Have you ever actually taken the time to consider how many different software products your business is paying for?

It’s commonplace to hear talk of canceling personal subscriptions like Netflix or Audible if you don’t use them as much as you hoped; But, auditing the software products you are paying for as a business seems less ordinary.

According to Flexera’s 2022 State of ITAM report, nearly 1/3 of a company’s SAAS spend goes to waste. Value in software is at the axis of two fundamental characteristics: cost and functionality. As you consider how to get the most value out of your business’ SAAS spend, you should consider these two

The equation of cost is simple, more tools for less money means more value.

Considering that the digital transformation has been accelerated by the rise of the hybrid office. how do you get more value out of your SAAS Spend? Consolidate – use less tools with greater value and make sure you focus on user adoption and training.

We are all used to the trade-off between quality and cost, perhaps most fondly through the adage “You get what you pay for.” Many software providers are offering bundled solutions representing a collection of their offerings. The best solution for your business might be to seek a provider who offers the most solutions for your business in a single package.

As SalesChain celebrates our 20th year in business, we are spending a lot of time thinking about how we got here. Like many businesses, we do a lot of planning, and in order to address the question, “How will the print industry evolve in the near future?”, it is helpful to first take a historic look back and track technological developments. We feel that a clear picture of how the industry successfully met the needs of an ever-advancing global culture in the past can help us shape the way we will address modern challenges and changes.

Print has been an essential part of our everyday life for millennia.  In many ways, the development of print media has mirrored first the mechanization and then industrialization of commerce, and finally the advent of the digital age.  In the last 20 years, print has evolved into a hybrid model of analog copies and digital documents. With this modern shift came an increase in revenue for the industry and consolidation, both in terms of acquisitions by larger providers and a resulting reduction in the number of jobs.

Here at SalesChain, we have evolved along with the print technology industry that we serve.  The company was founded in 2002 to deliver a lease portfolio management tool to help dealers track leased assets.  We’ve expanded our value proposition to include support for the entire office equipment enterprise including proposal pricing, documentation, order fulfillment workflow, service pricing, commissions, delivery workflow automation, and document management. Along with our expanded functionality, we’ve developed integrations with some of the industry’s most respected software providers.

According to CIO, “The future of collaboration software is all about integration, not consolidation.” In the past few years, we have really come to understand the importance of integration and collaboration.  Our customers’ top priority is a relevant dataset.  We have come to understand that our product must provide seamless integration with industry-leading software partners and are making commitments towards this goal. The CRM database is no longer entirely about how much time is spent generating information within the platform itself, rather, it is about how much data the company can collect inside of the CRM.

As we continue to learn and grow in 2022, integration to more industry partners is going to be a major focus of our development team. Software users do not have the luxury of spending time entering information into two different products. We have been integrating with leasing partners and ERP systems to enhance our technical dataset for years. In fact, SalesChain boasts the industry-standard e-Automate integration and API integrations to leasing partners, including DLL. In 2022, that focus will continue through the lens of marketing automation and CRM data augmentation.

SaaS product platforms will create a promising industry future for businesses willing to embrace collaboration and work towards a unified and communicative dataset. We understand that businesses want specialized tools from different vendors (see Don’t Try to Do Everything, below) and we’re excited to be a part of this trend.

Over the years we have relied on our customers to tell us what tools they need us to build into our software to get their jobs done more efficiently and effectively. As we continue to improve our product and make it more robust for an ever-more-demanding software marketplace, we will continue to rely on our customers to help guide the direction of our development efforts. Inevitably, a tool that we build that helps one customer succeed will likely help many others.

As Qminder says, “A happy customer is more than a satisfied customer – it’s a retained customer.” A satisfied customer will sing your praises and be your best advocate, while a dissatisfied customer will explore, and potentially advocate on behalf of, your competitors.

As we grow and evolve in the new year, we will be relying more and more on our customers to help us chart a course for what is most important to our collective future. While we often work with the loud minority, we will intentionally solicit the input of the silent majority this year to see where we can make our most impactful improvements. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that everyone has something of value to contribute, whether they have taken the time to express it or not.

In 2022, SalesChain will celebrate its 20^th anniversary as a company. When reflecting on our history and growth, SalesChain has weathered some momentous changes in the office technology sector. Perhaps none of these changes rival the ones that the industry is experiencing right now, driven both by a global pandemic and the lightning speed of technological developments.

