TrueSales Corporation

Catalyst's suite of Selling CenterSelling Portal software manages the detailed information related to a company's products and services thus enabling the company to effectively negotiate and close a sale and to communicate all relevant information about sales transactions to the appropriate parties inside and outside the company. A (Selling CenterSelling Portal) encompasses a quoting, estimating, order and product configuration system for sales support as well as an executive reporting tool for sales management.

WrightTools (Selling CenterSelling Portal) software also allows a company to incorporate sales and engineering expertise into the application. It has a unique lead to order pipeline process, supports multi-level sales channel management, and provides communication to all relevant parties in both the buyer and seller organizations.

The WrightTools product line comprises a set of sales support tools. The two primary software applications with additional modules of functionality included are:

• SalesTransact Suite used for quoting, estimating, pricing and proposals
• eInteract used for creating and accessing both the selling expertise and the capability of configuring products and services

Licensing is priced by user (seat) and the software can be either client (LAN) or browser based (internet or intranet) and it utilizes a single common database.

PRODUCT DETAIL

WrightTools' (Selling CenterSelling Portal) software comprises a fully integrated set of modules that provide the following management functionalities:

Lead to Order Pipeline Management

WrightTools has organized around the tracking of the iterative stages of a lead through the quoting and order process. A lead to order pipeline ensures that all sales transactions are properly categorized (by status) and the correct process and personnel are in place to quickly and accurately communicate and close business opportunities. It allows the right resources to be applied at the right level of detail for each phase, which focuses on the real revenue opportunities.

Specific features include:

• Notification and disbursement of leads including tracking the opportunity with all related quote activity.
• Approval Status codes. These drive sales actions required for quoting and the correct workflow to move a quote to an order.
• Event notification using e-mail to notify and inform the required parties - promotes collaboration in the completion of the transaction.
• The system provides details on all activity throughout the pipeline process.

Multi-Level Sales Channel Management

Allows manufacturers to maintain the current sales models and improve support of their current selling methodology. Users can tune communication and collaboration to the channel requirements ensuring fewer mistakes and better customer service (through timeliness of information). This includes powerful sales functionality tailored specifically to the sales channel user.

Specific features include:

• Supports various Sales Channel types including inside sales, outside sales, resellers, manufacturer's independent sales representatives, business users, suppliers, service providers as well as others.
• Security to support different types of users within an individual sales channel or buying organization.
• The ability to create a hierarchy of management, sales and sales channels within an organization and across all sales channels.
• Access to the appropriate critical data to users including accurate pricing, products, services, terms and conditions when they need it and organized to help them sell.

Quote Engine and Document Management

This module guarantees that all information needed to successfully communicate a sale (closing documents) to all parties is available and complete. This significantly reduces non-value-added lead-time, reduces expensive errors and ensures rapid communication to back office. Quote management provides further details on the make up and breakdown of the products and services required by the customer. Specific features include:

• All information required for completing the transaction including drawings, e-mails internal notes, and appropriate authorizations are attached.
• Contact information, shipping, billing, main addresses, terms and conditions, internal and external notes, forecast data as well as payment options among other data are provided.
• Provides quote/order and line level data necessary to document sales information and ensures accurate pricing and customer specifications are there.
• Visibility of all margin, correct configurations, and product data for rapid approval and executions are included.

Parts and Pricing Management

Manages extensive information about parts and services, can be used for creating catalogs, and allows users the details necessary to communicate all the required information to the sales force and/or customer. Parts and pricing management allows for communication and enforcement of business agreements. This ensures that customers and sales personnel can quickly access correct products/service, minimizes mistakes and provides for the best value proposition. Cross-references to competitive products can assist in better product positioning for better margins and higher close ratios.

Specific features include:

• Simple or complex pricing models including copying and duplication of customer specific contracts.
• Multiple price books support to assist in different or specific sales channels and contracts.
• Time and volume agreements with quantity and set up fees included.
• Identification of pricing source for better analysis.
• Security to restrict specific product and services by sales channel.
• Storage and maintenance of competitive product parts data.

