SalesChain Releases Version 8.1 featuring New Forecast 30-60-90 View, Activity Tab Sorting, and Net New vs Existing Activity Sorting

Forecasting

  • We’ve added a new 30-60-90+ Forecasting Desk to give users another option for viewing their pipeline. This interactive report was inspired by one of our archived screens – the “Sales Funnel Report by 30/60/90,” and features a slim, expected-close-date-based breakdown. Notably, the “Next Step” of each lead is prominently displayed and directly editable with a brand-new pop-up interface for easy sales team communication.

BETA: TCO/MPS Toolset

  • The much-anticipated Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Managed Print Services (MPS) utility is now in beta. We are beginning the initial round of testing with a select group of dealers who have been instrumental in guiding our design and development efforts.

Business Intelligence – Charting

  • We’ve added a new “Tile” construct to display a specific metric such as Revenue or GP as a number. This allows for additional level of creative display of information within our custom dashboarding tools.
  • Created three new dashboard templates for users to have more options when they create custom dashboards in SalesChain’s Business Intelligence platform.

Statement of Work

  • We’ve created a Statement of Work (SOW) utility to allow dealers to creatively define lists of services offered and to generate marketing friendly documents for customers. This can be used by sales to create a talk track aimed at cross-selling all of the different services your business might provide.
  • Statement of Work options have been added to the Customer Advanced Search utility so that sales can easily search customers that do or do not currently have a particular service.
  • SOW documents generated will be highlighted and attached to the SOW to easily track SOW history.
  • Attachments may also be marked as SOW related and highlighted in the SOW history viewer.

Great America Leasing Integration

  • We’ve upgraded our credit application integration to utilize GAL’s latest Restful API system. This will replace our long stand SOAP-based integration module and opens up the door for more features and future improvements.

Activity Tracking

  • We’ve added filtering capabilities to view New Prospect vs. Existing Customers within the Forecast 30 – 60 – 90 and Forecast by Category Slim.
  • We’ve added colorization to improve the visualization and highlight actions when viewing account activities, scheduled tasks, and more, so prioritized actions can “pop”!
  • We’ve added the ability to filter activities by type within the account view. Users can now filter activities to show only attachments, documents, notes, emails or tasks in addition to viewing all.

Fixes and Tweaks

  • We’ve modified the method of securing the tabs on the Order Breakdown by not showing a tab at all if the user does not have access to the underlying component. This means certain users may not only be permissioned away from parts of the OBD, but they will no longer see the areas they do not have access to, avoiding potential confusion and frustration.
  • We’ve removed the old Help library from the Menu/Help section. This feature has been replaced by SalesChain’s new self-help library.
  • We fixed an authorization request with the DLL integration that was causing the portfolio request to be locked.
  • We’ve updated our integration to HubSpot to support upgrades to their API scopes.

 

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SalesChain Launches new Territory Analytics Tool

[Southbury, CT] Business workflow automation provider SalesChain released a new territory analytics tool to their software platform. This tool will allow dealers to use their software platform to collate, analyze, and make decisions based on sales opportunities in different geographic regions.

According to SalesChain CEO Tim Szczygiel, this tool provides a “spot-in-time analysis.”  It helps dealers understand the range of their opportunities in a particular region, based on zip code, so they can balance their sales rep’s customer base in that area.

The software syncs sales rep territory information input with national census data. This gives users density data, such as total number of businesses in a zip code or a region, along with how many accounts are currently in that region along with the number of leases, and the revenue being generated there. This balancing tool has the capacity to run scenarios with the data to help managers make informed decisions.

Contact SalesChain today to see how our platform can help your business effectively distribute customer accounts by territory and increase your bottom line! Users interested in this feature can contact the SalesChain help desk for more information at (203) 262-1611 or email us at Support@saleschain.com.

 

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Matthew Szczygiel Becomes New Client Success Manager for SalesChain

[Waterbury, CT]: Matthew Szczygiel will occupy the new position of SalesChain’s client success manager effective September 20th, 2022. Matt has been serving the company as director of marketing since March of 2020 and has been an integral part in developing SalesChain’s corporate website and most recent advertising strategies.

Matt will move into responsibilities aimed at helping customers experience success with their implementation and use of the SalesChain platform. He will act as a general contractor and point of contact to help customers navigate through SalesChain, making sure to address all their needs, questions, and/or concerns. He will collaborate with project managers to ensure the successful completion of onboarding, post-sales support, and implementation of any additional products or customization.

“I am really excited to get to know our customers better and see how we can work together in this new role. I am ready to help build and nurture the SalesChain community!” says Matt.

