14 DAY TRIAL // A report from analyst firm Gartner has recently found that enterprise investment in the iPad will benefit prospecting, account management and configure, price, quote (CPQ).
The company’s Michael Dunne noted this summer that there was growing usage of the Apple iPad and that CPQ ranking was the third most likely to provide high impact benefits, as far as the tablet’s effect on sales processes was concerned.
“Mobility innovations will resonate with field sales forces that have to capture requirements, position products, assemble deals, generate proposals and quotes, and modify deals over the course of negotiations,” said Dunne.
“More promising use cases involve sales teams working on proposals while on the road and in home offices to assemble deals for simple services, as well as for ship-to-order and simpler assemble-to-order (i.e. limited variation of components) solutions,” he added.
Dunne’s June 2011 report, entitled ‘iPads: Their Impact on the Top Six Sales Processes’, meantions that Cameleon Software, a leader in ‘next generation’ product configuration, quotes, proposals (CPQ) and eCommerce software, has provided the first mobile configurator that runs on Apple’s iPad natively.
Available in the App Store and tightly integrated with Force.com (salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform) the app can either integrate with Salesforce CRM, or it can be used ‘as is’
It works in real-time to help companies configure their products and services, quickly and accurately.
“Salesforce.com was a pioneer in sharing a vision of how social and mobile technologies impact business. Cameleon shares our vision as they find innovative ways to make mobile configuration a reality,” said Kraig Swensrud, chief marketing officer, salesforce.com.
Cameleon CEO Jacques Soumeillan added that their firm recently received a positive rating from the Gartner MarketScope for the CPQ market.
Soumeillan said he believed his company could easily pass for a ‘visionary veteran’ in the market.
To back his claims, Soumeillan said that “For more than two decades, we have helped customers increase revenue. Today we are the first vendor to offer a mobile configurator native on the iPad and iPhone. This demonstrates our unique ability to enable our customers to further benefit from their CPQ investment by selling more anywhere and everywhere.”