Account and Contact Management

SalesTransact supports all of the required sales information about the customer, distributor or even reseller's accounts. Account and contact management reduces transaction costs and helps in cross and up selling. It helps accomplish this by organizing and improving accessibility of critical account data, default data, as well as detail sales and quote history. Specific features include:

• Supports corporate relationships for multi site customer management.
• Provides for specific customer or sales channel contract conditions, credit information, terms and conditions and provides for default information to transfer to transactions.
• Creation of extensive internal and external notes. Users can access these notes by sales channel or customer and position within an organization.
• Sales personnel and their management can be associated with their accounts/contacts for commission tracking and performance analysis.
• Contact management with the necessary data on all of the individuals involved at the account, including details on location and type of involvement. Defaults for minimal data entry are standard.

Executive Information Management

SalesTransact provides critical data on what is happening in sales across all the sales channels, including details on opportunities that are being worked. Executive Information provides visibility based on detailed transaction information and provides more predictable forecasts and better revenue management by focusing on the right opportunities, and the ability to help improve sales by providing metrics to help the performance of lower producing channels.

Specific features include:

• Reporting includes all lead performance, quoting and order activity information.
• Win/loss data, business reasons, competitive analysis and weighted revenue figures.
• Forecast and sales activity by sale channel.
• Margin analysis on order, accounts and product sales.
• Visibility of quoted product line details and configurations for improved inventory management throughout the sales channel.
• Performance tracking of sales by sales channel.

Estimating and Custom Products Management

This module allows companies to customize products to meet specific customer requirements or specifications. Estimating and custom product management improves quote turn around time, provides accurate margin information and improves flexibility when working on projects. It gives companies the ability to build customer specific quotes, provide margin analysis and allow contracts to be developed based on internal and external supply chain data.

Specific features include:

• Users can build product structures (bills of material) and manufacturing requirements (routings) and can import parts from other systems or create virtual “one off“ products.
• Copy function allows for quick same as/except comparisons.
• Rolled up cost build-ups, mark ups and quantity breaks are supported
• Price or costs books can be used
• Provides critical margin analysis for management.
• Can be front-ended with rules based questions that allow the sales force to capture all of the required data for engineering to custom build a quote.

Portal Management

This allows additional suppliers to be involved in deals by providing them with secured access to their own information, products/services, pricing, and costs. It can help improve revenue and profit margins by allowing a manufacturer to leverage their existing sales and infrastructure (WEB) resources. They can rapidly expand their own product and service offerings to include complimentary offerings from their suppliers with little or no overhead. They will collect commission on additional products and services sold.

Specific features include:

• Companies can sell other complementary products by including suppliers as part of their offering.
• Suppliers can update their own price/cost structures.
• Specific terms and conditions to each supplier can be included.
• Supplier information can be directly used in building contract pricing.

Product, Sales and Order Configuration Management

eInteract allows sales and engineering requirements to be integrated into the process, ensuring pricing and correct configuration of complex products. Product and order management provides proven and significant returns in the areas of improved margins (reduction or elimination of mistakes both in pricing and configuration), lower costs (less engineering or internal support requirements), better customer service (buying experience and reduced lead times), and overall lower transaction costs. Specific features include:

• Easy rules creation with drop and drag capability that allow engineers to impart and maintain sales knowledge database.
• Ability to create code driven, natural language specification or sales diagnostic configuration input.
• Correctly prices product, orders or services.
• Unique object orientation that allows a single set of rules to support multiple products within a product family.
• Complex pricing and look up capability with multiple price book look up, and formula based pricing.

Sales and Business Expertise Management

eInteract ensures the correct product selection and interactive expertise is available at the web site to recommend to the customers exactly the products that they need. Sales and business expertise improves the selling experience while reducing costs by providing expert knowledge about your products and services without the cost of live personnel. Reduced overhead comes in the form of creating interactive and dynamic scripts to accurately collect all critical data every time.

Specific features include:

• Interactive prompting of questions and filtering of choices based on built in ”expert logic“.
• Ability to link to more information, find or select ”found products“ to a shopping cart
• Rules creation can be through intuitive drop and drag graphical interface.
• Data collected can be stored for sales analysis.

Integration Across the Enterprise

System can easily be integrated with existing ERP and CRM systems. Integration can be done by customers or contractors, and for some leading systems integration standardized framework already exists.