Marketo Partner Tokara Underscores Power of Inbound Marketing

As most of you have discovered, Tokara Solutions has broadened the scope of its professional services consulting around marketing automation by becoming a Marketo partner. As an Agency partner, our CRM, business intelligence, and marketing automation consultants are now able to bring you all the benefits of Marketo, an industry leader in marketing automation software, ranking for consecutive years in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Lead Management.

To refine our readers’ understanding around the range of benefits Marketo offers to companies who make use of its marketing automation software, this blog series is exploring some of the features this technology offers to enable you to quickly and easily get the most out of your marketing efforts – minimizing the effort required to achieve maximum sales and marketing results. In this post, we’ll focus on inbound marketing services.

In the most basic sense, inbound marketing differs substantially from what most consider to be ‘traditional marketing’ — which includes outbound activities such as print advertising, direct mail, and attendance at tradeshows and conferences. While these types of ‘outbound’ marketing efforts may still have considerable value depending on your industry and audience, when used in isolation they can be costly have limitations in terms of efficiency and effectiveness in gaining new business. In the ‘always on’ world that we (and most of our prospects) now inhabit, many feel that ‘inbound marketing’ represents the future of how we relate to and connect with customers and prospects.

Catering to this new paradigm in which buyers educate themselves, and seek out, and find sellers (rather than the reverse process in traditional outbound marketing), Marketo defines inbound marketing as ‘creating interesting, informative, valuable and even entertaining content, and then optimizing and distributing it across different online channels so it can be found by – and engage – prospective buyers early in their process.’

So let’s look at just a few of the ways Marketo facilitates and streamlines inbound marketing efforts for its clients, starting with creation of simple landing pages that customers can click through to from any number of online marketing ‘vehicles,’ such as an HTML email with links to the page, a banner advertisement, or a Google Adword. At the most basic level, Seth Godin defines the landing page as the first page someone who clicks on your site sees. If this is a page that offers content of extreme interest and value to potential viewers, it can also have a short form that must be filled out (or partially filled out) before the viewer gains full access to the content, thereby allowing the marketer to collect critical contact data on parties who want to know more about some aspect of their offering.

Regardless of what you plan to require of viewers when they reach a landing page, Marketo software makes the creation process clean and simple. As with the development of HTML emails, Marketo requires no knowledge of HTML or technical expertise – you can create a landing page in minutes by using the drag-and-drop feature and add forms, polls, and simple share tools along with your text and images. And the bottom line? All of these features increase the chances of converting a prospect to a paying customer.

And in terms of search engine optimization (SEO)/search engine marketing (SEM), Marketo also enables you to take inbound marketing to the next level with search marketing, which is of course how prospects find you online without having been contacted first. Using Marketo, you can choose the right keywords for your industry, track those keywords to ensure maximum effectiveness, create content that attracts the prospects who are most likely to buy your products and services, test landing pages, and much more.

While attracting prospects to your landing pages, you can also use Marketo’s insight features to track visitors to your website and see which ones click through, where they came from, what they click, and how long they visit specific pages. This analysis capability allows you to concentrate most on marketing efforts associated with prospects that have a higher (apparent) interest in and greater likelihood of converting from prospect to client.

As with all of the technologies we support, Tokara has become a Marketo partner to provide the best possible sales and marketing outcomes for our clients. In combination with our results-oriented CRM solutions, the email marketing functionality within Marketo’s marketing automation platform is poised to bring your marketing campaigns to the next level and elicit dramatic results from your prospects and clients.

For details on Marketo marketing automation software, or to find out more about how our consultants can deliver this functionality to your business as a Marketo partner, please contact any member of our consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com. We also encourage you to contact Tokara’s VP of Business Development, Mark Fillingim, directly at +1 972-719-0213.

