Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

19
Jun
09

SalesView #1 on AppExchange

We are thrilled to announce that SalesView is now the overall most popular and top-rated application available on the Force.com AppExchange from Salesforce.com.

SalesView was the first Sales 2.0 application integrated with Salesforce CRM and launched on the AppExchange on-demand application marketplace in March 2008. Since then, there has been more than 1,400 installs and 400 joint Salesforce.com customers. Our place as the top application on AppExchange is a great testament to the value of real-time access to relevant news alerts, relationship analysis as well as intelligently aggregated research results from both traditional editorial sources and social media, within the CRM application.

In the announcement released today, Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView noted that, “The fact that adoption has increased to 1,400 installs and customers are seeing tremendous results from SalesView highlights the value and ROI Sales 2.0 technologies provide.”

The Force.com AppExchange is a premier Web marketplace for cloud computing applications, to learn more about it please visit: www.salesforce.com/appexchange

16
Jun
09

InsideView on SmartSaaS

SmartSaaS posted a lengthy Q&A with Umberto Milletti today, as well as a profile of InsideView. The article covers issues such as key emerging trends in the SaaS industry and 2009 outlook, as well as historical anecdotes about InsideView. You can check out the full piece here.

If you are not familiar, the SmartSaaS blog is written by Kevin Dobbs, Owner and Managing Partner at Montclair Advisors. Montclair Advisors provides personalized Software-as-a-Service advisory services designed to help SaaS-based and non-SaaS-based software companies to optimize their business models, improve revenues, control costs and deliver world-class software – check them out at www.montclairadvisors.com

05
Jun
09

Reaching the social customer

A lot of very interesting analysis has been written on the implications of our increasingly social media savvy culture. Recently, a few thoughtful pieces have been published that look at the ways to approach a customer base that is now entrenched in the social Web. CRM Magazine, who recently covered our “Vision of Social Sales,” published a new issue of the magazine that focuses on the question “Who Owns the Social Customer?” An interesting, complex question, as evidenced by the passage below from one of the issue’s articles:

In fact, the value of social media carries along with it a certain amount of risk: Embracing its full potential means embracing transparency, and engagement among transparent individuals—whether they’re employees, vendors, suppliers, customers, or prospects—involves far more complexity than the engagement you may have grown accustomed to.

Some have argued that in order to have more meaningful and effective online relationships with customers, a better system for prioritization and organization is needed within our current social media tools. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb, recently examined this idea in great length in his article “How to Create Sub-Groups to Maximize Your Online Effectiveness.”

HelpStream, a social customer service and relationship management technology company, also wrote about Marshall’s article recently on their blog, concluding that more sophisticated prioritization tools have the potential to increase the value and collaboration of online social groups.

Leveraging social media to connect with customers is central to our mission at InsideView, but it is clearly an evolving science. It’s exciting to see so many sharp minds (besides ours) at work developing the next generation of strategies to engage with customers through social media.

29
May
09

Melding Social Media into CRM

Check out this week’s eWEEK podcast hosted by Mike Vizard, which features InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti. The conversation, entitled, “Melding Social Media into CRM,” focuses on ‘the critical role social networks and media will play in creating a new approach for generating sales leads that can easily be managed from within CRM applications.’ Its a great conversation about the role of social media within CRM and how InsideView’s new Buzz Tab is helping facilitate this convergence. Enjoy!

22
May
09

Umberto Pens Guest Article for InsideCRM

One of the key discussions around sales effectiveness right now is the role of social media. We’ve taken this head-on ourselves – using Twitter as an example, we’ve both discussed and integrated the micro-blogging site’s power into the sales process through SalesView’s new buzz tab.

Part of that discussion continues today, with Umberto’s guest article in InsideCRM. InsideCRM’s Chris Bucholtz introduces the piece:

When business visionaries in the 1990s talked about how information would be the asset of the future, they were unwittingly foreshadowing the arrival of companies like InsideView. Umberto Milletti provides some suggestions for evaluating data sources that any organization can use to evaluate how and where to participate in social media – and whether Twitter is a channel you should take seriously.

You can check out Umberto’s suggestions at InsideCRM here.

20
May
09

PC Magazine weighs in on the Buzz Tab

On the heels of our recent NetSuite partnership, as well as Twitter integration news, we had the chance to talk with PC Mag and ‘@Work’ reporter Kathy Yakal about what enterprise technology and the social Web mean to today’s workplace. Kathy covers news, trends and solutions that make a difference at work in her regular column ‘Tech Tools for Better Business.’

In her post today, Kathy covers our recent Buzz Tab launch and its implications, framing the article with the question: What if Twitter could come to me instead of me going to it?

And Kathy answered her own question in resounding fashion, “This is a great idea, a perfect partnership.”

We certainly agree. Relevant Twitter feeds brought directly within the CRM application stand to deliver more actionable, current information to sales professionals, which will help them do their job more efficiently and with better results. As Kathy notes, “SalesView connects the dots for you.”

