“SDA is a hidden gem. When our partners see this scope they know it is good, it is clean, it is something they can go to the bank on.”
For over 26 years Communications Resources, Inc. (CRI) has been the premier VMware Virtual Solutions and Unified Communications specialist, providing Real Time Innovative Solutions. Technology resellers turn to CRI to provide them with innovative service solutions. Headquartered in Farmingdale, New Jersey, CRI boasts impressive partnerships and have focused on the application side of communications, providing cutting-edge solutions while offering exemplary service and unmatched results. CRI is an Avaya Business Partner, a systems integrator, a DevConnect Partner for Avaya, a certified VMware Enterprise Solution Provider, and partners with Dell, IBM, HPE, Microsoft, Esna, and Citrix.
Google + SDA
With 80% of their business volume being driven by their partner channel, CRI fulfills a large number of quote requests. After many years of using a previous solution for their quoting needs, Paul Leatherman, CRI’s Chief Technology Officer, found the upkeep to be unwieldy and the content stale. The solution being used produced a static document that allowed no room for the various combinations of professional services offered to its partners nor the ability to further customize a scope of work. Partners also requested the ability to easily embed the CRI Scope of Work (SOW) directly into their entire project proposal. CRI turned to CorsPro’s Sales Doc Architect (SDA) software for its professional services contracting scopes of work and Avaya direct sales proposals. With CorsPro’s SDA, CRI is able to quickly create accurate and competitive scopes of work.
Prior to using SDA, the sales team spent way too much time qualifying a quote and chasing down missing information rather than actually selling and consulting as a solution expert. Leatherman worked closely with his lead software engineer Joe Sabatini and created a Google form and linked it to SDA utilizing the Google Forms API. Per Leatherman, “The beauty of working with Google Forms is anyone, anywhere can get access and easily follow the prompts to answer the required questions.” Once all the information is in the form, a notification is sent, and a CRI Sales Consultant can import the information via the import utility. Accurate information is pulled in without any second-guessing or potential data entry errors. This “self-service” model educates CRI’s partners so they can make smarter requests. CRI sales members review the request to ensure it is a valid request and if something looks incorrect, they immediately reach out to the reseller.
Dynamic Productivity
Because SDA is built on the Microsoft Office platform, the CRI sales team can now quickly and dynamically build scopes of work. The answers to the Google Forms workflow of questions are fed into the Excel portion of SDA’s desktop application that are then translated to a Word document. Leatherman shared his enthusiasm for SDA by stating, “Whereas our outputs were in a static PDF format, today’s Word output allows our partners to easily include our scope in their proposal and scope of work. SDA empowers our sales team to do more, quickly and accurately.” He also stated, “Furthermore, we are able to define dynamic tables in the output that shows what services are and are not included in the scope. It is very easy for our partners to assess if they are getting what they asked for – eliminating any misconceptions and exposing them to things they may not have known were available.”
Partners and sales have noticed the changes. The turn-around time has been drastically reduced from one week to no more than 48 hours. The SDA scope of work output is a “must-have” for the partner channel. The Word output allows different product lines to come together seamlessly with a consistent look and feel. Leatherman states they’ve received numerous praises on the new Word-based scope – “This is so much better. So much cleaner. Easy to read – I understand it.” According to Leatherman, SDA has raised the bar in the quality and polish of the scopes of work. It allows greater productivity from the sales team and provides a robust, well thought-out scope of work that is easy to understand and eliminates questions and mistakes. Leatherman summed up his thoughts with, “SDA is a hidden gem. It is a must-have for our partner channel. When our partners see this scope they know it is good, it is clean, it is something they can go to the bank on.”