Paperless collateral cuts costs, speeds sales process for software company
By shifting to a web-based portal from iCentera to manage its marketing collateral, software company Infor has slashed the bill for printed materials from $130,000 per quarter to roughly $10,000 to $15,000 per quarter.
That's a reduction of 89 percent.
At the same time, the CRM and enterprise asset management software company has made it simpler for its marketing and sales support team to FIND the right, most updated collateral, according to Infor vice president of global marketing services David Alampi. Wild goose chases for materials -- which are often outdated anyway -- were costing Infor hundreds of hours of lost time.
"This was such an obvious solution," Alampi says.
iCentera describes itself as a sales-enablement company. The company's CEO, Craig Nelson, says iCentera was founded in 2003 with a vision of shifting corporate sales cultural away from the notion that collateral needs to be "hard copy everything." Aside from the obvious environmental benefits of eliminating paper waste, iCentera is also a content management play. It doesn't necessarily replace your existing electronic content management software application (if you have one), but it can help an organization keep better tabs on which content is being used and how often.
Yes, folks, another baby step toward that holy grail of assigning return on investment metrics to marketing campaigns. So, let's summarize. Cutting paper saves money. Moving electronic lets you see not only which collateral is being used (and NOT used) by your team, it also helps sales people find and deliver information faster.
In the case of Infor, the company maintains more than 1,200 data sheets and brochures, more than 400 case studies and something like 250 white papers that can be used by its marketing and sales teams in their pitches. It manages more than 5,500 separate pieces of collateral with the iCentera service.
Most of this content is now delivered to prospects electronically; what does get printed is produced on 100 percent post-recycled paper through a sophisticated print-on-demand system that was in place before Info adopted iCentera, Alampi says. There are average of 42 print orders per quarter, which is off from around 934 orders quarterly previously.
Nelson say that iCentera works with approximately 120 enterprise organizations who have tied its service to their sales portals or marketing collateral and content management system. The service is priced very flexibly: for example, an administrator might be billed at $60 per person per month, while providing a sales person with access might cost $30 per month.
Infor figures that 51 percent of its sales team is using the portal on a weekly basis, close to 90 percent use it at least once per month. Approximately two-thirds of the users are able to find what they are looking for in less than 30 minutes.
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com