactive elements to their existing sales and marketing videos quickly and easily. notifiCRM users report higher engagement rates as well as increased sales conversion rates compared to traditional, static, non-interactive video. And unlike other

identifies which clients or prospects watched the videos, notifiCRM users are able to focus their sales and marketing efforts on those prospects that have demonstrated an interest in the subject matter of the video.

Moreover, in many cases the interactive videos, with clickable “buy-it-now” buttons right in the videos, actually do the selling with little to no intervention on the part of the salesperson required. As a result, sales and marketing professionals are able to produce and close more sales and generate more revenue in less time. Businesses report lower attrition rates, lower recruitment costs, lower client acquisition costs, lower training costs, and heathier bottom lines.

CRM products on the market today that only ‘track’ customer engagement, notifiCRM’s interactive video sales and marketing tool actually ‘creates’ customer engagement. nFusz developed the proprietary interactive video technology that serves as the basis for its cloud, Softwareas-a-Service (“SaaS”) products and services, which it offers on a subscription basis. And with pricing packages starting as low as $9.99 per month, notifiCRM is affordable by any sales or marketing professional. Their products are accessible, and the videos are viewable and clickable on all mobile and desktop devices, and no download is required.

Introducing… ‘Augmented Sales Intelligence’ Augmented Intelligence or “AI” is becoming more than just a phrase permeating current tech vernacular. More and more business leaders are recognizing the competitive advantages AI will provide, especially in the context of customer communications. At the leading edge of technological innovation, nFusz has not only coined the phrase Augmented Sales Intelligence, but they have built tools, features and functionality into their notifiCRM product that truly act to augment and enhance the skills of any salesperson, whether an experienced professional or a novice. notifiCRM users have access to detailed, yet easy to understand analytics data in the application dashboard. The dashboard reflects when the videos were viewed, by whom, how many times, for how long, and what interactive elements were clicked-on in the video, among other things.

Through this simple and easy to understand dashboard that

Upcoming versions of notifiCRM will include additional augmented sales intelligence features such as the ability to deliver follow-up videos and other information to customers and prospects automatically based on the way they interact and engage with the videos, including such innovations as tracking, recording, and analyzing where a viewer may have paused, or even hovered their mouse in a video, and applying algorithms to that data to predict viewer behavior, including the ability to predict the likelihood of closing that particular lead.

The notifiCRM platform can accommodate any size campaign or sales organization, and it is enterprise-class scalable to meet the needs of today’s global organizations. nFusz offers stand-alone versions of its notifiCRM product on a subscription basis to individual consumers, sales-based organizations, consumer brands, marketing and advertising agencies, as well as to artists and social influencers. It also offers notifiCRM through a network of partners and resellers that include Oracle/NetSuite, Marketo, and Odoo, among others who offer notifiCRM to their respective clients and customers as an upgrade or add-on to their existing subscriptions. The company is actively developing integrations of notifiCRM into other popular marketing, CRM, and Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) platforms.

Thinking Outside the CRM Box The power of interactive video for sales and marketing applications is undeniable, but nFusz has not only identified applications for its technology beyond sales and marketing, it has already developed innovative new products for the healthcare and education sectors. Its notifiMED application is designed for physicians and other healthcare providers to create more efficient and effective interactive

communications with patients. Patients are able to avoid unnecessary and inconvenient visits to their physicians’ or other healthcare providers’ offices by viewing and responding to interactive videos through in-video, onscreen clicks that are designed to assess the patients’ need for an office visit. If the patient’s responses to the interactive video indicate that an office visit is either necessary or desirable, the patient can schedule the office visit through the video in real time. Patients can also download and print prescription information, care instructions, and other physician distributed documents right from and through the video.

Its notifiEDU application is designed for teachers and school administrators for more effective communications with students, parents, and faculty. notifiEDU allows

teachers to deliver interactive lessons to students which are both more engaging and more effective. It also allows teachers to communicate with students through their mobile devices and laptop computers to deliver lessons and tests/quizzes on the screen and in the video. The analytics capabilities of notifiEDU available on the dashboard of the teacher or school administrator allows them to track which students watched the lesson, when, for how long, how many times, and track and report on test/quiz results. nFusz’s notifiTV and notifiLIVE products are also part of its proprietary interactive video platform. These applications allow viewers to interact with pre-recorded as well as live broadcast video content by clicking on links embedded on-screen in people’s attire, in sponsors’ products, and other objects, graphics, or sponsors’ signage in the video. Viewers can experience interactive content and capabilities of notifiTV and notifiLIVE on most devices available in the market today without the need to download special software or proprietary video players.

Exemplifying the Spirit of Innovation

‘‘

We’ve redefined what engagement means in today’s video-centric business and social environment.

Rory J. Cutaia, Founder, Chairman and CEO, is the visionary behind nFusz with an impressive track record of disrupting established industries through technological innovation. Rory began his career as an attorney at a major NYC law firm, representing world renowned entrepreneurs.

Rory left the practice of law to change the landscape of the telecom industry through a tech company start-up he founded called Telx. Over the course of only 6 years, Telx became the internationally recognized leader in the data center/carrier interconnection sector by creating the de facto standard, still used even today, by which the world’s telecom carriers interconnect to one another to distribute and share data traffic globally. Telx was sold for more than $200 Million to a prominent Palo Alto private equity firm after a highly competitive bidding process, in which Rory returned more than 18 times invested capital to his investors. Telx was recently sold again for $1.9 Billion.

Rory brings that same innovator spirit and drive to nFusz.

One of Rory’s quotes that very aptly sums up his approach to innovation is “To deliver true innovation, we must focus not on what is possible - but on what is not yet possible.”

Rory encourages his management team to think beyond preconceived boundaries and not simply accept things as they are, but instead envision them as they can be and then develop and execute a plan to make it so. His team is encouraged to explore and develop their own otherwise unknown, unrealized potential, rewarding them for demonstrated initiative and innovation, while keeping them

keenly focused on the company’s business plans and objectives.

Additionally, Rory is actively involved in many charitable endeavors. He founded the US Chapter of Innocence in Danger, a global organization dedicated to the protection and rehabilitation of children who have been victims of trafficking. He is also a former member of the Board of Trustees of The New York Institute of Technology and the Board of Trustees of the American Shakespeare Center.

The Plan to Create Stockholder Value Rory states that as CEO, his first and foremost responsibility is to create stockholder value. Like most CEOs, he seeks to create value by executing well-conceived growth strategies. For nFusz, it began with its interactive video technology and determining the best way to exploit it for maximum value creation. Recognizing that nFusz’s interactive video technology was an effective communication tool, Rory determined that he could maximize the value of the technology by wrapping a CRM application around it.

