CRM Software Developer Advanced Concepts Augments Customer Communications with WebDemo Online Conferencing and Collaboration

The Situation:

As a developer of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Advanced Concepts is constantly thinking about its own interaction with customers. Since the company's inception in 1980, Advanced Systems has been looking for a way to facilitate product demonstrations, and to make it easier to express the sometimes-difficult concepts of Customer Relationship Management. The company's CRM product-SalesCTRL™ -provides many advanced capabilities and integrates tightly into existing database applications, which at times make it difficult to explain.

Another division of Advanced Systems develops TRAVERSE™ financial accounting software enhancements, and it was inevitable for the two successful products to become integrated. With the integration of the two products, Advanced Concepts was able to provide many new capabilities by creating a whole application that was far greater the sum of its parts. CRM and accounting integration opened new doors for the use of CRM software, and the facilitation of automated customer transactions and record keeping. However, introducing these revolutionary new capabilities also presented a problem-the concepts were difficult to explain, requiring extensive customer visits and phone conversations, and almost inevitably a product demonstration or evaluation.

Advanced Concepts turned to the Internet for the answer-searching for a way to provide inexpensive demonstrations of their product online. "Speaking to a client on the phone isn't enough, yet the costs of extensive travel for customer visits and product demonstrations means that face-to-face meetings just aren't always possible," said Jeff Wohlfahrt, President of Advanced Concepts. "We needed a way to show our clients what we meant-to illustrate complex ideas easily. That meant finding a solution that would allow us to communicate online, while providing real product demonstrations and giving presentations dynamically."

The Solution:

While researching and evaluating products, Wohlfahrt discovered WebDemo™ from Converging Technologies. He was able to immediately recognize the benefits of WebDemo thanks to http://www.linktivity.com , where the WebDemo product is used to demonstrate its own capabilities-allowing visitors to participate in a real-time online demonstration with just a couple of easy clicks in their Web browser. As a developer of Customer Relationship Management solutions, Advanced Concepts is acutely aware of what customers are and are not willing to do-and it was easy to see that WebDemo was non-obtrusive enough for it to be accepted by end-users.

While WebDemo provides a host of advanced features to enhance online communications-including voice- and keyboard- chat, electronic whiteboarding, application sharing, and co-browsing-the product's ease of use is what allowed Advanced Systems to deploy the system. "The most outstanding feature of WebDemo is the product's simplicity," said Wohlfahrt. "Customers are asked to connect through our Web site for assistance in sales calls, support, and training. If the process of connecting to the system is anything less than seamless, you've lost the customer before the connection even opens."

Advanced Systems worked with Converging to implement WebDemo in sales, training, and support. "We initially implemented WebDemo back in version 1.0," commented Wohlfahrt. "As a development company, we understood the risks involved in a 1.0 deployment, but the benefits were too obvious to ignore. Converging provided us with exceptional support, and the initial implementation went without a hitch. The server installation only took about fifteen minutes."

WebDemo was evaluated against several competing products, but won the final selection process due to its ease-of-use, cost, control, and the flexibility of the system. While priced very competitively, WebDemo is a purchased server product-providing Advanced Concepts with a tool that they owned and could customize, as they deemed necessary. Many competitive products require per-use charges, which would require Advanced Systems to manage costs on a per-meeting basis. "That is a solution that would cripple itself, as we would be forced to scrutinize each use of the system financially." Added Wohlfahrt.

The Results:

The results of Advanced Concept's WebDemo implementation were immediate-the quality of remote consultations has improved the sales cycle, and costs have been reduced as well. WebDemo largely replaces the need to send out evaluation software, and in many cases reduces the needs to ship marketing collateral as well. "Using WebDemo we can actually demo our products and concepts online - you can communicate easily, conduct presentations, and provide real-time interactive product demonstrations. You'll be in the middle of a demo when the light bulb goes on and you know that they're thinking 'this is exactly what I'm looking for'. It gives our ideas and our products instant visibility."

The WebDemo solution also provides a necessary degree of flexibility to training. With the current economic decline, many companies have reduced or eliminated training budgets-hampering Advanced Concept's ability to properly educate and support their customers. However, by providing customized personal training online, training expenses can be dramatically reduced. A trainer can quickly set up a WebDemo session, allowing a customer to log in, and stay for any amount of time-tailoring training needs to suit customer requirements, cost considerations, and schedules.

"Our ability to communicate with our customers has increased our ability to operate as a company. And everybody benefits-we're actually reducing costs at the same time!" said Wohlfahrt. Advanced Concepts has enabled new levels of customer interaction, making it easier to communicate, consult, train, and support.

About Linktivity
Linktivity, a 20 year-old Tucson, Arizona-based division of Converging Technologies Inc., provides server-based communications and control products that enable person-to-person interactions through a browser window. Linktivity products include WebDemo, a Web-based, real-time conferencing and collaboration software tool, and WebInteractive, a real-time software tool that gives support professionals an efficient way to manage and resolve online support requirements for personal computers. For more information, please visit www.linktivity.com .