Matt is a graduate of High Point University, where he earned a BA in communications with a focus in electronic media production. He is a resident of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and an avid videographer.

About SalesChain: SalesChain is the complete business automation solution for office equipment dealers. A CIO Magazine top 10 Workflow Automation Company, their goal is to help businesses see greater profitability and increased efficiency through better automation and synchronized data. SalesChain helps dealers create smart data that can be used across the business to create more efficient operations.

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

SalesChain Releases Version 8.0 featuring Bundled Print, IT Product, and Managed Service Pricing

[Southbury, CT] – Business automation software provider SalesChain released version 8.0 of their platform this past Sunday, August 7th, 2022. This release brings an industry-first bundled configure price quote (CPQ) platform for Print, IT Products, Management Services, Telephony, and document management products and services.

“SalesChain is the first and only system that offers a complete CPQ for copiers, printers, IT and managed services, period.” Says CEO Tim Szczygiel “Combining the industry’s best CPQ for print with real-time integrations to distributor inventory and pricing is something that no other system can deliver.”

SalesChain’s bundled solutions platform gives dealers a sales solution capable of supporting multiple product offerings. In addition, the provider has created purpose-built forecasting and lead management tools designed for the relative print or IT sales representative. These tools, along with integrations to ConnectWise Manage and e-Automate can help maximize collaboration and eliminate redundant data entry.

Upgrades to SalesChain’s IT Pricing Solution allow reps to view and compare real-time pricing and availability of products from various distributors. Etilize acts as a configurator, bringing in data on associated accessories as well. A block of time feature allows users to separate monthly service fees from one-time installation charges.

Integration with ConnectWise Manage is at the core of SalesChain’s initiative. Two-way integration between the platforms synchronizes companies, contacts, tickets, opportunities, projects, and orders. This level of functionality means that SalesChain users can now share data effortlessly between ConnectWise Manage and ECI e-Automate – creating one shared dataset.

About SalesChain: SalesChain is the complete business automation solution for office equipment dealers. A CIO Magazine top 10 Workflow Automation Company, SalesChain provides CRM, CPQ, Quote to Cash, and more for copier dealers and managed service providers. SalesChain helps dealers create smart data that can be used across the business to create more efficient operations.

Click here to learn more about SalesChain

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

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SalesChain’s New Bundled Lead Screen: What You Need to Know

SalesChain is proud to announce a major overhaul of our lead entry screen. We’ve replaced our existing form with an all-new bundled solutions selling lead screen. This updated version includes significant enhancements aimed at helping dealers with diverse offerings sell all the different products and services they offer right from SalesChain’s order breakdown CPQ tool.

In this article, we’ll cover the reason for these updates and give you a summary of the features that have been updated.

Why Build a New Lead Screen?

Quite simply, the purpose is to create a tailor-made experience for the different sales teams that work in today’s complex dealers. As dealerships continue to expand into more and more diverse offerings, it’s likely that specialists in each different segment of the business are looking for more product or service-specific details.

It’s clear from industry feedback that users selling IT products and services don’t want to use a software product that is designed exclusively for those selling copiers. In response to this feedback, SalesChain has created a single platform with lead and opportunity management processes for imaging hardware and services, IT products and services, document management and scanning services, VoIP systems, and more. This allows salespeople to work in their way with their vernacular, and it allows businesses to better sell and track blended solutions.

Why Focus on Blended Solutions?

As we elaborate on in this recent article,  product diversification in the office technology field is becoming increasingly necessary, as dealers focus on offerings that are compelling for WFH and hybrid offices.

The problem is that there are currently separate software ecosystems to accommodate sales in imaging, IT products, and services, as well as management functions like forecasting, analytics, and commissioning.

What we have created instead is a single, unified system that seamlessly connects all the separate processes required to keep your business running. The merging of these separate worlds can help dealers with diverse offerings get more of their product offerings to their customer base to future-proof their services and grow intelligently.

One System for Dealers in Imaging and IT.

Watch this brief video to learn a bit about where our offering is headed in 2022!

What’s Different?

New Look and Feel – SalesChain’s new lead screen has received a facelift and now matches our updated user interface look and feel. Large font and buttons indicate the most important pieces of information to convey while details are clearly organized for the user’s review.

Tabs for Specialists – Each offering that your business has can be configured as a tab for your respective specialists, giving them familiar fields to enter information. Users can switch between tabs or view the “all” tab to review the details of the entire blended solution.