Rory chose CRM for several reasons. First, the CRM space is huge; currently a $40 Billion dollar-a-year industry and

growing at more than 10% a year, according to Gartner. In fact, this year, CRM overtook data management as the largest software market, and those that were cloud-based SaaS, and had subscription-based revenue models commanded the highest valuations. But notwithstanding the size of market and its impressive growth rate, Rory found the major CRM applications to be outdated, bloated, complicated, and expensive. He and his team foresaw that small and medium sized businesses would begin to understand the need for CRM applications to grow their businesses. Yet, the cost and steep learning curves of many CRMs were prohibitive. Rory and his team also recognized that most sales methods were becoming outdated, and most salespeople were ineffective at selling. Salespeople were either untrained, poorly trained, or simply lacked sales skills, including communication skills. The nFusz team also recognized that the way people purchased products and services had changed. People had become much more informed buyers and began to consume more and more information through videos. In fact, recent studies show that retention rates are dramatically higher for video-based communications. Accordingly, Rory and his team concluded that the CRM sector, which had not yet adopted an effective video-based communications strategy, was a ripe for disruption.

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Company Name

Management

Brief

Avertra avertra.com

Volker Herrmann Products Manager

Avertra is a global integration services, product development and consultancy organization focused on the energy and utilities industry.

Capitan Ltd. capitan.solutions

Yakir Sabag Founder & CEO

Capitan specializes in developing and applying organizational workow solutions and services for a variety of constructional, industrial & commercial organizations.

Cirrus Shield cirrus-shield.com

Camille El Hage Founder

Cirrus Shield is the plug and play, extensible CRM to manage businesses.

Commence Corporation commence.com

Larry Caretsky CEO

Commence Corporation is a software manufacturer specializing in CRM and Business Process Automation.

nFusz Inc. nfusz.com

Rory J. Cutaia Founder, Chairman & CEO

nFusz is a SaaS applications developer and services provider, marketing cloud-based, interactive video business software products, oered on a subscription basis.

Pipelinersales Inc. pipelinersales.com

Nikolaus Kimla Founder & CEO

Pipelinersales Inc. is the next-generation CRM software that uses unique visual tools to help salespeople interact with and improve their sales pipeline

Salpo Technologies Ltd salpo.com

Paul Lawrence CEO

Salpo Technologies is a platform connecting people, data, processes and systems of associated organizations to achieve desired goals

SPI Software spi-software.com

Thierry Racinais Founder & CEO

SPI Software excels at solutions for key players in the furniture business

Streak streak.com

Aleem Co-founder

Streak is the developer of an eponymous customer relationship management platform for Gmail.

Voicent Communications, Inc. voicent.com

Joe Wu CEO

Voicent Communications is a US-based company aspires to eliminate the communication gap between companies and its management

Expert’s Advice

Points to Remember Before Investing in a CRM Software

I

n the today’s software industry, also on the dynamic and emerging markets it’s hard to decide what software to use when it comes to CRM. The reason why it’s hard is because most of the solution are not onesize-fits-all and to be honest there is not such solution, all vendors have their focus on specific verticals or specific features.

1. The main thing to keep present when making an investment in a CRM solution, for my opinion, is the ability to be inter-connected. What does that mean? It means that your CRM platform must be able to exchange data, sending and receiving to third party platforms, for the simple reason... business it’s getting more and more dynamic, which in itself is translated into having more demand for different software solutions, and as such, you should have the ability to exchange this data from one platform to another, so in very simple words, your CRM is your orchestrator, like the central hub of your company, this because the customer is the first class citizen into your company and the CRM deals with customer’s data... so to speak.

2. Another major part which it’s important to look at, is the ability of the CRM platform to adapt to the business flow a client have. This is very important topic because business change very rapidly, the dynamics of a business 18

October 2018

are really to be considered, as something which may work today for the business, might not work tomorrow, due to marketing strategies or sales strategies are changing, or even the internal hierarchy and procedures are changing. If the client is about to adapt the business to the CRM solution, that won’t make any sense in the long run, as it would be hard to operate and compete in the market.

3. A CRM Software should be as much open as possible, so the client might elaborate the data coming in and going out, due to the fact that data formats are not standard, and channels from where the information is collected, such as leads capture or any other form of data, must be easily accessible through APIs. 4. Another feature which might seems a small one in the first place, but it has extreme importance, are the Webhooks. This is a new term in the SaaS industry but not a new thing, it has been there for years, but recently widely used from systems. An webhook would allow you to send data to a third party platform when a very specific event is happening, let say when you get a new lead, or when you get a new deal/opportunity.

5. The ability to understand the overall concept of how the CRM software operates is crucial, many CRM

About the Author Eriol Gjergji is the Founder of Flexie CRM, a platform which handles almost All business operations and needs. Starting from marketing automation, business ows automation, managing sales and a lot more.

Eriol help organizations to implement best strategies on how to manage their data and business ows on top of digital platforms and tools. Through Flexie he envisions helping companies in digital transformation and move forward in the online economy era.

Eriol Gjergji Founder

Flexie CRM

operates in different ways, they treat and ellaborate data differently. So in order to make full use of the CRM platform, you have to understand it, if you don’t you simply won’t be able to use it. This is also related with the fact on how fast the business is growing, and there are needed to make new implementations for all features, which should be understandable in the first place.

6. Sales teams are typically busy on their day to day routine, subsequently they have no time to frequently check CRM for upcoming tasks or meeting or phone calls. It should be the CRM itself reminding them for upcoming events, using all possible channels. This way the company increases the efficiency of the sales team, which is the core of the company existence.

how fast they react to issues and demands on explaining how to implement one thing or another. This is very important on a SaaS model, because the company (your client) is operating the full business into the CRM platform, and the expectations are high when it comes to support.

However, all items above are different from one company to another, but for us at Flexie, the key thing, is that the CRM must be inter-connected, that would bring the client’s company to another level, and create flexible flows for data to travel and be elaborated from one platform to another. As the client’s business keeps growing, we must be there, always to support and innovate new technologies which resolve vital problems.

7. Among the top items which someone should look when buying a CRM solution is the support team, and

October 2018

19

Avertra: Disrupting Utilities Industry Globally

I

n an interview with Insights Success, Volker Herrmann, Products Manager of Avertra shares his experience and gives resourceful insights. In addition to this he has also noted about Avertra, its products and motto of the organization along with the future goals in revolutionizing the industry.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Volker and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of the Avertra, its solutions and services?

Avertra began as a boutique IT Consultancy delivering digital transformation to the Utilities and Energy industry via enterprise technologies such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Esri, Qlik and Maximo.

Throughout the first 8 years of consulting services work, the company consistently observed a major problem facing the industry: A lack of integrated, modern, and easy to use solutions addressing the unique needs of the industry. Avertra set out to build a system that would enhance and provide an innovation layer to the traditional ERP and CIS systems of utilities, while reducing implementation times and costs. In 2012, Avertra began developing the MiUtility™ platform with the focus on optimizing, streamlining and

20

October 2018

automating the New Construction-toCash lifecycle.

How do you diversify CRM solutions so that it will benefit your customers?

Our Customer Service products cover both the call center and the self-service endpoints. Each application can be independently deployed if requested.

But it is in the integration to each other where our customers are receiving the full 360 views of their clientele. A user starting a process by calling the call center and being able to continue and finish it in self-service without interruption and on their own schedule.

Vice versa the same, a business process started in self-service that requires a contact to the call center by web chat or call back can be addressed by the call center agent with direct access to the customer’s data. And all products are following an ease of use approach that has its roots in our MiCustomer application.

