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Dear Readers,

The BigMachines Blog is expanding to a new web address: blogs.bigmachines.com.

At this new address, you will find even more resources about the topics you are interested in, including: b2b sales, on demand configuration, guided selling, quoting and proposal best practices, ecommerce for business-to-business organizations and more! We will continue to provide you with information about the events we host and attend, technology news and BigMachines product developments, information about our partners, sales strategy, and related topics.

The “old” blog is not going away — past articles will remain at this address for your reference but new posts, tips and tricks, and best practices will be found at blogs.bigmachines.com.

Why are we making this change?

We launched the BigMachines Blog in 2010 and have gained insights about what your interests are and learned new ways to serve your interests better. With our new blog, we will be providing even more engaging content with more frequent updates, and making it easier to find the content from search engines. In addition, you will be able to subscribe to one of our “micro-blogs” that provide targeted blog posts on specific topics such as B2B ecommerce, proposal generation, sales configuration, and many more.  But for the richest blog experience, simply go to blogs.bigmachines.com.

In addition, you can continue to stay informed on all things BigMachines by:

• Becoming our fan on Facebook
• Joining our LinkedIn Group
• Following us on Twitter
• or Subscribing to our Newsletter

Thanks for being part of the BigMachines community and if you are new, welcome to the neighborhood. Please let us know how we can continue to serve you better. You can reach us through any of our social networks or post a comment on our blog. We look forward to hearing from you.

Happy Selling,

The BigMachines Team

BigMachines recently announced the release BigMachines 12, the latest version of the company’s award-winning SaaS selling software.  BigMachines 12 delivers an enhanced user experience and ease of maintenance.

The new features delivered in BigMachines 12 are driven by customer input combined with extensive industry research.  BigMachines gathers product feedback by collaborating with customers on the My BigIdea innovation portal, regional Customer Success Forums and Cloud conferences in the United States and Europe.

“BigMachines 12 is the latest release in our long line of industry-leading SaaS software solutions.  Each new BigMachines product release improves upon the scalability, repeatability and predictability of the solution for our customers,” said John Pulling, Senior Vice President of Products, BigMachines.  “Customer feedback is crucial to the process and enables us to continue to deliver the features requested by our customers that will best drive their business productivity.”

The release notes are available to customers on the BigMachines Customer Support website.

Read the official BigMachines 12 Press Release: View Release

For additional information about BigMachines, please contact us:  www.bigmachines.com/contact.php

Sales Documents convey how “together” you are as an organization – did you throw something together, or take the time to understand, customize, and prioritize the relationship?

In this four-part series, we’ll share the benefits of the BigMachines Document Engine and leave you with a better understanding of what makes a winning proposal (or quote, or contract)!

Posts in this series:

Sales Documents: Quote, Proposal, Contract, Order, Receipt
Sales Documents: Marketing’s Perspective on Sales Quotes, Proposals and Contracts
Sales Documents: Streamline the Creation Process with Integration, Versioning, and eSignatures
Sales Documents: Reporting on Sales Contract Trends

Recent news from BigMachines…

TechWeek 100 introduces the 100 most innovative names in Chicago technology.

The purpose of the TechWeek 100 is to give credit to those individuals who are impacting the business and technology landscape on a global scale, from managing fast-growing technology companies to inventing new computer programming languages. The TechWeek 100 is not a rankings but rather a list of 100 technology leaders chosen through a review of nominations by the TechWeek advisors and the TechWeek team.

Included on the list is BigMachines Co-Founder and Senior Advisor, Godard Abel.

Godard was chosen for inclusion based on five major factors including:

1. Founder or executive of a fast-growth technology company
2. Publicity for technology leadership
3. Managing technology for corporations in Chicagoland
4. Support of the technology startup community
5. Making a public impact with technology

Read Godard’s profile and the profiles of all 100 Innovators at techweek.com/conference/techweek-10

(This is a re-post from our website. To view the release in its entirety, visit www.bigmachines.com/press_releases.php)

BigMachines, Inc. today announced the availability of BigMachines 11.1, the latest release of the company’s flagship, award-winning SaaS platform. BigMachines 11.1 enables sales teams, channel partners and resellers to easily configure products, generate quotes and proposals, manage complex pricing, generate legal contracts, submit and manage orders more efficiently and securely.

