Conjoin: Solutions White Paper

Conjoin: An intranet application portal for sales & marketing/FONT>

Conjoin has developed Field.First, an intranet application portal for sales & marketing.

Field.First provides marketing with an easy-to-use, . HTML-free. publishing environment for delivering content to the intranet, and offers sales a set of applications through which sales and marketing may access and act on the content provided. This applications focus is extremely important; salespeople need more than web-based access to publish content. They need tools to manage this content and get their work done faster, efficiently and more effectively.

The value equation for Field.First is straightforward:

Reduce the time required to prepare for sales calls
by giving salespeople tools to quickly execute account-related tasks . such as building presentations, briefing themselves on a competitor or new product, building and distributing literature kits to customers and prospects. Less time preparing means more time selling.

Improve the caliber of the ammunition used to close orders
by providing the field with better access to information, by removing out-of-date and irrelevant information, and by offering tools which enable the assembly of sharper, more focused materials and messages. Better ammunition means more orders closed.

A key capability of Conjoin. s Field.First is to create a powerful feedback loop between the sales force and the marketing team. Using Field.First, marketing is kept well informed as to which content is valued and used most often by the field. In short, through the use of several Conjoin-developed feedback mechanisms, the marketing team can, over time, become a much more effective supplier of useful and valuable information.

Conjoin Field.First application foundation.

Conjoin. s Field.First application foundation is designed to provide key functionality for content . lifecycle. management, content publishing, and content aggregation. It includes Conjoin software, as well as third party web server, application server, and ODBC-compliant database components. Scalable, modular, easy to use, Conjoin. s application foundation allows for the rapid initial deployment of several key applications; then, over time, the extension of the intranet through the deployment of additional application modules.

The following offers a brief discussion of the base functionality built into every Conjoin deployment:

Content lifecycle management: The . self-cleaning. intranet
One well-known problem with many Intranets is the tendency for content to become stale, and for marginally useful content to proliferate to a degree that makes it difficult to find valuable information. Every Conjoin intranet incorporates a content management system, which serves to . prune. intranet content over time by automatically removing and archiving both out-of-date and unused content.

Out-of-date content is managed by giving all published content an expiration date. Several days prior to expiration, the content owner will be emailed and notified accordingly. The owner may wish to update and extend the content or simply allow it to be retired. Unused content is managed in a similar fashion, through the application of . usage thresholds.. If a piece of content is not being used by the field (failing to exceed a threshold of minimal unique hits), then the owner will be notified accordingly; the owner can either promote and extend the content, or allow it to be automatically moved to the archive.

Feedback: Conjoin. s ratings engine
Conjoin also provides a . single-click. ratings engine that allows sales people to rate content they. ve accessed. If, for example, a document is accessed very rarely but always given very high marks, it is a clear signal to marketing that this content should be maintained and aggressively promoted to other members of the field force. Conversely, if a document is accessed constantly, yet is usually given low marks, then marketing should probably modify the content to increase its value.

This mechanism, in conjunction with the content lifecycle management features described above, ensures that all content is kept current, relevant, and valuable to users. In addition, a backchannel is created through which marketing will, over time, become a better supplier of . product. to sales, its primary . customer.
. HTML-free. publishing / Distributed content ownership
Another well-known problem with intranets is the bottleneck that occurs as IT becomes the publishing agent, or . babysitter,. for all new material. Using OLE technology (object linking and embedding), Conjoin. s architecture permits content to be published, stored, and accessed in its native format. This, in turn, allows any marketing personnel (with assigned publishing rights) to post new content to the intranet or extranet . without requiring HTML conversion or knowledge of any web publishing tool or technology.

Conjoin. s approach allows content ownership to be distributed. A product manager who developed a cost-of-ownership model for her product will be singly responsible for managing that content over time. This ensures greater buy-in by marketing as a group, and ensures that the authors themselves govern the quality of the intranet or extranet content.
Content Classification

The frustration users experience at the hands of ineffectual keyword search engines is well known. Field.First allows a different approach. Every Conjoin deployment incorporates a content classification scheme or . taxomony. built around the customer. s specific products, markets, competitors and business language. When content is published, the author tags it as being relevant to specific topics or categories. Using this taxonomy, users can then rapidly . slice and dice. available content to create a logical, useful view of specific content.

Conjoin does, of course, include keyword search capabilities. In fact, unlike search engines which merely crawl and catalogue document titles or abstracts, Conjoin. s search engine ensures that every word of every document . whether it be in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, .PDF, or any number of other formats . is indexed and included in every search.

Field.First application modules.

Field.First is comprised of six application software modules; each designed to help the salesperson become better prepared and informed, resulting in more sales wins.

The following is a brief description of each module. A customer may choose to deploy one or two . or all six, depending on their needs and issues:

My Field.First

Provides each user with a personal page that efficiently summarizes new content and materials relevant to their business focus.

Modeled after "My Yahoo", My Field.First allows the user to subscribe to topics of interest. As new content is published to the system, it is automatically filtered and presented to each user through the . My Field.First. application module. The content is continuously and automatically monitored in accordance with a rolling . time window. set for the system, so that only new or recent content is displayed.