As users on a web portal we are relying on functionality that is easy to use and allows for fast interaction without the need for training. Can you imagine having to go through a trainings tutorial to do online shopping? Why not apply the same fundamentals to the enterprise side? Flat menu structures, non-truncated labeling and guided processes that provide information, verification and communication at the

right time and in the right place. All this leads to a reduction in costly training and a higher user acceptance which in turn benefits our customer’s transformation effort as well.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the Avertra.

We started out as a consulting service company in the Utility sector, focused on SAP applications. Our clients called on us to correct issues that came out of their ERP implementations, occurring after the implementer already left. That gave us a front row seat on where these “standard software” projects fail.

We saw the results of applying a template on a Utility company that had been built on the flawed assumption that the processes included by the software vendor are already an overall match for most utilities. Guess what, they aren’t. Only because a company is buying the full suite at a reduced price does not mean they have the need to use all of it or that the single piece in scope right away is fitting their needs at all.

A municipal water utility does not have the same goals as a multi-division, multi company code utility that operates in multiple states and the deregulated market. While the software

“

We are problem solvers focusing on simplicity, synergy, and innovation.

vendor might have a scalable product, the templates using it as a base are not.

With that in mind Avertra invested into Mendix as a development platform that not only allows us to build our platform products but at the same time allows for fast adjustments during implementation without the need for long development cycles. Our processes have been built based on the experience of our employees and in partnerships with our customers and represent a true best practice approach with little need for major adjustments But once again, the pieces that need adjusting can be tuned on the spot.

How does the company contribute towards making the industry better?

Avertra’s size and market knowledge enable the company to quickly pivot in response to market changes. Additionally, Avertra is one of very few software providers building solutions specifically for the Utilities industry. Competitors are large, slow to react, and unfocused on the market, and competing technologies are monolithic, un-integrated, and require a high degree of costly customization for utility customers.

Where does Avertra see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

We see ourselves in the next 2 -3 years launching MiUtility.com to be the salesforce.com of the utility industry.

Considering the rising number of CRM solutions providers, how does Avertra stand out from its competitors?

Our employees have several life times of industry experience. They have seen the good and the bad, dozen times over. That influences our product R&D. They share the common vision to change the industry, which is what

Volker Herrmann Products Manager

led them to join Avertra in the first place. Too often we have seen companies implementing a product suite with functionality that can’t be utilized and the parts that would be applicable are nowhere near the business requirements.

We are attacking the status quo of the top tier software vendors by providing true industry specific solutions to address our customers’ needs, not some attempt of a modified ‘one size should fit all’ product.

Testimonials from Avertra Clients "Avertra has helped Loudoun Water meet and exceed the high expectations of our tech-savvy customer base."

- Mike Beardslee, Managing Director of IT Services, Loudoun Water About the Leader Volker has been in the Utility Industry for over 29 years now. Prior to Avertra, he worked as a Manager - Advisory Power and Utilities at PwC. He also worked as Senior Solution Consultant at SAP for thirteen years. Volker and his team are continuously engaging with industry thought leaders and experts to keep validating the roadmaps as well as presenting their own unique perspective on the utility industry’s lack of focus on end-to-end unified user experience across all channels.

October 2018

21

Capitán: Solidifying Innovative Manufacturing Processes

B

usinesses around the globe are growing at a rapid pace.

Industries are pushing themselves over the edge to sustain the cut-throat competition.

Manufacturing is one of the most important divisions which aid the same purpose. However, manufacturing comes with its own set of challenges including maintaining the inventory, quality and efficiency of a company.

Manufacturing Execution System (MES) enables the companies to overcome these challenges. It is growing to be the most popular data based systems that deliver operational solutions to manufacturing firms. The global MES market is estimated to be $19.36 billion by year 2023. In order to retrieve the same, many enterprises have contributed extensively. One of them is Capitán Ltd.

gain a complete control over the whole manufacturing process, via an intuitive web applications, and mobile devices.

Founded in 2015, Capitán develops a platform for managing, monitoring and optimizing the production process in factories. Its unique platform retrieves the data collected in real-time from manufacturing devices (PLC’s, IIoT), and allow managers and machine operators to

Yakir Sabag is the Founder and CEO of Capitán. He started the company with the vision to have a comprehensive platform specifically for modern factories. While mentioning about his vision he asserts, “Throughout the years, I’ve found that there is no modern system

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October 2018

Assured Solutions Capitán believes in the idea of great experience and greater knowledge.

An approach empowered with same principal enables the company to provide the appropriate solution.

Based on its built-in workflows, it has a comprehensive platform which enables every factory to set the required adjustments. Capitán’s enthusiasm for discovering solutions to complex problems using technology leads to the benefits of its customers with proven practices, from different manufacture, in different sections.

Vision to Fulfill Needs of Modern Factories

which is able to fulfill a modern factory needs. If it’s about the technology used, the data structure, the user interface, the depth of the data collected and processed by the system, the responsiveness for manufacturing exceptions.”

Yakir was a graduate of science from the University of Haifa. Prior to Capitán, Yakir was the founder of Mameer, a humor portal for people diagnosed with cancer. He has also been a CTO for production software Solutions Company, for six years.

Maximizing Efficiency and Raising Profitability While the previous generation of software lack functions on the production floor, Capitán aims to fill that hole with data, and different tools to maximize efficiency, and raise the profitability of the factory.

Its platform seamlessly communicates with the factory’s ERP system, sends relevant processed data from the production floor. As a result, Capitán empowers factories by empowering their operative-class human resources, to be a part of the thinking process.

“

Information, Control, Automation.

As an MES system being an operative decision-making system, the company amplifies its users, with accurate data regarding their manufacturing processes.

Eventually, Capitán transforms into the factory’s “knowit-all” system, thanks to its knowledge preserving - of the manufacturing facility. This is how it provides operational intelligence and actionable information to its platform-users, helping them make a measurable difference in their manufacturing excellence.

Distinctive and Ahead Capitán has precisely developed various features in its platforms and according to the company, these features are 20 years ahead of competition. The company believes in innovation and learning a new thing every day. Thus, it has developed a unique implementation plan that reveals the platform ROI in a matter of weeks.

Throughout the process the company insures customers can have an affordable, almost risk-free agile platform that grows with the factory step-by-step.

Journey of Innovation Capitán believes that its journey of innovation is not going to end anytime soon. It is very enthusiastic about the fact that it has faced and resolved the challenges in such short period. The company has learned a lot from these experiences. From different business cultures around the world that that it’s dealing with, to the technical issues that it is solving using its creativities, to the startups the company is meeting with in order to expand its platform features.

Yakir Sabag Founder & CEO

Capitán has started from a house-office; at that point it never believed that it would gain such trust from leading companies and governments, which fuels the company with motivation to keep up what the work. In its periodically customers meetings, Capitán keeps traveling its “Capitánized” production floors, the machine operators actually enjoy working in the company. The team in Capitán believes that working in the company is a never-ending learning process. And it strives to keep itself updated and obligated to provide the ideal solutions in real time.

Determined to Deliver With all its experience, Capitán believes that in the long run, what keeps a company better are satisfied customers. Hence, it is investing huge efforts in communication with its customers, to learn about the evolving needs, in order to develop and extend the platform capabilities to support the industry needs. In coming times, the company envisions providing its customers subsequent best-in-class solutions and aims to lead itself in the list of top 5 industrial IT company.