Marketo Partner Tokara Underscores Power of Inbound Marketing

Upgrade to Pivotal 6.0 PCM for Leading Pharma Company Highlights Tokara's CRM Expertise

With engineers boasting 10 to 15 years of Pivotal CRM experience before even joining the company, Tokara Solutions’ ability to offer the highest available level of Pivotal CRM expertise available in the marketplace is unquestioned. But what further differentiates this veteran CRM consultancy continues to be their unwavering commitment to engaging with clients in a long-term partnership model focused around that client’s individual needs and business requirements. A recent upgrade to Pivotal 6.0 PCM for Tokara client in the pharmaceutical industry highlights both the value clients derive when ‘partnership’ is taken to the next level and the reasons Tokara includes this relational component in every aspect of technical engagement.

With thousands of clients of their own across the globe, this leading pharmaceutical company knew first hand how robust and powerful the Pivotal platform had already proven to be in effectively reaching and communicating with clients and prospects. This history with the technology drove them to plan future development projects on the platform, including an upcoming mobile tablet solution for their sales team.

After the company’s initial engagement of Tokara Solutions for a Pivotal Health Check to ensure their system was performing efficiently, it partnered again with Tokara for an upgrade from Pivotal 6.0 CMS to Pivotal 6.0 PCM, a move they knew would leave them well positioned to move forward with new projects and development activities designed to maximize the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts. Because the upgrade to Pivotal 6.0 PCM would require that their system be essentially rebuilt from the ground up, the company worked closely with the Tokara team to ensure they fully understood the company’s business operations and processes, including customizations that had been made to their existing Pivotal CMS system.

Said a company representative close to the project, “We were looking for a top-tier professional services partner who was really committed to the long-term relationship, and we couldn’t have made a better choice. As they transitioned us from Pivotal CMS to Pivotal PCM, most users didn’t even notice a hiccup in performance – and any issues that did emerge were immediately resolved by the Tokara team. I can’t say enough good things about Tokara’s engineers, businesses analysts – really all of their technical resources. Especially for a project of this magnitude, things could not have gone more smoothly — they did excellent work.”

Says Shawn Grant, President and Founder of Tokara Solutions, “We’re very fortunate to have a technical team with resources who have spent their entire careers making Pivotal projects successful across a range of industries – most of them had 10 to 15 years of experience with the software before they even began working with us. That’s the foundation that enables us to be one the most specialized Pivotal Premier partners worldwide. But we find that what really defines us in our clients’ eyes is our ability to pair this level of expertise with an equally powerful focus on them – on understanding their business and knowing how they define ‘success.’ This relational component really drives our interactions with every client and ensures they end up seeing the business results they need to see from their investment in CRM technology. We want them to view us as an extension of their own team and have a really high level of comfort that we’re in it with them over the long haul. We’re redefining what it means to be a ‘partner’ in the software industry, and finding that what results from this strategy is genuinely a win for everyone involved.”

For details on upgrades to Pivotal 6.0 PCM or any of Tokara Solutions’ CRM, marketing automation, or business intelligence offerings, please visit tokarasolutions.com or contact Mark Fillingim, VP of Business Development, at 972-719-0213.

Upgrade to Pivotal 6.0 PCM for Leading Pharma Company Highlights Tokara's CRM Expertise

SalesChief for Pivotal 6.0 CRM: VP of Sales Use Case

For those of you who following our blog series featuring the business intelligence functionality made possible by SalesChief, you already know SalesChief is accessible to Pivotal CRM 6.0 users from within a dedicated tab in the Pivotal application. Once you’ve opened SalesChief, you can see that the application is comprised of four main tabs: Sales Performance, Opportunity Analysis, Marketing Effectiveness, and Lead Analysis.

As a follow-on to the high-level overviews provided to date in this series, today’s blog examines a typical use case for SalesChief within any sales organization, namely, that of a VP of Sales who is evaluating the performance of sales team members against pre-determined criteria and metrics.

For a VP of Sales, data made available through SalesChief provides critical insight in preparing to conduct reviews on sales reps based on the previous year’s performance as well as in establishing development plans for improved performance. From the sales team list, a VP can immediately select any member (or members) of the team to analyze performance; selected team member(s) will be highlighted in green.

