Caspian sales processing, management and automation modules are all designed around the needs of ‘different' sales people within different industries and within the same organisations. The DNA of Caspian software for field sales/ account managers is very different to that of internal sales staff and sales managers. There have very different needs and issues as well as requirements which Caspian addresses very successfully. Below are a number of common requirements. For more (and there is much more!) about Caspian for improved sales administration, management and analysis please contact our sales office.

• Single Click Analysis
• Sales alerts
• Sales forecasting
• Multi currency
• Territory management
• Customised automated processes
• Lead management
• Project management
• Quotations with rules based pricing
• Field sales
• Partners and resellers
• Back office Integration
• Product configurator & customisations
• Sales order processing and discounting
• Invoices and credit analysis
• Sales analysis and histories
• Competitors tracking & SWOT Analysis
• PDA, XDA & Web Phones
• Telesales scripting
• Telephony integration
• Graphical reports and analysis
• Knowledge centre

Single Click Analysis

It's hard to imagine any software being easier to use than ‘one single click'! Caspian single clicks can be developed by your own IT staff and/or by a range of customer services we can offer. It's very fast and extremely effective. Below are a few examples of single clicks, but there is virtually no limit to the range and comprehensive nature of single clicks.

• With a single click you can get a graphical listing of your customers by type and with whom you are sharing

Sales alerts

The success of any business depends on its ability to fulfil the needs of its market. The success of any sales person is to a large degree dependent on timing supported with useful, meaningful and practical information. There are numerous methods and options to provide highly targeted and tailored sales alerts to every type of sales process, situations and cultures.

Sales forecasting

It's a myth that sales forecasting cannot be accurate and that sales people don't understand or know how to forecast sales. Sales people by the very definition of their profession know the benefits to their company and themselves. Numerous issues and complexities are created, many with good intentions, which actually make sales forecasting far more difficult and inaccurate. Caspian provides methods for effective, accurate and timely sales forecasting because forecasting large order values that take many months to secure is very different to those priced significantly lower with different sales cycles. Caspian enables sales staff to have fast, flexible, practical and simple to use options. Equally as important are the sales forecasting reports and analysis, comparative analysis and much more. Find out how sales forecasting can make a significant difference to your entire business.

Multi currency

There are so many time consuming administrative tasks associated with international sales. It starts with the simplest requirement, namely to provide indicative prices in the currency local to your prospects and customers, then to follow-up, revise and fully understand the impact of exchange rates. Of course the complexities grow once you get into multi currency quotations and simply gets worse once the quote becomes an order six months later and gets invoiced three months after that! Central to the design of Caspian are ‘financial transactions', often far exceeding mid market accounting and ERP systems. Imagine a sales manager quoting and forecasting in Euros, reporting to a Director in UK who best understand his numbers in £ sterling and yet has to report to his US head office in US Dollars. In between all obvious difficulties are different exchange rates and company policies. Caspian multi currency module works with products, enquiries, leads, quotations, sales orders, integrated sales invoices and even financial transactions from your accounting, ERP and financial systems.

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Territory management

Investing time with prospects and customers leads to better relationships, products, services and financial performance, but when there are overlapping territories – customer offices, prospect sites, product lines, it becomes a real headache to effectively manage, monitor and improve. The concept of territory management means different things to different people in the same industries. Whatever rules, guidelines, projections, profiles and criteria you need to have or to use, you'll find Caspian an invaluable tool and enabler.

Customised automated processes

There are many aspects of everyone's work where with a bit of thought and the use of a very substantial tool, many tasks and processes can be automated. Automation can work extremely well when you use a very detailed and comprehensive software solution like Caspian. Automations with Caspian could make real differences to your operating expenses and productivities. But best of all, it would enable far less work for your staff and managers, which means better quality of life at work and better performance.

