Adventace Seeks to Automate Entire Sales Process

By TMCnet Special Guest

Arthur Cole, TMCnet Contributor

 

Pittsburgh-based Adventace says it has come up with a comprehensive sales force automation system that provides complete management of sales operations and team leaders with measurable performance metrics.

 

The company’s Sales Management System (SMS) is available as a hosted service under Salesforce.com’s AppExchange platform.

 

Company founder and CEO Bob Junke told TMCnet that the goal is to provide more than a simple repository for sales information. Rather, SMS aims to provide a system that matches existing processes.

 

“We took a look at why many CRM systems fail,” he said. “We decided to specialize in helping put processes in place to run the entire sales operation better.”

 

To that end, the system automates everything from the initial lead information, through pipeline management, forecasting and even skills development for sales people.

 

“We give a real picture of the success or failure a different seller may experience,” Junke said. “Are there problems with the account management? Prospecting? It gives managers a view as to whether a seller is having problems with 10 different selling skills and provides a plan to develop those skills.”

 

Pipeline management is a key element in the system in that it helps managers even out the flow of current and future sales activity. It does this by automatically building analytic tools designed to maintain pipeline balance against sales goals.

 

“It dramatically improves the probability to not only make the end-of-quarter numbers but to go into the next quarter with a loaded pipeline,” Junke explained. “It automatically determines if a seller has a gap and calculates what to do to resolve that gap.”

 

Equally important is the ability to evaluate a given sales opportunity and identify the critical needs of the potential client and how best to meet them. If those needs cannot be met, SMS makes it easier to decide to pursue another opportunity.

 

SMS is based on processes developed as part of Adventace’s High Performance Sales Environment (HPSE), an automated sales platform that the company claims can double the performance of a typical sales organization.

 

The company is already working on a means to tie SMS into a broader-based account management suite designed to integrate the major functions of account management with sales management tools capable of delivering execution-ready output.

 

Junke noted that SMS is available exclusively through Salesforce.com (News - Alert), which he called a “better, faster, cheaper way to distribute software.”

 

“With AppExchange, it took us two months to go from concept to completion,” he commented.

 

It is also scalable, with the ability to manager four-figure sales for the SMB market all the way to multi-million dollar projects of global enterprises.

 

Currently, Adventace is focused on the high-tech information and communications field, with clients like Cisco, EMC (News - Alert) and Oracle (News - Alert). However, Junke said the company is eager to branch out into other markets, such as manufacturing and healthcare.

 

“For manufacturers, there is a high percentage of sales through VARs,” he said. “We have the ability to help better manage those relationships. In pharmaceuticals and the regulatory environment they are subject to, this is the kind of system that provides sales managers with a great deal more information than traditional CRMs.”