Presentation Builder
Provides marketing with a single web-based presentation repository, and sales personnel with a web-based tool for quickly building a custom slide set for an upcoming sales call.

Presentation builder allows a sales person to quickly identify appropriate slides on chosen topics from a database of all available presentations, then download only those slides onto a local hard drive for final arrangement and customization. Sales people always know which presentations are available, always have access to the latest and greatest versions, and . through the use of slide . thumbnails. . sales people can view slides and avoid laborious downloads of entire presentations.

Literature Cabinet
Creates a sortable, searchable database for literature and other customer handouts. Enables salespeople to quickly build a packet of information and distribute it electronically to their prospects and customers.

The Literature Cabinet allows a sales person to specify the product or topic of interest to the customer, then receive . recommendations. on which documents might be used as ammunition in closing the sale. The Literature Cabinet enables the sales person to specify and send an appropriate on-line literature packet to a customer . via email, fulfillment center, or (in a future release) through the creation of a unique website at which the selected handouts are viewable by the customer via the web.

Briefing Center

Provides easy-to-use Briefing Rooms through which sales personnel can quickly become informed and educated in advance of upcoming sales calls or customer meetings.

Briefing Rooms are . forums. within the intranet that marketing managers can create instantly. They provide a convenient method for providing and sharing materials and intelligence to the field. By visiting a specific Briefing Room, sales people and channel partners can quickly and easily brief themselves on a given subject . such as a new competitive announcement, a recently announced product, or an upcoming trade show or sales meeting. A Briefing Room may also provide a virtual workspace where remote teams can work together on a proposal or project.

Reporting Center

Provides managers, publishers and administrators with a detailed understanding of how well the materials published to Field.First cover all of the categories of information; and offers a window into the perceived value and of the content as seen through the ratings and usage patterns of end users.

The Reporting Center provides the following reports:

Summary: This report shows how many documents have been published in each topical area, how many documents have been published by type, and how many documents each user has viewed.
Usage and Ratings: This report details the Usage and Ratings information for every published document. Based on this information, the report generates a recommendation for how to manage that piece of content to improve the usability and quality of the materials.
Content: This report provides detail on an individual document.
Briefing Rooms: This report details the active Briefing Rooms, and the content contained within them.

Content Manager

Permits users to search and sort all Field.First content in accordance with specific parameters.

The Content Manager features Power Find, a search and filtering content utility which lets users quickly aggregate content by specifying one or more of the following: document type, desired topical categories, date of publish, publisher, and document format. Allows users to rapidly create highly customized views of available content.

It is worth emphasizing once again the value of Conjoin. s applications-based approach. Providing marketing with a means to . post. presentations, literature, competitive information, and other materials to an intranet (or marketing encyclopedia) is important but wholly insufficient. Conjoin not only provides an interactive environment for publishing and content management but also ensures that the sales people are given tools to apply these materials to sales-cycle related tasks. Sales people don. t simply download published content, they use powerful tools to actively build a custom slide set, brief themselves on a new competitor, assemble and distribute a literature package, or easily locate all content pertaining to a given topic. This enables sales people to be educated and informed in a timely manner.

Conjoin. s Field.First modules described above are the result of extensive market research conducted with prospective clients and key customers concerning which informational problems are the most pressing. Conjoin continues to identify with prospects, industry analysts and valued customers, additional applications that will be added to Conjoin. s product portfolio.

Product advantages.

In light of the problems commonly inherent with traditional intranets for sales and marketing, Field.First offers several distinct advantages over earlier approaches:

Integrated, easy to use applications.
Simply posting information for the field is helpful, but wholly insufficient. Conjoin provides a suite of applications which lets sales people act on the information they. re given . building presentations, briefing themselves on specific topics, building and distributing literature kits . just by using the browsers on their computers.

Fast aggregation of desired information.
Search alone doesn. t cut it in the intranet environment. Conjoin has developed a powerful information classification scheme, based on the customer. s own business taxonomy, which lets users rapidly find all content related to focused, company-specific topics.

Self-cleaning, self-pruning
Forrester has noted that "the majority of Fortune 1000 intranets suffer from unmanaged content." In fact, most intranets today have no established method or model for removing stale or irrelevant information. Enter Conjoin. s Content Lifecycle Management. Through the use of expiration dates, usage analysis, and a simple ratings engine, Field.First automatically . prunes back. out-of-date, unused and low-value content - ensuring that what remains is current, relevant, and of value to the field.

Distributed publishing, distributed ownership.
. Field.First saves IT and marketing valuable time. By enabling all marketing personnel to post new content directly to the intranet, IT is spared the tremendous time investment required to maintain a . static HTML. environment. And, since authors manage the lifecycle of their own content, there is a much higher level of buy-in from the marketing group as a whole.

Conclusion.

Companies have a choice. They can spend several hundred thousand dollars and use valuable internal resources to offer basic functionality to the sales force; or, they can deploy a packaged intranet solution, at a fraction of the cost, that will empower their marketing group and make their sales force much more efficient and productive, increasing sales wins.

<The intranet portal<
Back to Compaq Case Study