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Editor’s Pick

The

Impressive

Impact of

Organic

Networking T

he main reason for the invention of website, Internet and technology devices that provides the platform for software to run and connect with each other is mainly to make networking of services, products and people possible. Technology leaders such as Cisco, Arista and Apple are dedicating their resources to provide various business enterprises and the masses the ability to communicate their values through technology mediums called as Networking.

The works and provisions of these organizations are very outstanding, and are believed to last for ages. This is because the growth of technology is not going out of style so soon, but rather it is believed to continue into the future.

Technology networking strategies is good, but to make it more eective there is the incessant need to incorporate organic strategies.

You may be asking what I mean by Organic Networking or Strategies. The organization that will survive in the market in the near future, considering the increasing rate of competition are the ones who take the necessary steps, to develop more human connection for their business, more than they do for machines such as provided by AI. The Factors to Consider for an Eective Organic Networking: Even as our age is encouraging more of technology strategies, if we must survive the future of it all, then we must connect more people, than we do for machines. As an

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innovative networking solution provider, it is going to pay more, when you include human intelligence and physicality in your networking strategies over machines.

Imagine a day that the machines are going to have a serious breakdown, and the owner organization do not have the capable persons to figure out the cause of the breakdown and possibly provide a feasible solution? What will be the fate of the organization? This means that, there will be a great loss of value and possibly a strike off the industry. I know you would never want that to happen. So, plan from now, to never pay for the loss in the future.

Balance Your People to machine Deployment: Social Medias are for networking, Newspapers and various Medias are also for networking, but there are people behind the arc of this innovation. The more you incorporate AI and machine learning strategies, always remember the need for Control Engineers and those are human beings.

The most successful organizations identify the major importance of

people networking and how best to utilize human intelligence in their business quest.

For example; if you write an article and share it on a website, who do you expect to read your article; human beings or machines? It is obvious that the organic networking aspect of computing will never go out of style; else, there will be a day in the future that digital connection and values will be measured on the number of bots that read your articles and/or that paid for your services. So, remember to balance the rate of your people to machine deployment, by acknowledging the need of human networking over technology networking.

The Need for Organic Sense in Networking and the Future: Technology is the miracle of our age, Artificial Intelligence is a major molding factor of this development, IoT is the liberator from machine isolation by providing the platform to interconnect millions of them over the virtual platforms, but humans make these things possible.

Networking is an innovative concept with high profile technology terms. If one does not implore deep interest and concentration while exploring this realm, there may be a serious distortion of original motive of indulgence, and this can lead to serious breakdown of enterprise infrastructure. Sometimes, it maybe direct and other times, it will be indirect, but in all, it will always have an impact. The future of technology is very bright, and that is mainly dependent on how available we make the resources to help manage what we have today in the near future. For this to be possible, the networking solution providers must incorporate more of organic sense in their solutions and industry advancements.

Technology will advance, more machines will be connected, devices will be programmed to run independently, but in all these things, the humans in the network will still rule the universe. The more organic you make your networking strategies, the lesser the fear of a disastrous future for your organization.

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Omnichannel Agent and Customer Engagement Solutions Simplify and personalize the customer experience, empower agents and achieve business success with one workspace for all channel interactions, application integrations, and CX reporting.

Cirrus Shield: The Next-Generation CRM Platform

I

n an interview with Insights Success, Camille El Hage, Founder of Cirrus Shield, shares his insights and experiences over products and motto of the organization, along with the organization’s future goals in revolutionizing the CRM industry.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Camille and Insights Success: How do you diversify CRM solutions so that it will benefit your customers?

Cirrus Shield was conceived as an application platform as a service (aPaaS) on top of which we implemented various solutions, first of which is our flagship Cirrus Shield CRM. We also have a built-in library of applications and CRM verticals that could be installed in one click.

Within a single environment, small to medium businesses could therefore start with a CRM that is tailor built to their vertical industry and benefit from a whole set of ready-made applications that they can install in one click. And

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bigger companies leverage the power of Cirrus Shield to deliver business applications fast.

Give a detailed explanation regarding the Founder/CEO/Management’s influence towards the industry and the company?

I started getting interested in computers and programming at the age of 12 and used to develop software as a hobby. After graduating from the Lebanese American University in 2001, I began my career as a software engineer. I then worked as a CRM Consultant for a number of years before launching Cirrus Shield. In 2011, I was named as one of the 12 influencers of CRM in France, and in 2013, I was selected as one of the top 350 consultants out of 80,000 worldwide.

As a consultant I gained a lot of experience in deploying CRMs, both for small to medium businesses and for big groups. I had the opportunity to work in more than 15 countries and work on CRM deployments with more than 10,000 users deployed so far in my career.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of Cirrus Shield.

Building Cirrus Shield wasn’t easy; there was little literature on how you build such a solution. Our choice was to hire from the very beginning some of the best minds in the market and convince them of the vision we were trying to achieve.

Another challenge we had after launching our software onto the market was we had the chance to win a project with one of the leading financial companies in the world. Suddenly our solution was to be able to support thousands of users with millions of records.

Considering the rising number of CRM solutions providers, how does Cirrus Shield stand out from its competitors?

Although they are now coming in different colors and flavors, today’s CRMs are still a legacy of the past, with little capacity in adapting to specific user requirements. They also

“

With Cirrus Shield, businesses can attract and satisfy customers in a whole new way.

Camille El Hage

have a monolithic approach of conducting business and are therefore usually not adapted to specific verticals.

Cirrus Shield provides businesses with tailor made software that is plug and play. Users can select the CRM for their vertical and install it in one click. And for those who wish to adapt or extend their CRM, Cirrus Shield offers a set of visual tools that let users with no technical background customize their CRM or even build business applications with clicks.

There is also a marketplace where business solutions can be downloaded and installed in the users’ environments. So Cirrus Shield can also cater to HR, invoicing, project management, etc.

Where does Cirrus Shield see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

There are a lot of things we would like to achieve in the long run, but those can be summarized in two categories: 1. To our customers, we would like Cirrus Shield to be the software platform on which they run and grow their businesses.

2. As a product, Cirrus Shield’s objective is to change how software will be used tomorrow, allowing users to build or customize their CRM or any business solution as they would play with a Lego™.

Founder

Give us a few testimonials of your clients that accurately highlight Cirrus Shield’s position in the market.

“With Cirrus Shield CRM connected to both our marketing and e-commerce platforms, we have been able to better understand our customers, improve customer segmentation and grow our sales.” – Charline Maillet, Web Marketing & CRM at Cheval Energy “Deployed in less than a month, our self-service customer portal implemented with Cirrus Shield allows us to better meet our customers’ expectations, anywhere in the world.”

– Laurent Joly, Vice President Worldwide Customer Care and Cloud Production, InfoVista About the Company Cirrus Shield lets companies of all sizes drive their sales, marketing and customer service. Cirrus Shield CRM offers a turnkey approach with industry-specific built-in solutions.

Cirrus Shield Platform empowers users to create business applications with visual configuration tools. Our collaborative rapid application development and delivery environment fosters innovation and new ideas across the company.