But SalesChain is no stranger to changing tides. We have continually expanded our software product with new tools to meet the needs of our customers. We realize that to remain viable, this openness to growth and change must continue. At some point, reliance on traditional photocopy machines will go away. This may seem alarming to a business whose focus is on selling and servicing these items, but it happens to all industries. Like the steam engines that were displaced by the more technologically advanced diesel engines, print media is giving way to electronic data transmission.

The question then becomes, how do you serve the industry, both now and in the future? Office technology dealers must maintain their revenue streams from mainframe machines and accessories while keeping an eye on the future of managed print services, document management services, IT products and services, and others that have not even been developed yet. What will the evolution of these cloud-based services look like? How can businesses expand into products based on the desire for these services?

In other words, how do you build a company for an industry that does not yet exist?

Educators face an analogous question as they train the future employees of this industry. How do you train a student for a career that does not yet exist? The short answer is: You train them to be creative and critical thinkers. These are the most important skills to transpose into the business world of tomorrow. As more baby boomers retire, the incoming generation of employees will be comfortable with cloud computing and will actually prefer it. They will be better prepared to fit into a work environment that does not fully exist yet.

SalesChain has managed to grow and reach the forefront of the office technology industry by doing two things:  building on our passion and solid foundation and striving to remain relevant. We have a great history that is foundational and will take us to where we are going next. Take your company successfully into the 21^st century by doing the same.

Have a clear and strong mission or vision statement that your employees are both familiar with and passionate about. Build on what you know and leverage those creative and critical thinking skills! Create an environment conducive to the generation of new insights by employees and customers alike. Finally, understand that the only constant in any business is change. Anticipate it and plan for it!

Talking about what life looks like in a post-pandemic world is so common now, that I think we’re all a little tired of hearing about it. It’s a tired cliché at this point. However, this transitional period hasn’t passed yet, so try as we might to avoid it, it’s important to grit our teeth, do some planning, and consider how changes will affect the office equipment and technology channel.

As we get more information and patterns and trends get analyzed, it seems that changes are inevitable but still unpredictable. Definitively saying that the office technology industry is going one way or another is about as sure as placing a bet on your favorite NCAA bowl game.

Some employees’ return to working in the office rather than working remotely will re-invigorate the need for print to an extent, but also the changes we are seeing in the print environment (a change from A3 to A4 devices and more need for network services) are going to persist and grow.

What we can say for sure (of any transitional phase) is that flexibility will be the key to successful business practices in 2022, even beyond. The evolution of technology is the one constant and businesses must change with the times to remain viable.

Jay McBain, principal analyst at Forrester, states that over 76% of global CEOs think the current business models won’t exist in five years! (Reference #4) Successful new business models will be ones that leverage the power of the internet and “real-time” commerce to harness a connected marketplace.

SalesChain is keenly aware of the importance of substantive, branded documentation when doing business. A well-established brand can set your company apart and accelerate the number of deals you close. The more familiar your clients are with your brand, the more comfortable they will become doing business with you. This applies to all aspects of the selling process. in this blog we would like to focus on the proposal document tools that SalesChain provides to our customers. From a marketing perspective, there are many benefits to having a unified proposal which all your prospective clients will see and that all your salespeople can use.

To summarize, your sales proposal document should make it clear what your business does and more specifically, how you can help the client. A terrific proposal means you should STAY ON BRAND! From the color palettes to the company logo, everything found in the proposal should reflect the corporate brand, resulting in a clean, consistent proposal. Highlight what sets you apart from your competitors and why your solution is the best proposition for the client. To capture a prospective client’s attention, you must identify their pain points and provide them with the right solution to alleviate their frustrations.

In the digital age, it is virtually impossible to find a situation where employees are not required to have at least some basic level of computer knowledge and internet savvy to perform their jobs. Like all technology, business computing has evolved at lightning speed. What was “state of the art” last year, is outmoded this year. With each update and advance, users are required to learn new skills to effectively use the software offerings and be the most efficient and effective workers.

The current range of computer experience and knowledge among workers is at an all-time high. The millennial generation has never been without devices as an integral part of their lives. They learn coding skills in grade school. The oldest baby boomers may never have had formal computer classes in school, or at best, have had high school or college training with rudimentary and outdated computing programs and machines. (Note: This dinosaur started out in high school learning Fortran and worked on one of the first room-size mainframe computers at Yale University with the help of keypunch cards!)  Somewhere in the middle are employees with education in both more advanced computer languages (such as HTML and CAD) and coding skills.