For a selected rep, the VP can immediately see performance data such as the number of accounts sold to and the total amount of business closed. The VP can also see how closely the amount of closed business aligns with that rep’s forecasting for the year; this of course is a critical component for any publicly traded company having to answer to investors and the analyst community.

Moving to the Opportunity Analysis tab, the VP can view a breakdown of sales performance, by rep – the default dollar unit used for sales can be easily toggled to show sales as a percentage, and the ‘quick change’ option allows for this data to be represented in a pie chart (default), block diagram, or bar chart — whichever format is most useful to the user.

Within this tab, the VP can see any discrepancies in the performance of sales reps, compare performance, and perhaps most importantly, can drill down into the details that reveal what distinguishes high- from low-performing reps.

Next week’s post will drill deeper into how this sales performance data can be used to compare techniques and level of success among sales team members, evaluating their sales performance against metrics and methodologies. It will also examine how a VP of Sales can easily use of SalesChief as a performance review and training tool. In the meantime, if you’d like to see more detail on the use case described in today’s blog for yourself, you can view the quick video below.

For details on SalesChief, we encourage you to download the SalesChief data sheet on our Resources & Downloads page, or contact any member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com. You can also feel free to contact Tokara’s VP of Business Development, Mark Fillingim, directly at +1 972-719-0213.

SalesChief for Pivotal 6.0 CRM: VP of Sales Use Case

SalesChief for Pivotal CRM 6.0: Overview, Part 2

This week we’re continuing our overview of SalesChief for Pivotal CRM 6.0 users, a powerful business and data analysis tool that enables sales and marketing executives to access the functionality of QlikView in order to gain insight into performance, pipeline breakdown, marketing ROI, lead analysis, and more. Today’s post looks at just a sampling of features that make the interface intuitive, flexible, easy to use, and effective for users from the first time they log in.

As we mentioned in the post two weeks ago, SalesChief can be accessed directly from a dedicated tab within the Pivotal application, which has been directly embedded into Pivotal’s SmartClient framework. From there, users can select from four main tabs that cover Sales Performance, Opportunity Analysis, Marketing Effectiveness, and Lead Analysis.

SalesChief maintains a unified template for visual consistency in the user interface throughout the application and within all four primary tabs. For example, the Sales Performance tab in SalesChief automatically positions date dimensions across the top of the page, and aligns sales representatives and other dimensions vertically along the left margin. Opening the Opportunity Analysis, the user can see that additional dimensions are available. But in all cases, this template can be configured to reflect how users want to see data in order to best fit their unique use cases.

SalesChief also uses a specific color scheme that visually guides the user into a better intuitive understanding of what they’re looking at. For example, green highlighting represents a selection (or multi-selection). For example, selecting a sales representative’s name highlights it in green, and that selection is also carried over to the top left-hand box on the screen. A green dot now also appears in any of the tabs in which there is applicable data related to the initial selection – in this case the sales representative’s name.

This ‘applicable data’ is highlighted in white. For example, looking at the sales rep’s data, white highlighting might show the months in which they had sales or the industries they sold into. Conversely, all of the elements that do not apply (in this case, months in which no sales were made or industries that were not been sold into) appear in grey highlighting.

Moving to the Opportunity Analysis tab from Sales Performance, the user will notice that the selections they just made in Sales Performance are automatically carried over. Users can selectively clear one or more individual sections within the tab, or they can affect a wholesale ‘clear’ using the button on the top menu bar to return to the original state, before any selections were made.

Users can also leverage forward and back buttons just as they would in a browser to access chronological selections, and can change display details on the fly using a simple toggle. For example, units of measure can be changed instantly from a dollar value to percentage breakdown. Similarly, the ‘fast change’ option allows the format of visual data representations to be adjusted on the fly – for example changing from a pie chart to a bar graph or block diagram.

These are just a few of the intuitive, flexible, user-friendly aspects inherent to SalesChief that make it useful to users from the moment they log in through Pivotal. It’s also important to remember that for every KPI in the software, there’s built-in ‘Export to Excel’ and print capability and that makes getting data out of the application as simple as one click. Tune in next week for details on insights SalesChief provides in a specific use case — a VP of Sales assessing and comparing the performance of sales team members.