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Commence Corporation: Leading Provider of Customer Relationship Management Software

L

aunched in 1988, Commence Corporation is a software manufacturer specializing in CRM and Business Process Automation. For more than two decades, Commence has been providing software solutions to the growing needs of businesses. The company offers a robust cloud based CRM solution for managing customer relationships, sales, leads, marketing, help desk ticketing and project management. Commence also offers a highly customizable windows based desktop solution for those companies that prefer to control and manage their CRM system on premise.

Being a leading provider of CRM solutions, Commence has created business software solutions that are affordable, easy to use and deliver extensive value to its customers.

These solutions are targeted at companies that require more than basic functionality, but not the cost and complexity of products designed specifically for enterprise level organizations. The company has delivered innovative software

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solutions that have helped thousands of small & midsize business to significantly improve how they market, sell and provide service to their customers. Commence products are used in more than 25 industries and more than a dozen countries around the world.

An Inspiring Leader Larry Caretsky is the CEO at Commence Corporation. Caretsky has served in executive level roles in several top 100 software companies and is considered an expert in the CRM sector. He has written numerous articles and white papers on the subject and an e-book called ‘Leveraging Information to Achieve Selling Results.’ He has also been a participant on several radio podcast where he discussed the use of CRM software as a component for implementing a successful sales enablement program. In 2017, Caretsky was nominated as an inspiring leader in sales management by the sales lead management association. Under his leadership, Commence has become one of the

most popular CRM solutions for small to mid-size businesses.

The Marketing Strategy Headquartered at Eatontown, New Jersey; Commence describes itself as “The Trusted Name in CRM’. For more than two decades, the company has earned a reputation for delivering high quality products and services, has completed several thousand implementations and continues to receive outstanding customer testimonials about its products and services. Coupled with the software are two service oriented products for sales and marketing enablement.

These value added services are designed to assist those businesses that need experienced resources to help automate and streamline their sales and marketing initiatives.

Commence Corporations diversification stems from the expansion of its product and service offerings. Each year the company introduces new products and functional enhancements to the core application and is engaged with other

“

We maintain strategic alliances with technology partners, system integrators, resellers and business partners throughout the world.

initiatives in artificial intelligence, (AI) big data, and digital marketing. Commence also continues to broaden the value added services it provides in order to ensure that customers realize the maximum value from its products and get a rapid return on their investment.

Exploring Business Requirements Commence CRM is targeted at companies of 10 to 100 users that require more functionality then that offered by the myriad of low cost solution providers, but who do not want the cost and complexity of expensive higher end products. Commence feels that there is a significant gap in the CRM sector and that their product is ideal for those businesses that need robust functionality and flexibility at an affordable cost.

Commence CRM’s functionality rivals that of enterprise level products costing much more and includes, account management, group calendaring, sales opportunity management, lead management, marketing, customer service and ticketing, a customer portal, project management and more. In addition, the value added support services that company offers is a differentiator in the mid-market segment.

Future Expansion

Larry Caretsky CEO

certain that the implementation and utilization of new technology will require professional expertise, so it is continuing to recruit and hire experts. The company’s goal is to continue to wrap professional services with new technology offerings. As such, it is ensuring its growth coming by expansion and utilization of its products and services.

Commence A Trusted Name in CRM

In the upcoming years, Commence will maintain its leadership position with regards to introducing new products and services in the SMB sector. The company is

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Digi-Talk

DIGITAL

Transformation

Shifting the Gears of Energy Sector

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T

he energy industry is undergoing a paradigm shift with the disruptive changes in digital transformation. Increased use of renewables, as well as resiliency and sustainability concerns, is just a few of the factors behind the industry’s need to make encroachments. The digital age has not only brought us a ‘digital twin’ version of the physical power plant that monitors every asset, but also provides an intelligent response with analytics. Thus, it activates appropriate actions from the maintenance and service perspective.

A few years ago, the Internet of Things (IoT) and its potential impact on industry were the untouched concepts.

But now, it is transforming the way power plants and assets are monitored, serviced, and managed which has bought several advancements in the energy sector. However, according to a recent survey, it has been observed that improvements of as small as one percent in all of the

world's industrial assets increase the potential of over $60bn over a period of fifteen years in terms of gains for the power industry.

These changes in the energy sector are going hand-in-hand with the implementation of Big Data analytics and the IoT. Organizations in the energy industry are utilizing digital transformations to their fullest. Real-time analytics and wide range of connected devices are assisting energy providers to transfigure the way power plants and assets are managed, monitored, and facilitating them to determine where efficiencies and values can be traced.

Adoption of Data Analytics and the IoT Performance Tracing: In the process of performance tracing, the information is recorded as well as digitally captured for the engineers to study operations with a deep-

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neck analysis over time and to make improvements. This approach can be enhanced through specialized software and few of them can be automated through smart technology.

Also, knowing the performance of turbines at various points of time allows service schedules to be updated which can save on the engineering time.

Managing Remote Assets: This is an important aspect when rural areas are managed by the localized power supplies.

With this aspect, power companies will explore more opportunities that could further improve efficiencies using data analytics. With the application of distributed generation, companies can shift the power production closer to the point of consumption via solar tiles or wind farms.

This all becomes possible because the technology is now intelligent enough to plan, monitor, service, and manage the remotest of assets.

Cloud-based IT: Generating performance data from generators is more accessible that allows information to be faster responded and the appropriate resources to be deployed. Through data analytics, engineers can gain a better understanding of a particular device which is likely to get fail; helping to reduce the downtime. The top two reasons for adopting this cloud-based IT technology are to improve the agility as well as responsiveness and moneysaving.

Increased Automation: Here, computer controlled automation is applied to turbines. The use of digital sensors

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brings in fine-tuning which not only extract more power out of the existing machinery but also keeps an eye on the performance and potential failure if equipment. Hence, it is all about making smart plans, capable of adapting the change more efficiently, in terms of cost and capacity.

Values and Efficiencies at par with TechTransformations Recently, an electric firm has reported over 40% of improved service reliability since the implementation of data analytics. This shows that energy companies are looking to gain value and efficiencies through the use of new technology and to seek these key forms of transformation. Also, one does not have to look far to find industry trailblazers that are already implementing these innovative methodologies. ‘Smart Grids’ are aiding utilities to gain deeper views on capacity demand and to provide power consumption more intelligently as per the business and consumers.

For the power industry, digital transformation is combined with IoT connected field service which offers both a short as well as long-term solution. This solution would cope with the varying regulatory and pricing demands of the market along with dealing costs, uptime, and service more probably. Digital transformation has opened new opportunities for those who embrace them. Thus, digital transformation is apparently increasing the pace of innovation and broadening the competitive gap.

Pipelinersales: A Valuable Sales Enablement Tool

T

he customer is usually the most valuable asset for any business. Hence, a business strategy that enables organizations to build long-lasting relationships with their customers is of utmost importance. Pipelinersales Inc., the parent company of Pipeliner CRM, is the next-generation CRM software that uses unique visual tools to help salespeople interact with and improve their sales pipeline. Pipeliner is all about sales. The company focuses on pipeline management, sales process and analytics and allows salespeople make educated and informed decisions about their business in real-time. It also delivers a unique experience from prospect to customer and on throughout the whole customer lifecycle - working in close partnership. Pipeliner thereby ensures a real impact for businesses that adopts it and each user that leverages it.

