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General Product Questions
Customisation Questions
How to Get Started Questions
Reporting Questions
Importing Questions
Security and Scalability Questions

General Product Questions

Q. What is Sales Force Automation?

A. Salespoint's Sales Force Automation application gives companies the tools and insight they need to maximise revenues and cut operational costs. Sales Force Automation provides a clear view of your sales pipeline and delivers instant snapshots of key sales metrics, such as revenue forecasts and sales in different countries. As a result, sales teams can generate accurate forecasts of revenue and customer demand, eliminate costly pipeline bottlenecks, and effectively collaborate to transform prospects into profitable customers. Flexible customisation allows companies to easily configure the application to match their own unique sales methodology or sales process. Because every lead is recorded, automatically routed to the right sales organisation and sales representative, and tracked through the pipeline in real time, no opportunities are missed.

Q. What is Customer Service & Support Management?

A. Salespoint's Customer Service & Support application enables companies to forge strong relationships and increase customer satisfaction while simultaneously streamlining customer service & support operations. Customer Service & Support provides systematic case tracking and management, allowing companies to automatically capture, route, and escalate cases based on customised business rules. As a result, companies can gain valuable insight into the source of top customer inquiries, identify up-sell/cross-sell opportunities, and ensure that no customer inquiries are dropped. Additionally, a centralised knowledgebase of customer solutions helps support teams retain organisational expertise, standardise solutions handling, improve response time, and shorten the ramp up time for new reps. Easy integration with call centre and back office systems enables companies to deliver more effective customer service through a single point of contact.

Q. What is Marketing Automation?

A. With Salespoint's Marketing Automation application, companies can maximise the return on their marketing investment with detailed tracking, reporting, and analytical tools that provide precise measurements on what marketing campaigns are performing, why they are performing, and the types of leads they attract. Trade shows, direct mail, advertising, and promotions can all be tracked, analysed, and optimised so that the best possible leads are delivered to your sales organisation. Integrated lead management ensures that leads are routed to the appropriate sales rep and monitored in real time, so that no leads are dropped. Additionally, marketing teams can optimise market segmentation, analyse existing customers for cross-sell/up-sell opportunities, standardise marketing and sales communications, and gain critical insight into lifetime customer value.

Q. What does Salespoint do?

A. Salespoint is a customisable, web-based Sales Automation solution, allowing you to organise and manage all of your customer information. All of your leads, opportunities, contacts, accounts, forecasts, cases, and solutions are easily viewed and can be appropriately shared with colleagues. Additionally, Salespoint lets you analyse and segment your customers and prospects, track your marketing effectiveness, and generate valuable reports from your data. Because Salespoint runs on the Internet - helpful, time-saving resources are integrated into the application and made available in order to provide real-time information about your prospects and customers.

Q. How does Salespoint work?

A. Salespoint web based and hosted in a secure data centre. Users simply connect to Salespoint via the Internet. In the same way you would log on to your favourite web site, you can connect to Salespoint and enter detailed information about your sales, service, and marketing activities. If you have a Web browser and an Internet connection, you are ready to start using Salespoint.

Q. I'm a Sales Manager. How can I benefit from using Salespoint?

A. Salespoint is beneficial for Sales Executives and Sales Managers. For Sales Managers, it is easy to train new employees and make existing employees more productive with easy access to sales best practices. With Salespoint, managers can also immediately track forecast roll-ups, without having to ask each individual rep to submit their reports. In addition, you can drill into a rep's forecast to quickly identify which opportunities may need your assistance. Salespoint also includes many pre-configured reports to display aggregated sales data that can easily be shared with your executive management without having to manually aggregate data from each Sales Executive in your organisation.

Q. I work in a team-selling environment. Can my entire team use Salespoint?

A. A key benefit of Salespoint is its ability to share data real-time and enable all team members to leverage a common set of information in one easily accessible location. As the owner of a given account, you have the power to grant all team members full access to ensure everyone can add data, and view each others' public notes, upcoming activities, and opportunities.

Q. My organisation uses resellers to sell our products. Can they access Salespoint, too?

A. As long as the reseller sales representative has a user name and password, you can grant them secure access to your sales data within Salespoint. By extending Salespoint to external partners, your organisation can easily share leads with your resellers, keep on top of all your reseller's deals, and ultimately maintain access to your end user customers.