For details on SalesChief, we invite you to download the SalesChief data sheet on our Resources & Downloads page, or to contact any member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com. You can also feel free to contact Tokara’s VP of Business Development, Mark Fillingim, directly at +1 972-719-0213.

SalesChief for Pivotal CRM 6.0: Overview, Part 2

Tokara Redefines Partnership in Pivotal 6.0 Upgrade for Kantar Retail

A hallmark of Tokara Solutions’ success as Pivotal CRM consultants has always been their focus on providing the highest level of Pivotal expertise coupled with an unflinching commitment to engaging with clients in a true partnership model. A recent upgrade to Pivotal 6.0 for Tokara client Kantar Retail illustrates both the value clients derive when ‘partnership’ is more than a marketing buzz word and the reasons Tokara extends it to every aspect of consultant engagement.

As a global consultancy providing insight and transformational growth solutions to leading blue chip brands and companies around the world, Kantar Retail makes powerful use of its Pivotal CRM solution, and fully understood the tangible benefits the company would see with an upgrade to Pivotal 6.0. Combining the best attributes of superior interface design with substantially increased functionality and ease of use, Kantar Retail chose Tokara Solutions as their partner in transitioning to Pivotal 6.0.

In working through upgrade details with Tokara, Kantar Retail wanted to ensure its own internal team was fully engaged and knowledgeable on all aspects of the software so the company wouldn’t need to rely heavily on external teams for future development requirements they might have. Customizing the engagement around the client’s requirements, Tokara fully integrated Kantar Retail’s technical team into the upgrade effort, providing side-by-side training and assigning appropriate tasking to team members, effectively leaving the team not only with a superior CRM product, but also with the knowledge and skills needed to maintain and further customize the solution moving forward.

Says Ginelle Davidson, MIS Director at Kantar Retail, “There’s no question the Tokara team has solid expertise in Pivotal CRM – but the added component that makes working with them entirely different is that their expertise comes with a commitment to partner in whatever way is best for that client. In our case, internal development teams worked side-by-side with Tokara’s consultants in a ‘train-the-trainer’ –style setup that prepared us to walk away from the upgrade not only with software we know we’ll see real ROI from, but a product we’re really able to ‘own’ in terms of future development needs we might have. It also meant our upgrade happened faster and with substantially lower cost than would have been the case in a more traditional implementation scenario.”

Says Shawn Grant, President and Founder of Tokara Solutions, “As a baseline, we ensure our Pivotal consultants really are the best in the industry – most of them have 10 to 15 years of experience with the software across a range of industries. But as one of the most specialized Pivotal Premier partners worldwide, we’re committed to more than just the expertise – we’re truly focused on making sure our clients see real results from their technology investment. This means that in every engagement, we’re looking at what ‘success’ means for that specific client, and how we can customize our model and our interactions with them to make sure they see the business results they need while also viewing Tokara as almost a part of their own team over the long term. We’re redefining what it means to be a ‘partner’ in the software industry because we think what results is a win for everyone.”

For details on Pivotal 6.0 upgrades or any of the CRM offerings of Tokara Solutions, please visit tokarasolutions.com or contact Mark Fillingim, VP of Business Development, at 972-719-0213.

Tokara Redefines Partnership in Pivotal 6.0 Upgrade for Kantar Retail

Ask the Expert, Part 2: A Firsthand Look at Pivotal 6 Upgrades

As you may know, as a follow-up to our recent blog series on Pivotal Upgrades and the tangible benefits businesses can expect from an upgrade to Pivotal 6, last week we heard from Bruce Biron, Managing Consultant at Tokara Solutions. Bruce shared some of his thoughts on why a Pivotal upgrade is such a game-changer for clients who engage him and his team. Last week’s post focused on the enhanced ‘look and feel’ that impact nearly every aspect of user productivity. This is what he had to say this week on features and functionality you can expect with a Pivotal 6 upgrade.