A Highly Configurable System One of the core strength of Pipeliner is that it is a highly configurable system.

Unlike other systems that require programmers or external consultants to customize, Pipeliner provides drag and drop and other tools designed for nontechnical users. This allows the system to be adapted to whatever industry the

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customer operates in as well as to their specific sales processes. Indeed, the company provides customers with the ability to create multiple pipelines, each with their own distinct processes so customers can have processes for lead nurturing, new business development, account management, and any other process they need to systematize.

Pipeliner assists companies in reducing their revenue risk and helps them leverage opportunities. It aids them in becoming increasingly more effective and efficient in their processes by empowering their team members to sell and to manage sales better. By doing so, companies can reduce operating costs.

A Serial Entrepreneur Pipeliner is continuously evolving under the leadership of Nikolaus Kimla, Founder and CEO. He believes fervently that sales can be a force for good and change within society itself. As a follower of the principles of the Austrian School of Economics, Nikolaus believes that free and fair trade is the greatest engine for global peace and prosperity and that salespeople can be the vanguard of this movement. When people exchange

goods and services in a fair and equitable manner creating win/win, enjoyable and an economically beneficial result for both parties, the conditions for peace and cooperation are created. By providing the best tool to help facilitate this process, Nikolaus is helping to change the world for the better.

A Vision that Led the Inception The leadership and strategic brains behind Pipeliner have come from sales and business backgrounds whether as Entrepreneurs, frontline salespeople or CEOs of global sales consulting companies. Each in their own way struggled in the past with CRM systems that were not designed with the reality of salespeople and sales management in mind. This is what united them in the vision to create a CRM that would enable salespeople to sell more effectively while delivering all of the insights and intelligence needed by sales management and executive leadership to run their business.

To create an effective CRM required many years of investment of time, resources and money to bring to reality.

In that time, Pipeliner witnessed that many other solutions have been rushed

“

Pipeliner CRM is All about Sales - We are a sales enablement tool focusing on pipeline management, sales process & analytics through Dynamic Instant Visualization! to market that lack the same quality and depth that Pipeliner CRM possesses. Staying true to its goal of creating the world’s most effective tool for sales has been the company’s greatest achievement. Pipeliner never took shortcuts, compromised on their principles or short-changed its users.

One Step Ahead of the Competition Pipeliner applies cybernetic principles within its CRM to assist people in sales and business in squarely facing up and dealing with today’s complexity. This is why Pipeliner is completely visual in nature and thereby translates complexity to simplicity. Cybernetics is not only evident in Pipeliner’s visual user interface, but also the whole concept of navigation. Its unified navigation concept allows the user to navigate rapidly and easily through the application. This is the reason that makes Pipeliner the only CRM that delivers Real Dynamic Instant Visualization.

Cybernetics, the science of simplification, is applied in many ways. Many companies complain that a CRM application takes long time to implement. Pipeliner has simplified CRM implementation to the point that it can be done in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of other CRM applications. The uniqueness of its design comes out of a powerful combination of visual aesthetics and extremely fast functionality. The core concept is that a picture communicates 60,000 times faster than text, and Pipeliner has visualized almost everything.

Nikolaus Kimla Founder & CEO

knowledge, ideas, and services both locally and globally, virtually and in-person to deliver on the vision of trade and sales as a driving force for global peace and prosperity. It does not see itself in the future solely as a CRM provider but rather, in conjunction with Sales POP, its online sales magazine, and Go Ahead! its in-person meeting and networking platform, as the global platform for all things sales.

Customers Expressing their Satisfaction “The clarity of data and how easily visible it is has made a huge difference in our process. It’s much easier to target key opportunities, instead of trying to sort through tables and tables of data. The visual representation was probably the biggest selling point for Pipeliner as far as I was concerned.”- Imran Jaferey, Vice President- Global Sales, Headworks International “At the beginning of 2016 we made a goal to increase sales by 20 percent, which is a large increase for our business. As of December 1st we are at 95 percent of that lofty goal with 31 days left to go. We really owe it to Pipeliner for helping us get to where we are now.” - Luke Wittenbraker, Sales and Marketing Director, Mactech On-Site

Upcoming Endeavors Pipeliner aims to create a global sales community. A community where anyone with an interest for sales can come together with likeminded people to exchange

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Salpo Technologies: Pushing the Boundaries

T

he concept of customer relationship management began in the 1970s and since then has been an essential element in business. One company in the CRM industry which is making a name for itself in the market is Salpo Technologies. Salpo is a progressive software company, focused on driving innovation and creating versatile software products to help businesses realize their potential.

The company tackles complex challenges with its modular CRM platform, custom software solutions, enterprise-grade apps and outsourced development resource. Salpo helps its clients to develop better business processes, increase efficiency, improve customer engagement and drive sales.

An Array of Solutions Despite offering quick self-serve setup, Salpo CRM is the antithesis of a onesize-fits-all solution. While it can be used ‘out of the box’ as a straightforward contact management tool, it’s fully customizable, with tailored bolt-on modules, third-party integrations and an open API which can fit any organization. Data fields and labels can be renamed to reflect specific business language and industry

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terms, with limitless custom fields to store, monitor, filter and analyze pertinent business information. Custom modules can be added to mirror any element – orders, products, projects, support tickets, events, services and properties with multi-layered connections to individuals, companies and other modules.

With Salpo’s business rules engine, customers can design processes to fit their workflow using pre-defined triggers such as contact setup or status changes and outputs such as document creation or call scheduling.

A Passionate Management Team Salpo’s CEO, Paul Lawrence and the management team has a passion for making customers lives better, improving their experience and putting emphasis on the relationship part of CRM. Management’s mantra is empowerment which runs through everything they do, how they do it and how they help their customers form better relationships with the company. Through many years of combined experience using business software available on the market; the management team realized that most of these were poorly

designed or focused only on administration, rather than the ultimate user experience. They have a zeal to prove that great CRM software can empower businesses to have a better understanding of customers and ultimately build better relationships.

Learning it the Hard Way Over the last 10 years, Salpo has learnt the hard way how to shape and build a ‘software as a service’ platform.

Companies cannot assume what a customer wants. They must engage with them, to prevent blindly integrating software features that users don’t need, want or use.

In light of this, Salpo has built a unique solution from the ground up, taking its experiences, feedback and future visions into consideration.

Salpo has created something that will change people’s perception of CRM software, meaning they no longer view this as an admin function.

Instead, it should interactively support the user, automating processes and empowering them in their role, whether in customer service, sales, marketing or management.

“

Our platform connects your people, data, processes and systems to achieve your goals.

Paul Lawrence CEO

Always Focused Salpo understands that the CRM marketplace is crowded, with most companies investing in marketing over innovation to attract customers.

The team often has to remind themselves that people ‘don’t know what they don’t know.’ Just because the team knows the product so well, they sometimes assume the customers do too. Customers need guidance and direction to appreciate what they can achieve with the software. Salpo has realized that it needs to bring the platform to life and guide them through the process to deliver a software platform that meets customer needs.

