By Joe Outlaw
CRMDaily.com
October 1, 2003
ust offering the lowest price or the highest-quality products and services is not always a winning corporate strategy. Understanding each customer''s requirements and crafting offerings that match is at the heart of effective sales and CRM processes.
OneSource Information Services
(Nasdaq: ONES) has announced the immediate availability of its new Catalyst/Account Intelligence Modules for Siebel''s
(Nasdaq: SEBL) eBusiness applications, in an effort to help its customers meet those goals. OneSource provides company-centric financial, news and business data from over 2,500 sources, it claims, as an information service that typically is accessed via the OneSource Business Browser.
The Catalyst modules are the new addition. They can provide an integrated method of accessing OneSource''s business information for customers with Siebel software releases 7 and 7.5. OneSource told CRMDaily that Catalyst modules for other CRM vendors'' products will be announced in the future.
Tailoring Information Needs
Providing salespeople with more data can be a good thing, or it can be counterproductive and frustrating, if the data is not convenient to use.
Providing salespeople with more data can be a good thing, or it can be counterproductive and frustrating, if the data is not convenient to use. "The added power of the Catalyst modules approach for Siebel customers is they can select which pieces of OneSource data to make available within their opportunity management systems (OMS) and CRM applications," Brad Haigis, OneSource director of product marketing, told CRMDaily. Information feeds also can be passed through industry and geographic funnels before reaching the user''s application to further refine data for a customer''s needs.
Optimizing Internal Data
"OneSource and other business-information services, such as Lexis-Nexis, Reuters and Factiva, provide the next level of customer data," said Gartner
vice president Joe Galvin. "This would be complementary to the internally gathered data a company has on its customers and prospects."
"OneSource and other business-information services, such as Lexis-Nexis, Reuters and Factiva, provide the next level of customer data," said Gartner
vice president Joe Galvin. "This would be complementary to the internally gathered data a company has on its customers and prospects." 
One of the big challenges in CRM is managing customer data. That includes collecting it, distilling it to only what is useful, ensuring its accuracy, and keeping it up-to-date. "The next logical step to completing profiles on customers is to look for external data sources." Galvin says.
Incentive To Use OMS
Many salespeople see CRM, opportunity-management, and salesforce-automation applications as being more useful for management reporting and oversight than for helping them make their sales quotas. That would be putting it mildly.
There are documented cases of sales teams refusing to use sales applications, effectively derailing their company''s CRM projects, because of the time the technology took away from selling. "What''s in it for me?" has become a common sales complaint about CRM software. Providing sales staff with useful information about customers and leads to help them craft winning proposals, for example, could be an answer to that question.
From Lead to Close
Again, according to Gartner''s Galvin, "We see a large segment of our clients now working to manage what we call ''the solutions-management layer,'' which is somewhere between a sales opportunity arriving and closing the sale." Activities in the solutions-management layer can include creating proposals, using guided selling plans, developing configuration pricing, and tailoring product information content.
"The more information you can bring to the salesperson''s awareness prior to the customer interaction," Galvin says, "the more closely they can align with the customer''s needs and values to craft a solution."
Knowledge is Sales Power
A good salesperson always is looking for an advantage; more complete customer and prospect information provide that edge.
Providing a convenient source of business information for sales is what OneSource Catalyst aims to accomplish. "You want your sales people to be better informed and prepared than your competitors'' sales people --- that is the value in this," Galvin remarked.