“One thing that’s immediately apparent in all the enhancements we see in Pivotal 6 is: it’s all about the end user. And one of the ways this focus becomes immediately clear is in productivity enhancements – for example, the integration between Outlook and Pivotal 6 is completely seamless. So if your end users spend most of their day in these two systems (which many end users do), it’s not only easier to work in these applications that are now so intuitively and comprehensively integrated, but it also saves each user an enormous amount of time (increasing productivity) and ensures every critical piece of data is saved and available everywhere it needs to be. This is one of the pieces of functionality in a Pivotal 6 upgrade that users just can’t stop talking about.

Another Pivotal 6 upgrade feature end users love is Dashboards. As just one example, let’s take a look at a Sales Dashboard, which provides the sales executive with specific portals displaying critical information in different types of graph types as well in list format. Again, the combination of functionality and interface is intuitive, aesthetically appealing, and truly ‘friendly’ – all designed to facilitate the user’s own individual workflow so that both individual productivity and corporate ROI are maximized. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.”

Tune in next week for Bruce’s thoughts on how Pivotal 6 enhancements affect development requirements and add access and flexibility for clients engaged in a Pivotal 6 upgrade.

And remember, you can still register for the year’s pre-eminent Pivotal event, Aptean Edge, May 13-15, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Register to find out everything you’ve wanted to know about how a Pivotal upgrade can provide impressive return on your software investment, making your business more productive, competitive, and profitable. For details on any of the benefits outlined here or other elements of Pivotal support, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Ask the Expert, Part 2: A Firsthand Look at Pivotal 6 Upgrades

Ask the Expert: A Firsthand Look at Pivotal Upgrades

As many of you know, we’ve recently focused our blog series on Pivotal Upgrades and the tangible benefits businesses can expect from an upgrade to Pivotal 6. Then we realized, ‘Who better to tell us about this than someone who works every day with companies upgrading to Pivotal 6?’. So for the next few weeks, we’ve asked Bruce Biron, Managing Consultant at Tokara Solutions, to share some of his thoughts on why a Pivotal upgrade is so compelling to clients who engage him and his team. This is what he had to say.

“My entire career has focused on implementation of complex CRM applications in a range of vertical industries, so I feel confident in saying first and foremost: Pivotal 6 is simply a superior product in every way. It combines the best attributes of ‘look and feel’ with functionality and ease of use that make it a product users love and companies see real ROI from. So from my standpoint on the front lines, there are a number of elements clients really rave about – we’ll start with ‘Look and Feel.’.

Everything about the look and feel of Pivotal 6 is designed with the user in mind. The interface is intuitive, aesthetically appealing, and truly ‘friendly’ – engaging the user to the point that this application becomes his/her central workspace. Whether you’re considering the streamlined navigation or feature-rich task bars, you immediately have access to everything you need to do your job in one centralized, well organized place – all designed in a way that facilitates the user’s own individual workflow.

Created using Visual Studio, even form design is engaging and intuitively laid out, as this screenshot of a Company Form illustrates. ‘Look and feel’ sounds like we’re talking about something subjective and artistic, but the truth is that when clients see screens like this they understand immediately the difference superior ‘look and feel’ and interface design will have on how efficiently they can get their jobs done.”

Tune in next week for Bruce’s thoughts on Pivotal 6 features and functionality that delight his clients who are embarking on a Pivotal upgrade.

And remember, you can still register for the year’s pre-eminent Pivotal event, Aptean Edge, May 13-15, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Register to find out everything you’ve wanted to know about how a Pivotal upgrade can provide impressive return on your software investment, making your business more productive, competitive, and profitable. For details on any of the benefits outlined here or other elements of Pivotal support, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Ask the Expert: A Firsthand Look at Pivotal Upgrades

Pivotal CRM Benefits

Pivotal CRM Benefits

Know What a Pivotal Upgrade Means for You: A Look at Pivotal Analytics

When we provide Pivotal consulting to clients, one of their primary goals is always to empower their team members to know more about their customers so they can engage with them more profitably. At the same time, we see first-hand the range of business benefits that result when our clients move to the latest version of the Pivotal CRM platform and applications. Today’s post covers the common ground between these areas and provides some detail around the enhanced customer insight that comes with a Pivotal upgrade in the form of the robust Pivotal Analytics module.