Contribution towards the Industry The Salpo platform is pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with customer relationship management software, and impacting the industry as a result.

Salpo is the only CRM provider to build a truly integrated GDPR compliance solution into its platform. The company recognized this requirement early and developed integrated tools, empowering its customers to quickly achieve GDPR compliance. While its competitors claim to have addressed the new regulation, no platform supports GDPR compliance in this comprehensive way.

The most basic and important mission, Salpo invests its time in engaging with customers throughout their journey, to truly understand their requirements and support them through the configuration process. It also understands that some customers prefer autonomy, so Salpo equip them with all the tools to build a custom system from scratch. From pre-configured industry templates, to quick-start modals, how-to videos, and an extensive support team and knowledge resource, it provides an environment that truly supports its customers.

The result is a versatile platform that works for all businesses, large and small; from complex organizations, such as business improvement districts and growth hubs, to simpler business models, needing leaner contact management and sales pipeline solutions.

Salpo’s ultimate goal is to evolve the platform to meet its expansive future roadmap, offering customers more insight, information and automation; helping them to increase their engagement rate, improve efficiency and drive sales.

Salpo has also built upon its dynamic framework to deliver bespoke best-in-class solutions, such as managing large data sets and designing complex pricing and quote comparison engines.

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SPI Software: Data for the Furniture Business

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n an interview with Insights Success, Thierry RACINAIS, Founder and CEO of SPI Software briefly mentions some of the challenges the organization has faced and strategies it has incorporated to ensure its standing in the market. So, let’s have a look at what the leader has to say about the organization.

Give a brief overview of SPI Software, its solutions and services?

From the outset, SPI Software have provided solutions to furniture retailers, dealers and manufacturers that cover the entire sales process of their customers. Today, that means inspiring a potential consumer with beautiful graphics during initial discovery, configuring their future kitchen together with them using the full richness of product catalogues and closing the sale, and then on to the actual delivery and installation of the kitchen in the consumer’s home By leveraging all the data we’ve collected together, we can support them on business analysis, activity and performance, help them improve operational business practices both online and in-store. Quite a performance, given the complexity of some kitchens, today!

How do you diversify CRM solutions so that it will benefit your customers?

We diversify everything we do in CRM, according to furniture business

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profiles! Kitchen designers, sales reps, installers, after-sales service all need their own diversification of CRM. The Storemanager.online CRM component provides that by directly integrating into all areas of the sales funnel, aggregating customer data & preferences, product details and pricing, end to end from discovery to delivery. Starting with a gorgeous customer discovery phase (using inspirational applications) and flowing across the entire sales process (including the quotation, from the initial consumer project design).

Beyond CRM, Storemanager.online also includes a complete back-office management system, including purchasing, inventory and logistics. We understand that CRM diversification is the key to mastering the customer lifecycle.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of SPI Software.

A key transformation has been the emergence of mobility, with the arrival of the iPhone. We all just suddenly “got it” that we could have access to the right information anywhere and at any time, whatever the support. We were no longer tethered to our desktop PCs! This totally changed the way we saw and used the Internet and allowed us to develop a totally new set of Web based applications. Our vast experience as a major ERP provider in the furniture industry, allowed us to offer a complete online experience to users from the very beginning, and to

drastically reduce the ramp-up time required to create & deploy new features, letting us spend more time on all the ergonomics and usability aspects of Storemanager.online.

How does the company contribute towards making the industry better?

SPI Software has been serving the furniture industry and business for over 25 years now, developing innovative solutions that help the key actors in the industry become more efficient at their daily tasks, using the fantastic potential of the Internet and related technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning, SPI Software is now driven by exploiting the increasing importance of data and in raising customer awareness of the immense value of that data. We are currently the #1 partner to the furniture business in collecting rich consumer content and managing retailer’s data.

Give a detailed explanation regarding the Founder/CEO/Management’s influence towards the industry and the company?

It’s an influence which has always been driven by innovation, applying people orientated management to developing and retaining our ‘key knowledge’ resources, whilst nurturing new resources for new technologies.

We began SPI Software right back in 1992 with a simple idea: PCs will become the new standard for business

“

We connect our customers (furniture retailers & dealers) to their consumers along the entire sales process, from the initial discovery stage, to the complete delivery of their customized home project.

management. With Thierry Racinais, a young business undergrad and a bit of a techno-geek meeting up with JeanMarc Lacombe, a production engineer and passionate furniture designer both coming together to join forces and develop a vertical ERP solution for the Furniture Industry, based on the then new, emerging Windows platform, rather than the more classic AS/400 or Unix world. With that, SPI Software was born, and the two partners are still running the company more than 25 years later! Even today, their driving ambition is to bring new technologies and fresh ideas to the Furniture Business!

In today’s world, that means Cloud based solutions, with ubiquitous mobile access, leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning to allow our customers the best user experience possible.

Where does SPI Software see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

SPI Software research is focusing on 2 fundamental pillars: Ÿ

Graphical Inspiration and Configuration applications

Ÿ

Enhancing CRM Platforms

We’re looking to improve graphical configuration capabilities in even the most complex environments in areas such as Closets, Wardrobes, Kitchens and Bathrooms, to bring the consumer a level of integration previously unknown of graphical discovery using new algorithms based on machine learning technology. All the initial feedback from our customers confirms that this would be a major evolution.

We’ll be delivering these innovations through an enhanced solutions portfolio with brand new mobile apps, for handling technical sales support functions, such as inventory, delivery, installation, post-sales service, all

Thierry RACINAIS Founder & CEO

connected through the same cloud-based platform: Storemanager.online!

All these elements will enable us to provide our customers with a comprehensive set of data, allow them a constantly richer level of understanding of their consumer and offer better products and services!

Considering the rising number of CRM solutions providers, how does SPI Software stand out from its competitors?

StoreManager.online is more than a CRM, it is a CRM combined with an advanced point of sales solution that integrates all the information needed to transform a contact into a successful furniture sale. As a companion to graphical solutions used to design the project (e.g. kitchen project) StoreManager.online centralizes all the information and data related to a store or to a network of stores. Retailers’ management teams can access directly their dealer’s data to help them improve their activity and business. Users roles and rights management are at the heart of our system, together with a powerful organization profile management, to ensure a complete scalability of our services, from an independent dealership to a complex multinational retailer or franchise organization.

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The effortless CRM powered by communication tools

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n effective communication plays a crucial role in the overall management of the organization. It also stimulates the basic functions of the organizations which enhance management stability such as planning, leading, organizing, and controlling. Voicent Communication is a US-based company aspires to eliminate the communication gap between companies and its management.

Through communication automation, the firm makes its business operations sustainable and efficient, also improving operations from lead generation and sales to customer service. From last fifteen years, the company has enhanced its products to over 50 countries worldwide. Voicent is headquarters in Mountain View, US. The firm strongly believes in business goals and design products that are changing the ways for people to find information, do business, communicate and learn.