Simplified, Tailored Selling – We have segmented the lead screen to allow specialists to show only the information which is relevant to their portion of the forecasted deal. A VoIP specialist can navigate to the VoIP tab, for example, and view only the information which is most important to them.

ConnectWise Manage Integration – We have added the ability for users to request help from IT specialists working in ConnectWise Manage by creating tickets right from the lead view. This integration can help leverage the efforts of teams working in different systems to improve the CPQ process overall.

Purpose Built IT Forecasting

Along with this updated lead screen, we’ve added a new blended IT solutions forecasting tool to complement our existing six options. This focused forecasting tool lets users compare revenue from IT services, IT products, IT setup fees, hardware, and service without getting bogged down by the segments of business outside of the IT realm.

SalesChain has featured our category-based forecasting tools for many years as the standard for tracking revenue across a dealership’s separate offerings. Segmented forecasting can help dealer owners understand which offerings are being leveraged to their maximum potential, and which might need a boost in the form of incentive programs or blitzing campaigns in order to see their full potential.

Want to Learn More?

This new lead screen will be available to all SalesChain Gold and Platinum subscription holders. SalesChain users interested in this feature can contact the SalesChain help desk for more information at (203) 262-1611. If you’re interested in the SalesChain System and are not currently a user, you can schedule a discovery call with our team here.

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

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20th Anniversary Photo Contest Giveaway!

Giveaway Time!

SalesChain Customers: As we celebrate our 20th anniversary you can enter for a chance to win your choice of: Apple Airpod Pros, a $100 Gift Card to JR Cigars, or a $100 Gift Card to Total Wine.

 

Instructions:

01: Follow SalesChain on LinkedIn and Facebook.

02: Post a creative photo wearing or using any item from your swag bag on Facebook or LinkedIn and tag SalesChain.

03: Winners will be drawn on July 31st, 2022.

We are very thankful for your business and can’t wait to see your photos!!

 

Thank you again for trusting SalesChain with your business workflow automation needs. We look forward to growing together!

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

GreatAmerica Financial Services and SalesChain Team Up for Credit Application Submittal Tutorial Video

20 years ago, SalesChain was founded as a lease portfolio management platform. Though our offering has expanded to include best in class CRM, proposal and order pricing, commissions and document generation tools, leasing has always remained at the core of our platform.

For this reason, we have always maintained strong relationships with the office technology industry’s top leasing companies. We have bidirectional integrations with many of these platforms, allowing SalesChain to pull lease portfolios from the finance companies as well as push credit applications directly into their systems.

In celebration of our awesome integration, Robin Fonck of GreatAmerica Financial Services joined SalesChain University host Matt Szczygiel in the creation of a credit application submittal tutorial for SalesChain users. You can watch the video or read a transcription below!

About SalesChain: SalesChain is the complete business automation solution for office equipment dealers. A CIO Magazine top 10 Workflow Automation Company, their goal is to help businesses see greater profitability and increased efficiency through better automation and synchronized data. SalesChain helps dealers create smart data that can be used across the business to create more efficient operations.

About GreatAmerica: GreatAmerica is the largest independent, family-owned national commercial equipment finance company in the U.S. with over $2.4 billion in assets and life-to-date finance originations of $13.5 billion. GreatAmerica was established in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1992 and today is organized into six divisions. It has a staff of over 600 employees with offices in Iowa, Georgia, Minnesota, and Illinois.

Watch The Tutorial Here!

Or Find it Online at SalesChain University’s YouTube Channel.

Transcription

Matt Szczygiel, SalesChain: In this video, we’ll show you how to submit a credit application through SalesChain’s order breakdown utility. And one of our friends at GreatAmerica Financial Services will show you how submitting your credit application through SalesChain can help make the process smoother for you.

Before you submit a credit request for approval through SalesChain, there are a couple of things we can check to make sure that all our information is as accurate as possible before we hit submit.

First, we want to make sure that equipment configurations and our manifest use is accurate as possible. If you don’t have your equipment properly configured in SalesChain, this may impact the dollar amount that your client is approved or declined for. You can check the configuration of your equipment in the products tab of SalesChain’s order breakdown.

Next, let’s move to the Pricing Tab of our order and take a look at the Financing Summary.

We want to make sure that the credit level, leasing company, product, and term are correct. Notice that the level and factor will be calculated for you by the system automatically, but that you do have override capabilities for that factor if necessary.

We want to make sure that we’ve entered a correct lease buyout value for either a competitive lease, our own lease, or both in the pricing tab as well. It’s important that these numbers are placed in the correct location so that the credit application can be properly filled out and submitted.