The term “user-friendly” can mean different things to different employees and is linked to their experience and comfort levels with computing. A user-friendly system to a millennial may be streamlined and highly graphic, reflecting their familiarity with computers and their prior knowledge of navigation of internet resources and software products. A user-friendly system for a baby boomer requires more detailed protocols of the basic background functions for them to successfully work through the intricacies of the software.

To learn a software system from the ground up, documentation within the system is of primary importance. Components should be separated into tabs. These tabs need to be chunked in a logical manner, so that users can learn the system basics and then easily navigate beyond what they already know, using their basic knowledge as the foundation for adding new functionality skills.

However, basic skill requirements are different for different learners.  Here is where the importance of addenda comes in.  In other words, basic training information required by the least experienced workers could be referenced in addenda, that millennials can ignore, and baby boomers can use as needed.  This addresses both the broad spectrum of basic background knowledge in general computing, as well as how quickly an individual learner can pick up on the specific details of the system they are learning.  If they need a refresher, there are two ways to go back and find basic, “walk you through it” kind of instructions, without complicating the menu fields in the program.  Perhaps these addenda could even be comprised of links to written or video tutorials outside of the system.

The expectation is simple: When you invest in an enterprise software product, you want it to work. We are not talking about the website simply resolving when you open the page, or the program launching successfully on your computer, we mean you expect it to really work.

You expect your employee base to adopt the use of it easily and you expect that it will function well for everyone. You expect that the workflow is going to work within the bounds of the way you do business. And most of all, you expect to get your money’s worth by making some processes more efficient or by filling an essential need.

To meet this expectation, enterprise software companies must rise to the task of configuring the software product to your specifications. At SalesChain, this is something we do every day – and with a CRM and Proposal Pricing system like ours, this configuration can take a few weeks.

For the average business, importing a database, setting up pricing levels, and ticking on and off several options is enough to make the system work well within their expectations. But this is not all it takes for some organizations that have multiple locations, complicated processes, or additional software products they would like to integrate into the new system. This is where customization of our software comes in.

Whether it is the fact that these two words are similar in structure or that they have similar meanings, we find that our customers often mistake Customization for Configuration and vice versa, leading to some confusion.

Because of this confusion, we wanted to outline the differences here. In this article, we will compare the configuration of software in the modern implementation of a CRM system with customization of CRM software, which usually entails custom software development. We will use the preview of CRM software since it serves as a good example, but also because it is our area of expertise. This concept can apply to most any type of enterprise-grade software.

During the configuration process, it feels a whole lot like the system is being customized for your business exclusively. The software vendor implements changes to user fields that are specific to your company, such as email templates, company-branded documents, security settings, page layouts, and workflow notifications.

Although these fields look customized, they are all part of the proverbial “options” that get configured as part of the standard system setup.

For a CRM solution specifically, configuration could include things like building dashboards, setting team roles from a hierarchical employee roster, uploading client information from other database sources, and setting deal pricing and commission reconciliation parameters.

Commission-based sales models have been standard business practice for many decades, but do they still make sense in a post-pandemic world?  Are they still functional and practical when the company has adapted to changing sales patterns, problems with supply chains, and more and more employees working part or even full time from home?

Historically, there are many advantages to commission-based sales models.  They can be a motivator for salespeople since they are based on the value of sales achieved and can form all or part of a pay package.

When used judiciously, this tool can benefit not only high-achieving salespeople but the company as well.  Payroll cost is related to the value of business achieved rather than just the amount of product made. It helps a business to control costs during peaks and troughs since payroll will be reduced or increased according to patterns in market trends.  An attractive commission package also helps companies retain top sales talent.

It’s no secret: the office technology industry is among those hit hard by the present supply chain issues. Dealers who have primarily relied on hardware-based commissions are simply going to need to rethink their strategy if they want to keep their top reps.

One way to approach this crisis is to focus on renewing business, like servicing existing machinery rather than selling additional hardware.

We saw similar challenges during the pandemic where the work from home movement caused a shift to sales of A3 or otherwise smaller format printers and copiers. Always keep in mind during a crisis that businesses are meant to adapt and grow with the times. Don’t get stuck in a rut and lose your profits in the mix.