It’s been an exciting few weeks here as we continue to fortify a solution that works for everyone, across all CRM platforms, with the newest resources living out there on the social Web. Kathy’s article identifies many of the advantages that SalesView now brings to sales professionals, to read the full article on InsideView, please click here

19
May
09

SalesView integrated with NetSuite

We’re very pleased to announce that beginning today SalesView will be integrated with NetSuite, an industry-leading on-demand business management suite. The integration gives businesses instant access to SalesView’s relevant intelligence results directly within NetSuite, empowering them to significantly accelerate sales cycles and improve productivity across key operations of their business. The integration was built using the NetSuite Business Operating System (NS-BOS), the development platform that is part of NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Ecosystem.

InsideView is a member of NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Developer Network, a multi-tiered program that enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to quickly go to market with on-demand business applications that leverage the power of NetSuite’s core business suite. You can read more about NetSuite’s integrated solution at www.suiteapp.com.

“As our recent Twitter integration reinforces, InsideView is continually expanding coverage of both traditional and Web 2.0 sources to distill timely, relevant business insights and deliver this intelligence at the point of need,” said Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer of InsideView. “We are excited to be able to provide NetSuite customers with access to actionable sales intelligence directly within their CRM, increasing both the quality and quantity of their sales leads, as well as improving the productivity of their sales force.”

“Our partnership with InsideView proves that once again we are not only attracting industry leading partners for ERP, but across the entire suite, including CRM,” said Guido Haarmans, vice president, SuiteCloud Developer Network of NetSuite. “The native mash-up with SalesView makes both traditional business and social Web information available directly within NetSuite, supporting increased sales productivity and accelerated sales cycles with timely, relevant insights from thousands of sources.”

To read the full announcement, please click here

14
May
09

InsideView Named to JMP Securities’ Hot 100: Best Privately Held Software Companies List

We are excited to announce that InsideView has been named to the JMP Securities Hot 100 List of best privately held software companies. JMP Securities, a San Francisco-based investment bank, stated in its annual report, “One powerful trend in application software is the emergence of a new breed of sales and marketing (or smarketing) automation tools. Particularly in an environment where new leads are precious, smarketing companies like Eloqua, Genius.com, Jigsaw, InsideView, Marketo, and others are finding an eager reception for their offerings.”

“We’re honored to be recognized as one of the Hot 100 private software companies by JMP Securities. This is a strong vote of confidence for our highly differentiated Sales 2.0 technology,” said Umberto Milletti, founder and CEO of InsideView. “Our solution enables companies to do more with less by accelerating sales cycles and increasing sales productivity — especially welcome during these challenging economic times as demonstrated by our record Q1 2009 results.”

Q1 2009 has been a really exciting time for InsideView.  In addition to being included in the JMP Securities Hot 100 List, we were also voted the best Sales Intelligence Application for 2008 on Force.com AppExchange.

11
May
09

Twitter Comes to the Enterprise

You know those millions of 140-character tweets taking place everyday? Organized by hashtag and searchable in real-time? Well, we’re excited to announce that as of today, those tweets are coming to the enterprise – and sales people will have the wealth of buzz generated on Twitter at their fingertips to further inform their lead and prospecting process, and ultimately close more deals.

Launched today, the SalesView Buzz tab will incorporate real-time social media monitoring on Twitter, as well as Google Blogs and Compete.com, into all major CRM applications. On one (big) hand, this is a huge addition to the enterprise, finally making in-the-moment conversation a slice of the prospect snapshot that helps sales professionals do their job more efficiently. At the same time, it’s also just the next step in our “social sales” story. In fact, we’ve discussed the potential usefulness of Twitter a lot recently, and now we’ve decided it’s go time.

This morning TechCrunch’s Leena Rao – who spoke with Umberto last week and covered the news today – says, “There’s no doubt that Twitter is fast becoming a source of breaking news and information. InsideView’s service is helpful in filtering business information and news that lives on social media platforms to help enterprises create a knowledge base around a potential sales lead.”

We’re excited to bring fast, relevant and intelligent access to Twitter to salespeople. Information existing on the social Web is part racket and part resource, and enterprises need smart tools to help them navigate through this. Now, with a real-time look at not only a lead’s latest LinkedIn profile, but also their social conversation and micro-buzz activity, sales professionals can have the information they need to get in touch and close the deal.

06
May
09

Content, As a Service

There’s a lot being said about content right now across all industries. Indeed, “content is king” is a common drumbeat by experts in everything from news media to marketing to SEO.
In addition to being king, we also see it as a service. One on hand, it’s more information than we’ve ever had available. On the other, it can yield wrong information, a loss of time and a lack of relevance. So what’s a sales person to do? We discussed this at length with our friend and SaaS veteran Phil Wainewright, and talked about how content can be made relevant and, now, delivered as a service to the sales force through innovations in cloud mash-up technologies.