If the customer is upgrading a lease where your company was the selling dealer, you need to enter the dollar amount into the lease upgrade field (which may or may not be marked with your company name).

If you’re buying a customer out of a competitive lease, use the competitive lease upgrade box. If your company charges the lease return fee, there may be a field where you can enter this value as well.

It is possible to associate this new deal with an existing lease if it is in your SalesChain system. We’ll do this in the Financing Tab of the order breakdown. You’ll see that the dollar value for the lease buyout value, if you entered one, has carried through to this screen as well.

I’ll click lookup to see if there are any leases with this account existing and use the checkboxes on the left-hand side to select whatever leases I want to associate this deal with.

You can select one or many existing leases. Once I’ve selected the lease or leases that I’m upgrading on this deal, I can designate this as an upgrade to return, an upgrade, to keep, etc. using the upgrade types dropdown.

I’ve invited Robin Fonck of Great America to come record with me today, and she’ll start by telling us what information they are looking for once this credit application hits their system.

Robin Fonck, GreatAmerica: So, most of the time we are looking for a variety of information in the credit application, really helping us understand the situation. So, items like the application type, are we looking at a dollar out or are we looking at maybe an FMV? We’re looking for the total financed amount. We’re looking for the terms so how long do we want the contract to last for?

We’re looking at possible purchase options at the end of the agreement. And lastly, we’re really looking for any additional customer information that you can share with us. So, once we have all of that information in our system, we begin processing the application and then we can reach out to you with any additional questions. Any information that provides clarity to the request can help speed the approval process and really improve the end user experience.

So, whether that’s the invoicing needs, the billing requirements or even possible future changes to the contract, the more we know, the easier the process can be.

Matt Szczygiel, SalesChain: Alright, now that we’ve done our due diligence and double-checked these figures, we’re ready to submit our credit application. In the Finance tab, I’ll click “submit applications”. I’ll be presented with a dialog box that lets me select which of my finance companies I want to submit this credit application to. In this case, I’m going to select GreatAmerica and click “Submit” at the bottom right-hand corner.

When a credit request has been submitted, your line item will be assigned a credit app ID, the date and time will be recorded, the financing company’s application ID will be returned, and a message will appear at the top in red, confirming that the request has been submitted. At this point, you can hit close and exit your proposal and order.

Any additional attempts to submit a credit request from this order will be met with a dialog box telling you that a request has already been submitted.

Robin, what sort of advantages can this process have for dealers?

Robin Fonck, GreatAmerica: So, solution providers really just like SalesChain and GreatAmerica using the integration for submitting credit applications will realize a significant runtime advantage over maybe emailing in or calling in any of the applications. So, our integration enables users to enter the credit application information directly into our booking system, which eliminates the entire idea of having a middleman that will enter system information in two or three different systems just to get the application to GreatAmerica.

It expedites the process and really, truly leads to a faster turn time once the application hits our system, you’ll be able to track it with regular updates from GreatAmerica directly in SalesChain.

Matt Szczygiel, SalesChain: After you’ve submitted your credit application, it’s easy to track its status using SalesChain’s Credit Desk. This is a dedicated screen designed with the leasing coordinator in mind. It helps to track and organize credit applications and their statuses across different leasing companies all in one place. This tool also helps users manage and process conditional approvals and declines.

Automated communication tools and workflow notifications are built in to notify the sales team of important actions like conditional approvals or declines.

Robin Fonck, GreatAmerica: So, keep in mind that this does not change the GreatAmerica’s approach to processing or notifying you of the status of a deal. The traditional process that you know and love about GreatAmerica’s approach to financing and communication will remain the same. This truly, just as an additional layer of visibility into the process.

Matt Szczygiel, SalesChain: So is that what makes submitting credit applications through SalesChain really spectacular or is it something else that makes it a little bit easier?

Robin Fonck, GreatAmerica: Well, SalesChain is spectacular anyway, but the added benefit of the integration, being able to take out that middleman truly helps everybody in the process, really achieve the transparency that we need in each of the deals and the communication that we need in each of the deals. So really, over the last several years, SalesChain has really advanced their integrations with GreatAmerica.

Personally, I’ve been incredibly impressed with your support team. SalesChain has always been very responsive with problem solving and customer service questions. Truly, this partnership makes it easier to do business together, and it helps bring as many possible integration solutions as possible to our end users.

Matt Szczygiel, SalesChain: Well, Robin, thank you very much for your time today. We really appreciate your contributions, your insight, your genius. Obviously, we love GreatAmerica, too, and it’s been very easy working with you as partners. So, thanks again for your time.