At its core, Pivotal Analytics allows clients to gain maximum benefit from their investment in Microsoft in the form of CRM analytics based on the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform. The module provides users with a toolkit that allows them to efficiently and effectively analyze customer data and make better and faster decisions around how, where, and when to engage with these customers to maximize relationship, revenue, and profit.

Using an industry leading OLAP engine (Microsoft Analysis Services) as well as a robust server-based reporting solution (Microsoft Reporting Services), the customization tools that come in Pivotal Analytics are simple to use, provide a range of deployment options, and ensure a vendor-agnostic front end that can be used with virtually any business intelligence viewer.

And of course, standard requisite sales and marketing analytics come out of the box and ready to use, ensuring teams are up and running without delay, beginning to experience the full benefits of the module’s functionality almost immediately.

So whether our clients choose to implement the complete suite at once or incrementally by module, the bottom line around Pivotal upgrades is the same: the results for our clients’ businesses is often dramatic. For more information Pivotal upgrades, Pivotal Analytics, or other elements of Pivotal support we provide, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Know What a Pivotal Upgrade Means for You: A Look at Pivotal Analytics

Think Outside the Office: What a Pivotal Upgrade Brings to the Mobile Salesforce

As a Premier Pivotal partner, the seasoned team at Tokara Solutions provides the full range of Pivotal support and consulting services our clients need. But as we’ve noted in previous posts, there is almost no area of Pivotal support we encounter that can ultimately make more of a difference to our customers’ success than the Pivotal upgrade. This week, we’re taking a look at why a Pivotal upgrade may provide exactly the tools your business needs to empower your mobile salesforce.

Almost irrespective of the industry segment your business is in, there’s no escaping the fact that today, mobile is everything. So business software that seamlessly provides mobile users the tools they need to do their jobs outside the office can make the difference in how competitive, and ultimately how successful, a business is. With a Pivotal upgrade, mobile users are able to benefit from the enhanced reliability and performance the latest versions of the software provide, enabling them to be as productive outside the office as they are inside.

As many of our clients already know, Pivotal Mobile Sales™ delivers a fully functional mobile CRM solution. In addition to accessing robust CRM functionality outside the office, mobile users can access the prospect, customer, and product data they need to do their jobs, even when they’re not behind a desk.

And what about administration? Using Pivotal SyncStream™, it’s as simple as a single-click client install package for mobile as well as office users, effectively reducing both the complexity of deployments and the administrative costs associated with them. Pivotal Mobile Client synchs in the background as soon as users in the field connect to their corporate network, so they can maximize productivity, even during the synchronization process. And say goodbye to resource-heavy updates that require users to be in the office — Pivotal’s mobile synchronization sessions also send out any necessary data changes, application updates, and service packs/hot fixes.

So whether you’re taking advantage of Pivotal’s tight integration with Microsoft Office applications or its ability to provide comprehensive CRM functionality to your business’ mobile users, it’s clear that the Pivotal upgrade can provide impressive return on your software investment, making your business more productive, competitive, and profitable. For details on any of the benefits outlined here or other elements of Pivotal support, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Think Outside the Office: What a Pivotal Upgrade Brings to the Mobile Salesforce

What a Pivotal Upgrade Brings to Your Business: the Benefits of Office Integration

As a trusted Pivotal partner to the many clients we provide Pivotal support to, we see first-hand the real business benefits that result when they move to the latest version of the Pivotal CRM platform and applications. From within this set of benefits, today’s post covers some of the ways in which Pivotal integrates with standard Microsoft applications to bring users enhanced capability and productivity and allow developers greater customization options.

There is no question that embarking on a Pivotal upgrade means heightened productivity – and one of the primary ways this occurs is via robust bi-directional integration with the ubiquitous Microsoft^® Office^® suite of products so heavily relied on by end users. Enhanced web services support means relevant data from Pivotal can be accessed directly from within Outlook, Excel, Word, or PowerPoint. It’s as easy as highlighting a word or phrase and clicking to see associated Pivotal data – and the data you’re looking for is brought directly into the Microsoft application you’re working in.