New features delivered in BigMachines 11.1 are the result of extensive industry research combined with customer input. BigMachines encourages customer feedback gathered from many sources: customers submit ideas via the My BigIdea innovation web portal, share and comment on product roadmaps at regional Customer Success Forums, and vote on most-requested enhancements during BigIdeas Customer and Cloud conferences in the United States and Europe.

Current BigMachines customers will benefit from enhancements and new features in BigMachines 11.1 include the following:

• Fast, dynamic user experience utilizing new AJAX configuration rules enables  dynamic updates without the need to refresh web pages.
• Intuitive drag and drop interface allows for easy reordering of product and part line items during commerce process.
• Streamlined Document Engine administration provides enhanced flexibility in designing document layouts for proposals, contracts and other sales documents.
• New workflow approval delegation options allow approvers to easily delegate  approval authority.
• Simplified document migration for faster deployment and upgrades.
• Expanded access to pricebook data in configuration rules.

To read the entire press release, visit www.bigmachines.com/press_releases.php.

Not sure how eCommerce can benefit your B2B sales team?

Learn more about the benefits of BigMachines eCommerce Engine and gain a better understanding of what makes a great eCommerce platform in this week long series!

Posts in this series:
Exploring eCommerce: Enterprise Portals and Cloud/Web Platforms
Exploring eCommerce: Web 2.0 Sales Tools
Exploring eCommerce: Sales Configuration
Exploring eCommerce: Sales Order Management
Exploring eCommerce: Mobile Web

There is a systematic shift happening in business. Organizations are becoming aware of the need to tap into new sales channels, but they often do so without adequate planning. B2B ecommerce is gaining increasing interest and adoption as a way to expand sales channels. Multichannel selling is a great path to increase revenue, but sales executives can’t tackle every channel, online, offline, mobile, ecommerce, etc., without the tools necessary to monitor, manage, and follow up.

The bottom line is that most organizations neither sell efficiently nor effectively. Despite the fact that a high performing sales organization is key to growth, our survey showed a clear disconnect between sales and the rest of the enterprise, hampering the success of the sales team. In far too many organizations, the sales organization works in a deep silo rather than in an interconnected, transparent setting. Despite the growing challenges for sales teams, the survey revealed optimism. Deal sizes are expected to increase throughout 2011 and hopefully beyond, pointing to anticipated growth. How can you ensure that your company is among those that fulfill those optimistic forecasts?

Continue reading this post at CRM.com

Salesforce.com’s Cloud Blog recently featured an interesting post on “connected computing” by Peter Coffee. We think it’s an interesting take on what “cloud” really means and how it doesn’t necessarily capture all that the cloud is capable of.

Here at BigMachines, we agree that there is tremendous business value in connecting customers, suppliers, partners as well as your own internal teams. In fact, now that we have all enjoyed the advantages of cloud (connected) computing, no one seems to be longing for the old days of poorly connected systems, accessible only when you are plugged in at your office with bulky devices.

Whether you call it Cloud Computing or Connected Computing, it represents both the present and the future. And BigMachines has been a proponent of it since we started our business in 2000, helping businesses grow revenue, sell more and sell faster – in the cloud and on-demand.

For many business to business sales organizations, eCommerce is seen as a threat to the sales team, or quickly dismissed as something that won’t work for their customers/products/services. But eCommerce is not simply a trend to write-off: Your customers are your peers, who have adopted online shopping and are managing a multitude of transactions via the web day in and day out.

While B2B eCommerce does differ from B2C, the two are not either/or. Discounting and other pricing rules, advanced self-service and support requests, and customizable and configurable products and services and high volume orders can all be processed in today’s web sales software.