If you have any additional questions about the credit application submittal process, please feel free to contact our support desk at 203-262-1611. One of our Help Desk experts would be happy to assist you with your questions. You can also email us at support@saleschain.com. Be sure to subscribe to this channel so that you don’t miss any other helpful tutorials like this one.

And if this helped you with the credit app submittal process, give it a light down below. Please be sure to check out GreatAmerica Financial Services at their website. GreatAmerica.com and until next time, have a great rest of your day.

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

SalesChain Releases v7.09: the Biggest IT Update in Company History

[Waterbury, CT]: CRM and business automation software provider, SalesChain, released version 7.09 of their software Sunday, May 8th, 2022. This update represents the largest collection of improvements to the provider’s IT pricing and managed services provider (MSP) business management tools. This update comes as the company continues to focus on office technology dealerships with diverse and evolving offerings.

This highly anticipated build includes an integration to ConnectWise Manage that synchronizes company, contact, tickets, opportunities, and orders between the two platforms. This integration is the foundation of SalesChain’s One System platform, supporting companies selling IT services, IT products, and print solutions with a single sales management, proposal & order pricing, documentation, and commissions platform. This integration means that SalesChain users can now share common customer data effortlessly between ConnectWise Manage and ECI e-Automate via SalesChain.

SalesChain’s new IT pricing platform is included in this update as well. Powered by Etilize, this tool pulls catalog data from TechData, Synnex, Supplies Network, and Ingram Micro nightly to offer up-to-date pricing data, inventory data, product comparisons, and associations. This tool was built so that businesses can quote IT products in the same system as imaging and IT services offerings.

Companies utilizing RingCentral phone services may now click on a phone number and automatically activate the phone.  Upon finishing the call, a note window will automatically pop up and allow the user to enter details along with the system capturing the call duration. If the user clicks on a phone number that appears on a task, a task action window will pop up instead of a note, to allow the user to log the action along with the call duration details.

This update also includes a new scope of services feature, the option to sort leads by revenue range on the forecasting screens, new 30-60-90-day forecasting charts, DLL’s credit application submittal API integration, and improvements to SalesChain’s HubSpot integration, workflow notifications, and email campaign systems. Several fixes and tweaks are included in the update as well.

For a full list of fixes, enhancements, and tweaks, SalesChain users can review the release notes from inside of SalesChain under Menu -> Release Notes.

About SalesChain: SalesChain is the complete business automation solution for office equipment dealers. A CIO Magazine top 10 Workflow Automation company, their goal is to help businesses see greater profitability and increased efficiency through better automation and synchronized data. SalesChain helps dealers create smart data that can be used across the business to create more efficient operations.

To stay up to date on SalesChain’s latest software updates, subscribe to their newsletter here.

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Better Call Art, “SalesChain & The Glue That Holds it All Together”

Our father-son team of Timothy and Matthew Szczygiel appeared on this week’s episode of “Better Call Art” with Art Post!

Amongst other things, they spoke about the evolution of the imaging channel and how integrations can help make your business automation and CRM software stick!

Thanks for having our team on, Art!

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

Pulse Technology Chooses SalesChain

[Southbury, CT]: Pulse Technology, a complete office technology partner providing IT services, office technologies, office products, and a Select Dealer Group member has chosen SalesChain for their CRM and Business Process Automation software needs.

After Pulse Technology signed with SalesChain in November, the SalesChain team got to work creating an integration to Pulse’s ERP system of choice: Forza. Currently, SalesChain is the only software platform in the CRM and business automation technology space that offers this integration

“Tim’s team delivered on their promise to create an integrated solution between SalesChain and Forza,” says owner, Chip Miceli.

“Chip has become a terrific partner and we are thrilled to be working with him and his fantastic team,” says Tim Szczygiel, President of SalesChain.

About SalesChain: SalesChain is the complete business automation solution for office equipment dealers. A CIO Magazine top 10 workflow automation company, their goal is to help businesses see greater profitability and increased efficiency through better automation and synchronized data. SalesChain helps dealers create smart data that can be used across the business to create more efficient operations. Learn More.

About Pulse Technology: Pulse Technology is an industry leader in print management, network services (IT), videoconferencing solutions, office furniture design and sales, office and promotional products, and eCommerce solutions. Pulse Technology is the new and re-branded name for several well-known area businesses: Des Plaines Office Equipment, McShane’s, and Kramer Leonard. From locations in Chesterton, IN and Chicago, Rockford and Schaumburg, IL, Pulse Technology has served the needs of businesses and organizations throughout the Midwest since 1955. Learn More. 

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.