A Pivotal upgrade also provides seamless integration between Pivotal and Outlook, allowing team members to create, edit, and manage emails from within Pivotal, as well as to link emails and attachments to ‘business objects’ that include contacts, opportunities, service requests, and companies. Perhaps best of all, this functionality can be accessed both in the workplace and while users are fully disconnected from the corporate VPN, providing a substantial boost to the productivity of increasingly mobile workforces.

Moving from benefits to the end user to benefits for the developer, a Pivotal upgrade also provides support for software customizations written in any Microsoft .NET language (including C# and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET), speeding the development and use of higher quality code and the ease with which customizations can be made. Pivotal even provides sample code to ‘jump start’ developers in writing custom CMS Application Server Rules in .NET languages.

So whether our clients choose to implement the complete suite at once or incrementally by module, the bottom line around Pivotal upgrades is the same: the results for their business can be dramatic. For more information Pivotal upgrades or other elements of Pivotal support we provide, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

What a Pivotal Upgrade Brings to Your Business: the Benefits of Office Integration

Considering a Pivotal Upgrade? Know What’s in It for You

As a Premier Pivotal partner, our team at Tokara Solutions provides the full range of Pivotal support and consulting services our clients need. But there is virtually no area of Pivotal support we see that can ultimately prove more critical to our customers’ success than embarking on a Pivotal Upgrade that moves them to the latest version of the Pivotal CRM platform and applications. This post provides a high-level outline of just a few of the benefits a Pivotal upgrade can bring to organizations that choose it; subsequent postings will cover several of these benefits in more granular detail.

What we see first-hand from clients who engage us for Pivotal support is that a Pivotal upgrade actually involves an exceptionally low total cost of ownership (TCO), while also ensuring these clients are able to quickly and efficiently customize, integrate, and deploy a solution to match their current and evolving business needs.

When we provide this type of Pivotal support, we have clients who choose to implement one module at a time and clients who implement the entire suite. Regardless of the implementation strategy they choose, they achieve a number of immediate benefits in functionality, usability, administration, and customization that can literally be game-changers for their business, including:

Greater productivity
Simplified end-user experience
Improved mobility & streamlined administration
Extended reach
Smarter and faster decision making
Enhanced customization options

As a proven Pivotal partner, we have an exceptionally experienced and fully certified team, with members of our Pivotal consulting team averaging 10+ years of experience delivering Pivotal support. Collectively, we have successfully delivered hundreds of Pivotal upgrades. This is why we feel qualified to share the benefits we see first-hand when our clients upgrade to the most recent version of Pivotal.

Tune in next week for a more in-depth look at several of these benefits and a discussion on how they deliver tangible business results. For more information on any of the benefits outlined here or other elements of Pivotal support we provide, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Considering a Pivotal Upgrade? Know What’s in It for You

Boosting Business Productivity: A Look at Pivotal CRM Navigation, Shortcuts, and Portals

As a Premier Pivotal partner providing Pivotal support and consulting across a range of vertical industries, we have many opportunities to see first-hand how the software’s architecture not only maximizes performance speed of the software itself, but also the ‘speed’ of business productivity, defined and measured as the length of time required to complete an end-to-end business task within the software. This post covers how Pivotal’s navigation structure and easy access to user history, shortcuts, and portals combine to dramatically boost business productivity.

Navigation: When we provide Pivotal support to clients, one of the greatest areas of productivity enhancement we see is related to its navigation structure, which is modeled around business structure rather than around a database. This provides it with the adaptability required to accommodate unique business use cases and while at the same time providing users access and functionality based on profiles that reflect their roles within the company.