A Trailblazer with Software Expertise Joe Wu is the CEO at Voicent Communication. He founded the company in 2002. Joe believes in the vision and leadership that keeps Voicent focused on top-notch customer value products. While explaining his whims Joe asserts, "Voicent technology

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should do more than simply work. It should work wonders.”

without data, CRM software is virtually useless.”

Joe is a successful Silicon Valley veteran whose expertise ranges from chip design to large software systems.

He aided his skill in companies like LSI Logic, Hewlett-Packard, and many Silicon Valley startups. Joe holds a Masters in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara and has consistently delivered software solutions that exceed expectations.

Shaping Journey with Flagship Products In October 2003, Voicent has set its first major milestone when it released its flagship product, "Voicent Gateway 1.0". The successful product offered its customers unlimited possibilities in providing innovative communication solutions. Since then, Voicent’s Gateway has served as a springboard for innovative products including its automated appointment-reminder software, phone, email and textmessage broadcasting software, customer relationship management software, computer-contained PBX systems, and design software for creating customized Interactive Voice Recognition systems.

Simplifying CRM Solutions Voicent products provide voice communication, email communication and text-message communication with unparalleled levels of automation and point-and-click ease. As a result, Voicent’s platform goes well beyond a CRM system. At the level where the company’s solutions extend the basic CRM functions with communication tools in voice, email and text messages and sensors as auto tracking customer interactions.

Joe mentions, “The biggest challenge many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have is choosing tools from different vendors, and none of the tools are data-centric. If you look at communication solutions, most are just to make and answer calls. On the other hand, CRM solutions require tons of manual work to collect customer engagement data because

Joe also states that “Our experience serving customers has led us to understand the needs of SMBs like no other CRM company out there. This is why Voicent prioritizes creating automated, easy-to-use, and comprehensive solutions that address the entire customer acquisition process.”

Unique CRM Solutions Voicent is the only company that provides an all-in-one cloud service focusing on customer acquisition, a built-in CRM system for data

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Empowering businesses sustainable and efficient growth with communication automation.

management. It also enhances the workflow engine for process automation, and a full suite of communications tools for voice, text, email, chat, and web. Voicent unique platform are best known for.

Extraordinary Ease-of-Use: It nearly works for all tasks which are accomplished within an intuitive dashboard with minimal training or technical expertise, even marketing campaign design and management.

Automated Data Collection and Recording: It automatically saves all customer interactions from phone calls, to emails, to text into CRM for both inbound and outbound communication.

Automated One-to-One Customer Engagement: It tracks all customer activities while visiting the company’s website and generates automated email, text, or phone messages to ascertain buyer interest levels.

Integrated Sales and Marketing Campaigns: This platform shares CRM data and campaign data which can be easily launched, measured and managed. One campaign can be easily created and launched based on a previous campaign’s results.

Customer-centric Business Process Automation: Through Voicent processes customer contact preferences can be collected and honored automatically were initiated connection can be routed to specific departments or individuals.

Customer Information Readily Available Anytime and Anywhere: It holds well-designed remote-agent capabilities and browser-based controls enable effective and efficient use in centrally-located or remote settings.

Joe Wu CEO

Elimination of Time-Consuming but Important Administrative Tasks: The platform is used for 24/7 monitoring and tracking web activity and also handles scheduled marketing or customer-service tasks, and the automation process.

Solidifying Future through Technology Advancements With its cloud service, Voicent eliminates the loss of information and lags that result from integrating communication tools and CRM system across different vendors and platforms. Voicent provides a tested and durable cloud platform that has unified following features to serve diversified business needs: Its ‘Communication Tool’ is a full array of enterprise-grade such as phone, SMS, email, web, chat, and social media.

With a unified ‘CRM’ platform, it generates automated data collection, campaign management, and real-time display of customer information anytime anywhere. Additionally, the ‘Workflow Engine’ platform enables any business process to be executed through automation. And, ‘Interface’ dashboard is a platform that has been exceptionally used for high work efficiency and productivity.

In the long run, Voicent’s goal is to be concerning solution for acquiring customer efficiency. And to achieve this, Voicent is harnessing the power of cutting-edge technology and also incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI) into its platform and makes it even more effective and durable.

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Benchmarking Future

The Future of

CRM is in your Inbox

Aleem Co-founder Streak

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t Streak, we built a CRM with the idea of a deep and embedded integration where salespeople have access to relationship management from their primary work surface—their email inbox. The deep integration with Gmail and the rest of G Suite is a result of our close relationship with the Google team.

opposed to hours and also helps us learn from any mistakes the algorithm might make. The future is where humans spend time on what they do best—building relationships, understanding their customers business and closing deals—while all the administrative work is handled by the machine.

customer—a company delivering physical products to SaaS industry leaders at tremendous scale— was confident that the tool was saving them each, on average, ten hours a week.

Those hours would have been spent looking for missed orders, historical conversations, and tracking down details that should already be available.

Streak simplified that. By living inside their inbox, their whole team has been able to collaborate and track interactions with leads—providing newfound clarity to the sales cycle. As a result, orders have stopped falling

Another major problem we think While it takes a moment to wrap users’ CRM’s need to solve, is helping sales heads around the fact that a CRM teams work together. Often times a could actually be run inside their salesperson would not even know that email, it makes perfect sense. It means a teammate has a relationship with a that salespeople will actually use their CRM, a problem that has plagued the industry for years.

About the Company The future is where salespeople don’t use two different tools to Streak is a next-generation CRM that offers spreadsheet-style communicate with their leads tracking capabilities built directly into the inbox. With over 4500 and manage those leads in a customers, Streak is disrupting the CRM space to offer a system pipeline.

Unfortunately, even in today’s age of technology, salespeople spend the majority of their day on administrative tasks and not enough time actually selling. At Streak, we believe that the next most effective CRM will aim to flip that ratio by having the CRM do all the basic follow-ups: updating the status of a deal, scheduling next steps, or even sending documents to customers.

Streak accomplishes this by using hundreds of millions of data points from their customers.

of engagement different from their competitors’ systems of record.

About the Author Aleem is the Co-founder at Streak. Prior to Streak, Aleem was a PM at Google. He studied Software Engineering at the University of Waterloo and received an MBA from Harvard. Aleem was legally allowed to fly before he could drive.

By making the input of data easy and integrated with the inbox, we’re able to use these data points to build and train a machine-learning AI engine that will do the administrative work for our users. We also realize, however, that no algorithm is ever perfect, so the automation interface we’re building will always ask the salesperson for confirmation before taking action.

This lets a salesperson finish all their administrative tasks in minutes as

customer they are trying to partner with. At Streak, we’re solving this by letting teams selectively share their emails with customers in an automated fashion.

behind and the team has been collaborating more effectively than ever. The future is where your sales team has clarity on what’s happened before and what’s happening next.

Salespeople can easily see who on their team has talked to a customer before.

The future is where every salesperson has the collective customer knowledge of their entire company at their fingertips.

Being a thought-leader in the CRM space means that we’re always looking to the future. At Streak, we’re already leveraging big data in our automation efforts but we have more exciting initiatives ahead of us. By bringing the benefits of machine-learning to the sales inbox, we’re hoping to enable more sales teams to close more deals, more efficiently.

The future of CRM lives in your inbox but there are customers today who are living that future today. One Streak

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