Q. I'm a Customer Support Manager. How can I benefit from using Salespoint?

A. With Salespoint you have a unified knowledgebase integrated with a comprehensive CRM system. It is easy to capture all details of customer problems and inquiries, whether they come by phone, fax, email, or even directly from your Web site. Manage caseload and flow across your support team and analyse your volume by case characteristic and customer segment. Re-use known solutions to increase the efficiency and response-time of your support reps without reinventing the wheel. Finally, share insight into potential problem areas with product management, development, and manufacturing to ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction and product quality.

Q. I'm a Marketing Manager. How can I benefit from using Salespoint?

A. With Salespoint, you can align your marketing initiatives with the appropriate target audiences, ensure that you are sending the right message at the right time, analyse existing customers for cross-sell/up-sell opportunities, and standardise marketing and sales communications. You get integrated lead management, aggregated customer information, comprehensive customer analysis, basic list management, and campaign effectiveness analysis. Product and brand managers get real-time visibility into the sales pipeline and customer support process to view issues, concerns, enhancement requests, and prioritisation.

Q. What platforms do I need to have in order to run Salespoint?

A. Since Marketpoint hosts the application, all you need is a computer or an alternative device that can run a Web browser. It doesn't matter what type of hardware or operating system you're running.

Q. How do I get upgrades to Salespoint?

A. Because Salespoint is web based, any time we add a new feature, you will have access to it immediately the next time you visit the site. There is no need to download any software or make system adjustments.

Q. What large companies have already bought?

A. Some of our larger customers include National Car Rental, Honeywell, PerkinElmer, Caterpillar and Intermec.

Q. What is the difference between Salespoint Corporate and Salespoint 1?

A. Salespoint Corporate includes an Enterprise Infrastructure to provide advanced customisation, integration, and administration functionality. The advanced customisation meets the needs of companies with complex customer-facing organisations, such as multiple sales groups or international divisions.

Q. What is the "Online Infrastructure"?

A. The Salespoint Online Infrastructure is a unique Web-based application comprising hosting (servers, database, security, scalability, backup, redundancy, disaster backup recovery site, load balancing, caching, monitoring, storage, etc.), license management, business process support, multilingual and multi-currency support, reporting, and front-line end-user support and training. Companies implementing a conventional CRM application have to license or internally staff and fund these functions above and beyond the software licenses, exponentially increasing the total cost of ownership. Salespoint provides these functions in its Online Infrastructure as an integral part of its Sales automation, at no additional charge.

Q. Can I upgrade from Salespoint 1 to Salespoint Corporate?

A. Yes. Salespoint 1 customers can easily migrate all of their existing data and settings to Salespoint Corporate with no effort on their part and minimal work on Salespoint's part. Customers will probably want to use Marketpoint Bureau Services for the business implementation work needed to take advantage of the robust customisation, integration, and administration capabilities included in Salespoint Corporate.

Q. How do I upgrade from Salespoint 1 to Salespoint Corporate?

A. Customers should contact Marketpoint to complete the necessary arrangments, including an annual subscription agreement. Once we are notified of the change, we can upgrade a customer within 24 hours.

Q. Can I migrate from Salespoint Corporate to Salespoint 1?

A. No. Because Salespoint Corporate includes significant new functionality and database settings, such as sharing privileges, multiple user interface configurations, user profiles, and more, there is no way to migrate an Salespoint Corporate customer back to SP1.

Customisation Questions

Q. What customisation can I carry out with Salespoint?
A.All customisation is carried out by the technical team at Marketpoint. This enables almost any level of customisation, from small screen changes, right up to entire database re-structuring. This flexible approach allows the client to use the application, evaluate what they like, and what they would like to change, and then feedback to Marketpoint.

How to Get Started Questions

Q. How do I get access to Salespoint?

A. Because Salespoint is an online service, there is no hardware or software to buy, install, or maintain. Just point your browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.0 or higher) or Netscape Navigator (version 4.5 or higher) to the login page and login.

Q. Is any training required to learn to use Salespoint?

A. Salespoint is designed to be easy to learn and can be used immediately. Our customers find that using Salespoint is extremely intuitive and user friendly.

