Companies tired of seeing sales staff send poorly focused, error-filled communications to customers can find some relief in two updated services: Sants Sant Suite On-Demand 7.2 and Savo Groups Sales Asset Manager 5.0. Both provide good tools for standardizing customer-bound communications, and Sant Suite 7.2 has the added bonus of tools specifically designed for responding to requests for proposals.
Introduced in February, the hosted version of Sant Suite 7.2 starts at $59 per user per month and is based on suite components used; the components used to create proposals and RFP responses each cost $109. SAM 5.0, which began shipping in April, is available only as a hosted solution and starts at $1,000 per user per year.
During tests, eWeek Labs found that both services do a good job of helping sales and marketing teams organize and create sales content that can be used to build targeted, relevant communications for prospective clients.
The main things that set the solutions apart from each other are Sant Suite 7.2s dedicated RFP response tools and workflow and SAM 5.0s focus on presenting content consumers with a task-driven interface as well as its broad browser support and a pure Web interface.
At the core, both services are CMSes (content management systems) with interfaces for content creators (such as a marketing team) and content consumers (such as a sales team). Both allow content creators to create boilerplate data for specific selling situations, such as a letter, presentation slides or a formal proposal.
A wizard then helps content consumers build a personalized presentation or document from the boilerplate content generated by the products. The wizard helps users merge relevant personalized data, such as a particular customers pain points. Both products also allow content creators to determine what content can, and must, be included in customer communications.
We expect that organizations will see a fast return on investment with both products, in terms of time saved creating and managing documents. Both services provide other ROI benefits as well, because they can enforce a specific sales methodology and help simplify sales steps, such as sending thank-you letters.
Both services can integrate with Salesforce.coms service, and both can be extended to work with other sales management and order management systems via APIs. Because the products are heavily customizable, companies should plan on investing in internal training.
Technical Analyst Michael Caton can be reached at michael_caton@ziffdavis.com.