Still not convinced the move is right for you? Here are just 10 benefits for your customers and sales team that may be realized by adding B2B eCommerce to your sales toolkit:

1. Provide product datasheets, descriptions and details from within an online product catalog. Your customers want information and no matter the time of day, day of the week, or busy schedule of your field reps, the information your customers and prospects need to make the decision to buy can be readily available via eCommerce web sites.
2. Link prospects to multimedia marketing materials. Remember that YouTube video the marketing team created? It’s time to give more exposure to a one-time campaign and provide relevant media files from directly within your sales toolkit.
3. Include warranty information where it is most likely to be read. Whether you choose to include warranty information with product descriptions and datasheets, or provide it from within an eCommerce shopping cart, you can ensure your customers are aware of the terms and conditions associated with their purchase.
4. Let happy customers do the selling for you with user reviews and product ratings similar to Amazon.com’s thriving review community. Have you ever bought something with less than a 3-star rating? Your prospects don’t want to either.
5. Integrate with social networks and promote social sharing and user communities.
6. Enable auto-suggest search for prospects who may not know what they need. This widely adopted tool allows users to start typing a phrase while related product searches are suggested.
7. Empower prospects with Guided Selling. Create survey-like questionnaires for customers to provide requirements, needs, and budget to return best-fit solutions.
8. Provide product comparisons to engage prospects in the evaluation process and allow them to understand the benefits of multiple models or service packages.
9. Include recommended items to increase average order value, and ensure customers never place an order without full knowledge of the parts needed to receive maximum benefits.
10. Automate the renewal process with self-service options for eCommerce users. Besides the traditional shopping cart functionality, eCommerce portals can integrate directly to ERP and CRM systems to enable customers to renew, reorder, and renegotiate contract terms as well as process payments online

In all, these ten benefits of eCommerce allow sales reps to spend more time selling to highly qualified, highly informed and highly engaged prospects and less time doing paperwork. While customers are empowered with information at their fingertips, in real time, on-demand. B2B eCommerce is a win-win!

We are so excited to have our first review on the salesforce.com AppExchange for our newest product, BigMachines QuickConfig, that we wanted to share it with you!

Bruce gave us 5-stars and left the following comments:

Thank you so much for your kind words, Bruce! We’re so happy to hear that QuickConfig helps you to sell more and sell faster!

To maintain sales momentum and grow market share, companies must now look to new tools and technologies that can reach across industries and across sales channels. Today’s successful business leaders are embracing solutions for optimizing flow, speed and accuracy, while improving efficiencies throughout all areas of their business, including Sales.

How do you eliminate waste, reduce inefficiencies, and improve order accuracy? You need to investigate all areas of your sales process, including product selection and configuration, pricing, quoting, and order processing. By applying innovative thinking and Web 2.0 technology, companies can eliminate the delays and errors inherent in the cumbersome processes typically used to sell complex products and services across multiple channels. Companies must eliminate inefficiencies throughout the inquiry-to-order process to remain agile and competitive in today’s global economy. Read the rest of this entry »

BigMachines announced today that two of its customers, AGCO and Enterasys Networks, were selected as winners of the seventh annual Progressive Manufacturing  PM100 Awards. The PM100 awards are given to companies that have successfully carried out projects that improve competitiveness and demonstrate mastery of one of eight foundation disciplines of Progressive Manufacturing.  Award winners were selected by Manufacturing Enterprise Communications, Inc., producers of the Manufacturing Leadership Summit and publishers of Managing Automation.  AGCO was recognized in the Customer Mastery category for its innovative use of the BigMachines Selling Platform, and Enterasys was recognized in the Supply Network Mastery category for their Sales & Operations Planning process improvements resulting from the integration of BigMachines with other key business applications. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of a press release from bigmachines.com

BigMachines, Inc., the leader in product configuration, pricing and quoting, proposal generator and B2B ecommerce, today announced that it has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious 2011 CODiE Awards. Established by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the CODiEs recognize excellence and achievement in the business software, digital content, and education technology industries. Being selected as a finalist is a unique and important distinction, as the CODiEs are the industry’s only peer-reviewed awards program.

BigMachines 10, the version of the company’s on-demand configuration, quoting and proposal software that was reviewed by the CODiE judges, was selected as a finalist in the “Best Integration Solution” category. Nominees in this category demonstrated innovative solutions designed to link disparate applications, operating systems, data and/or business processes used within an organization in order to simplify and automate their use and eliminate silos of information and functionality. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello and welcome to San Mateo, California — a small city just 25 minutes south of San Francisco and in the heart of silicon valley — and the home to BigMachines’ office in the sky! My name is Michael Martin and I’m a Senior Implementation Engineer here at BigMachines. Come on in and I’ll show you around the place. Read the rest of this entry »