Software Company Spreads Globally without Expanding Sales Force

Chafin, Goetz and Williams, Inc., is a software company that wanted big reach. It found a solution to broaden its sales capacity without expanding its staff through WebDemo by Linktivity.

CGW's flagship product, EnterpriseTwo (e2), is a tightly integrated suite of supply chain solutions for processing and managing. With customers across the United States, the company was ready to shoot for international business but didn't want to expand its sales force; WebDemo made that possible.

"We supplemented our limited sales force by giving interactive demonstrations of our product online," said Carl Flemister, Director of IT, "WebDemo allows us to do presentations in different geographic locations the same day. A few weeks ago, we did an early morning presentation for a potential client in India and then an afternoon presentation for another potential client in New Orleans. The cost was limited to the long distance phone calls that allowed us to discuss with them what they were looking at."

In addition, WebDemo allows CGW to turn over the operation of the system to the potential client so they can actually experience the look-and-feel of the system, an approach Flemister says clients appreciate because they drive the program themselves.

CGW's clients look to the company to create solutions that help them improve customer service and retention while reducing operational costs. The solutions are known in the industry to be quick to implement, state-of-the-art, easy to use, and extremely stable. For CGW, using WebDemo is another way the company demonstrates to its clients its concern and focus on optimizing technological solution to improve business practices.

CGW also uses WebDemo for customer support. The customer can show CGW exactly what the system is doing in their own environment so CGW can answer questions, explain the system's operation, and research the problem.

"This function has helped us immensely with customer support needs," Flemister said. "In particular, WebDemo's ability to switch viewport and operation back and forth is proving to be very valuable because the customer is not limited to describing what they see. This is truly a situation where a picture truly is worth a thousand words."

As CGW recently began allowing hardware and software vendors to sell WebDemo to their customers, CGW faced the problem of how to get the new sales people up to speed with the system. CGW considered bringing clients into its offices for training, but quickly realized the travel and related expenses would likely limit the vendors' interest in representing CGW products. By turning to WebDemo, CGW now has the ability to train them one-on-one or in groups at very low cost to all involved.

CGW's clients also use WebDemo to train their own employees on CGW's products - so much so that CGW is looking at setting up pre-recorded training that can be presented on-demand as clients add new employees or upgrade to a new release.

CGW and its clients and vendors are also now excited about using WebDemo 2.0's newest feature, just released, which brings video conferencing capability to the already versatile WebDemo collaboration software, adding even more function and efficiencies.
"We have been very pleased with the cost savings and efficiency gain we have achieved using WebDemo," Flemister said. "It seems like we're trying new ways to use it almost every week. And all of our clients and potential clients have been impressed with it and enthusiastic about its capabilities - some to the point of asking where we got it."

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.