Q. Is there training available if I need it?

A. While training is not required, we offer training for users and administrators of the Salespoint solution. The sessions run between 1 hour and half a day and cover typical usage by a user and administrator.

Q. What involvement is required from my company's IT department?

A. None. Salespoint applications are accessed through the Internet via a Web browser and require no modifications or upgrades to your existing environment. All you need is Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.0 or higher) or Netscape Navigator (version 4.5 or higher), and you are ready to use Salespoint. Because there is no hardware, software, or network equipment to purchase, and the application is accessed through a standard Web browser, your IT department will not need to implement or maintain the Salespoint solution.

Q. How quickly can my company be up and running?

A. With Salespoint you can be up and running within a matter of weeks. For Salespoint 1 users this can be a matter of days.

Q. What is the job of the Salespoint System Administrator?

A. The Administrator is responsible for the set-up of your Salespoint online "Organisation," in conjunction with Marketpoint's Account Manager. This includes adding users, establishing their roles, configuring pick lists (drop-down menus), and adding custom fields. The Administrator may also manage the initial process of importing your company's existing account, contact data, and notes.

Q. How does Salespoint handle territory management?

A. Salespoint's role hierarchy allows customers to easily manage the roll-up of information among territories. The hierarchy structure is not based on traditional titles, but rather on a hierarchy of roles. Multiple people with different traditional titles can be assigned to the same role. A user's role helps determine the information that user can see. Users can always view the information of other users assigned to roles directly below them in the hierarchy. A user's role also determines which data is accessible to him or her in forecasts.

Q. How does Salespoint's Organisation Sharing Model work?

A. Salespoint has a flexible Organisation Sharing Model. As the Administrator, you can define the default sharing model for your organisation to give users greater access to information. The three sharing model options can be selected separately for Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities. These models include: Private: This choice allows users to access only the data they are listed as owning. Individuals can choose to grant access to specific Accounts (and the associated Contacts) and Opportunities to their colleagues. If you choose this sharing model as the Administrator, the default is that those items are private. Public Read-Only: This choice allows users to read-but not change-all Accounts (and the associated Contacts) and Opportunities in their organisation, regardless of who owns those areas. Individuals can choose to grant update privileges to specific Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities to their colleagues, but the default is those items are read-only. Public Read-Write: This choice allows all users the ability to read and write to all Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities. If you are an Administrator, whatever option you choose, Salespoint makes it very easy for your organisation to control the access to information.

Reporting Questions

Q. Can I get report information out of Salespoint?

A. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel and other desktop applications by selecting the "CSV" button in the display of every report.

Importing Questions

Q. How do I import my existing data into Salespoint?

Your Marketpoint Account Manager is ready to carry out this process for you, and advise on any data cleaning issues.

Security and Scalability Questions

Q. How can I be assured my data will be kept private?

A. We are committed to keeping your sales data private and secure. To this end, Marketpoint has expressly stated how we will handle your private data. For a greater understanding of the legal obligations Salespoint adheres to regarding data privacy, please refer to the Salespoint Terms of Use Agreement.

Q. Does Marketpoint ever view or use my data?

A. No. "Salespoint will not review, share, distribute, print, or reference any such Data except as provided in the Salespoint Terms of Use, or as may be required by law. Individual records may at times be viewed or accessed only for the purpose of resolving a problem, support issue, or suspected violation of the Terms of Use, or as may be required by law. Of course, customers are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of their user registration and password."

Q. What happens when the Salespoint database goes down?

A. Salespoint has built redundancy into all its systems in order to minimise any system failures that could be perceived as customer outages. Salespoint achieves a practically unheard-of 99.9% scheduled uptime level. All components of the Salespoint system are proactively monitored and managed so that faults are detected before system outages. Salespoint realises there may occasionally be system outages due to issues beyond our control. Salespoint has established numerous escalation procedures to notify the proper personnel in the event of any system outage and remedy any issues as quickly as possible. Since the application is managed by Marketpoint for all customers, the people who best understand the architecture, installation, and design are immediately available to resolve any issues.

Q. How scalable is Salespoint?

A. Salespoint has the capacity to scale to the largest of enterprises. The architecture behind the Salespoint solution was designed to handle millions of users. We use the most scalable Dell servers, and can scale as rapidly as our customers require.