Simply stated, Pivotal CRM’s navigation structure means fewer clicks to access data as well as data provision through context-driven task pads and portals that deliver critical functionality like real-time reports, KPIs, and alerts. So as users navigate through the system, they are provided with dynamically updated information in task pads and portals that reflect the most common requirements of the specific area they’re working in. Pivotal also shines in its ability to support non-linear multi-tasking, which allows users to view and interact with a variety of forms simultaneously, as well as save them for later use or create shortcuts to them.

History, Shortcuts & Portals: Another way in which Pivotal speeds business productivity is linked to how easy it makes it for users to access to history, create shortcuts, and aggregate information and functionality critical to their specific role through portals. Pivotal keeps user history close at hand, with easy access to both the last few items accessed as well as the most recently loaded records. Users can then organize and store this data in whatever structure makes the most sense for them based on their organizational role and working style.

Similarly, users can easily create custom shortcuts to data or functionality they access frequently, as well as configure custom portals, which aggregate all the data/functionality they’d like to see in on one centralized page – a ‘one stop shop’ customized to their unique organizational role and tasking. These features not only minimize clicks required to access desired locations, information, and functionality, but also reduce server load as steps required to complete tasking are reduced.

As a Pivotal partner, these are just a few of the ways we see the software’s architecture reduce the time required to complete business tasks. Tune in next week for details on how business productivity is dramatically increased as Pivotal provides users with the ability to easily configure smart forms; establish access and security parameters, and perform diagnostics. For more information on any of the benefits outlined here or other elements of Pivotal support, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Boosting Business Productivity: A Look at Pivotal CRM Navigation, Shortcuts, and Portals

Architected for Speed: the Design behind Pivotal CRM Application Performance

Because Tokara Solutions is recognized as providing some of the highest-level Pivotal consulting and support across the globe, we have unique insight into not only the benefits the software provides to our clients, but also into the actual architecture that sets the software apart.

In other words, when we act as Pivotal partners during a Pivotal implementation or even a Pivotal upgrade, we see firsthand that the performance speed clients enjoy has been designed into the core of the software. This blog entry outlines just a few of the major design decisions that yield Pivotal CRM’s dramatic performance in both speed and responsiveness – the next entry will examine in greater depth the business productivity gains that result from this unique architecture.

Optimization/Minimization of Server Round Trips: Pivotal CRM is architected with clear definition (and separation between) its three tiers of architecture – the database layer, application server layer, and presentation/user access layer. The ability to delegate a degree of business logic and workflow to the presentation layer/tier allows for some processing to take place there, without the need to engage the application server. This reduction in server round trips means faster, ultra-responsive performance for the end user.

Stateless Web Application Design: Because so much of our business lies in providing Pivotal support, we are enthusiasts about the applications ‘economy’ as it relates to hardware resources. As a stateless web application, Pivotal CRM uses network resources only when a request is made, freeing these same resources to process other requests more quickly, and enabling hardware sizing considerations to be made based on number of concurrent rather than actual users.

Client-Side Caching: Anyone experienced with the robustness of the Pivotal CRM application is aware of the myriad of forms users can access to enable powerful customer relationship management. Pivotal CRM has been designed to cache these forms on the user’s computer so that they are instantly accessible when needed rather than having to be retrieved from a more distant location on the server.

Smart Client Speed: As a smart client application, Pivotal CRM can take advantage of increasingly robust local hardware resources (e.g., CPU, hard drive, peripherals) to perform work at the local level, typically resulting in increased speed and responsiveness for the user, as compared with thin client applications.

And of course these elements only begin to scratch the surface of how Pivotal CRM design drives both speed and performance. Providing Pivotal support and consulting across a range of industries, we also see other architecture decisions in the software that yield similar benefits, including middle-tier caching, ‘n-tier’ deployment of satellite servers, as well as indexing and full-text searching. For details on any of the benefits outlined here or other elements of Pivotal support, please contact a member of our Pivotal consulting team at info@tokarasolutions.com.

Architected for Speed: the Design behind Pivotal CRM Application Performance

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Testing — ignore this, it will go away in a sec.

Testing -- ignore this, it will go away in a sec.

Test Post from Tokara Solutions

Test Post from Tokara Solutions http://www.tokarasolutions.com