Software empowers sales effectiveness.
Press Release Summary:
Centralized and scalable, EnterpriseROI(TM) Sales Tool Platform v4.0 helps B2B and IT vendors prove business value and ROI of their solutions. Programming-free, Web-based sales tools drive sales programs that align with each stage of customer buying process. Leveraging customer-specific benchmarks, company comparisons, benefit assessments, and cost analyses, users can create tools to help understand goals/opportunities, empower peer benchmarking, drive recommendations, and calculate TCO.
Original Press Release:
Alinean Launches EnterpriseROI(TM) Version 4.0 to Empower Sales Effectiveness
New Features Driven by Customers' Recognition that Communicating Value Messages Vital to B2B Sales and Marketing Success
ORLANDO, Fla., June 26 -- Alinean, Inc., the leading expert on IT Business Value Selling solutions, today announced a significant upgrade to their industry-standard toolset, with the launch of EnterpriseROI(TM) Sales Tool Platform version 4.0. The new features will extend the ability of B2B and IT vendors to effectively prove the business value and return on investment (ROI) of their solutions amid an increasingly competitive marketplace.
The new EnterpriseROI(TM) brings the power of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to Alinean's comprehensive suite of sales tools. Centralized, scalable & flexible, this turnkey solution enables the industry's first programming-free, web-based sales tools. Using the EnterpriseROI software and platform, sales and marketing teams are enabled to drive effective value-based sales programs to align with each stage of the customer buying process.
By leveraging customer-specific benchmarks, company comparisons, benefit assessments and cost analyses, they can easily create highly-effective tools to help understand goals and opportunities, empower peer benchmarking, drive intelligent solution recommendations, calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages and provide customer-specific, quantifiable proof of ROI to frugal executive prospects.
According to the latest selling and marketing effectiveness research, Business Value Selling is an important driver to sales success, especially as the economy continues to tighten. A recent SiriusDecisions Sales Readiness survey polled more than 120 sales and marketing executives in organizations ranging in size from $10 million to more than $2 billion, in vertical markets that included technology, financial services, healthcare, information services and others. When asked to rank five prominent inhibitors to a salesperson's ability to make plan, findings show that the inability to communicate value messages to customers and prospects finished at the top of the list. The full report can be found at www.siriusdecisions.com/ .
According to Joe Galvin, Vice President, Service Director of SiriusDecisions, "Today's most effective reps understand that establishing relationship credibility, and providing genuine value to a prospect or customer throughout the buying cycle, is the difference between ultimately closing the deal or losing it. When engaged by potential buyers, the successful sales representative significantly enhances the ability to influence the final decision by being prepared to fill knowledge gaps with the specific, customized information they need -- and can't get from other sources."
Implementing the powerful EnterpriseROI business value toolset and practices represents an opportunity for vendors to collaborate and form a consultative partnership with their customers -- and significantly upgrade the quality of interactions. As an example, prospects can initially engage through easy-to-use, self-service tools from a company website. Sales teams can then leverage more in-depth consultative selling tools to accelerate and support the customer throughout the buying process.
"Today over 90% of corporate buyers and executives expect B2B vendors to help them assess opportunities and quantify the value of proposed solutions," said Tom Pisello, CEO and founder of Alinean. "With Alinean's EnterpriseROI tools, the process of opportunity discovery, value quantification, ROI and TCO analysis is automated, helping vendors better connect with frugal buyers and win executive approval."
The Alinean EnterpriseROI version 4.0 release adds a number of key new features, including:
-- Easily creates any type of value-based benchmarking, assessment, ROI/TCO or configurator/pricing sales tools from a single development and delivery platform.
-- Consolidates existing value-based sales tool campaigns onto one centralized software platform to collect data from customers, use the data in assessment and benchmark reports, capture leads and track progress and track user adoption.
-- Easily converts any existing spreadsheet-based sales tools developed by internal subject matter experts or consultants into more powerful, value-based sales tool applications that are easier to use, support and maintain.
-- Enables companies to develop sales tools the way they want, either internally via their own Alinean trained and certified ValueExpert(TM) authors - where internal subject matter experts design, create and maintain sales tools - or by engaging Alinean's team of ex-Gartner and leading B2B ROI/TCO experts to help design, create and validate tools. Complete turnkey development is also available.
-- Offers full international selling support including worldwide metrics and research, international language enablement and currency support
-- Delivered quickly and cost effectively via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to reduce the cost of sales tool campaign development, maintenance and support.
-- Other key exclusive features include:
-- Support for improved customizable, easy to use and attractive user interface
-- Compelling turnkey PPT and Word assessment
-- Updated Peer Comparison(TM) application and ValueBase(TM) of financial & IT benchmarks for 20,000 worldwide companies
-- Online and desktop (off-line) options
-- Team-based selling and collaboration
-- Lead generation and authenticated web services integration
"As our sales tool development partner to our most trusted customers, Alinean delivers a software-as-a-service platform to make our business value playbooks and white papers come to life -- completely personalized, interactive and relevant to each client situation," said Randy Perry, VP of Business Value Strategy at IDC. "Alinean's latest release of their EnterpriseROI platform provides us with the capability to create any benchmark, assessment or ROI sales tool to empower our IT vendor customers effectively and efficiently communicate business value."
"Our sales tool-based marketing campaigns have been proven to deliver more, highly qualified leads than other campaigns, while empowering sales professionals, channel partners and consultants with the ability to better connect with frugal executives and buyers, quantify the value of proposed solutions to gain priority, faster decisions, reduce discounting and increase deal size," said Mr. Pisello, "Our B2B customers have used these value-based sales and marketing tools to drive incremental revenue and derive a clear competitive selling advantage."
Alinean EnterpriseROI 4.0 and the complete feature set is available immediately and rolled out free of charge to all current Alinean customers. More information about EnterpriseROI and a complete listing of features and benefits can be found at: www.alinean.com/EnterpriseROI.asp .
About Alinean
Alinean develops software and solutions to streamline the B2B selling process with business value selling solutions -- using ROI/TCO and business case analysis to prove and improve the value of solutions to prospects and customers. The company's founding team pioneered the concept of interactive ROI and TCO software in 1994, developing award-winning solutions for leading B2B vendors and consultants. Its research methodologies and software tools are used by analyst firms and consultancies such as IDC and B2B leaders such as Oracle, HP, Dell, SAP, Microsoft, Symantec and IBM, and have helped justify billions of dollars in IT spending and derived value. For more information, visit www.alinean.com or call 407.382.0005.
CONTACT: Judy Robinet of Alinean, Inc., +1-407-382-0005, Ext. 302, pr@alinean.com