Lead management

Most organisations need to generate leads and manage them. Most organisations generate the leads and fail, at times dramatically, at the follow-up and management of leads. This is not because no one wants or cares about the leads! There are a number of important factors contributing to the demise of leads and their management. Caspian lead management centralises every piece of information, document, prices, activity, influencers, risks and much more. Leads can be qualified far more effectively, efficiently and professionally. Best of all, you'll soon know if the lead is worth your company's resources and you'll have every opportunity to focus on every lead and turn them into profitable sales. Caspian lead management works for both direct sales and sales through indirect channels, like distributors and/or resellers. With the combination of Web site integration it means that leads can also be viewed, updated and analysed by any authorised person/organisations such as your resellers.

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Project management

Most organisations find they don't need much more than a highly flexible, sophisticated and simple to use lead management solution as offered in Caspian. However, in many industry sectors, such as manufacturing, construction, distribution and corporate finance to name a few, they simply cannot be effective without ‘project' or ‘major opportunity' management. In fact, it's not at all uncommon to find the needs for both lead and project management within the same company or division. But sales projects are complex. For example; supporting the project with integrations with other systems like manufacturing and financial systems, sales forecasting, customer complaints, multi currency or independent organisations influencing the decision in your favour or against you. Competitor's activities are also common issues. Caspian project management is the one key element of its total range of solutions for sales force automation. Very simple, fast and automated synchronisations for field based users places them in full control and better able to direct limited and expensive resources far more efficiently and effectively.

Quotations with rules based pricing

For those organisations or departments that have to do quotations, they all share common goals and objectives. The goals are to quickly and accurately create quotations; to ensure that if there are any specific discount terms these are automatically incorporated; to ensure that products and services are compiled and put together accurately and simply; to ensure required gross profit for the whole quote and/or per each line of the quote; to apply multi currency to the quote, within one second. Amongst these objectives is to personalise the quote, print it, fax it and email it. To ensure follow-ups are done and be reminded as well as warned if its not done; to quickly and easily re-quote; to issue the same quote to any number of organisations; to link quotes to marketing activities, campaigns, leads and projects; to covert quotes to sales orders; to automatically inform and update other members of the sales team and department; to protect against internal competition; to forecast at various sales process stages with varying levels of probability of success. Caspian quotations module with its extensive range of sub modules and options is very powerful and detailed.

Field sales

Sometimes we are criticised for saying that the people who are field based and have to manage, support and develop prospects and customers have one of the toughest jobs in their organisation. One of the main reasons for our view is to do with the vast range of information needed to work remotely and effectively. “I don't know, what I don't know”. For one of the aspects of CRM - sales force automation - to have any chance of success, it must first stop making a slave of the remotely based sales person/ account manager and secondly it must provide a vast range of information from across the organisation including financial systems. All of these are under pinned by very fast, no nonsense bi-directional synchronisations. Caspian for remote/field-based users is probably the most important and empowering tool and resource.

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Partners and resellers

You may only operate through one or more indirect routes and channels to the market. Or may be your organisation operates with a combination of both, to a varying percentage of your annual sales. It could even be that your sales are not through these intermediaries, but the sales are significantly influenced through third parties. For example, a construction manufacturing company sells directly to the contractors, but has to win the specification battles with the architects. Of course, you can use the Internet and any of your web sites to create and manage your distributors/resellers in a collaborative manner.

Back office Integration

Without robust, fast, bi-directional, transaction-based integration with your back office systems like financials, the CRM project is least likely to be successful. Caspian is extremely capable and powerful with regards to integrations, “integrations with any system for any reason”. For example one very common and at the same time complex problem many mid size organisations have is to do with multiple sales ledger customer accounts, each with unique codes and attached sales transactions. However, these separate sales ledger accounts must be in the CRM system, but reflect only a single customer view, yet at the same time distinguish between each of the sales ledger accounts. This way, marketing and sales staff can get a total sales view and analysis, but at the same time see and manage the individual sales ledger accounts. Caspian tools and modules make integrations, simple, robust, comprehensive and very cost effective.

Product configurator & customisations

One single product in Caspian can have up to 1000 specific attributes. There are the obvious ones, like multiple codes, straightforward or more complex discounting options, groups, types, cost prices, but, there are far more extended and detailed options. For example, multiple suppliers, locations, multi currency, substitutions with other products, bundles, etc. There is no known attribute, rule or condition that Caspian could not accommodate. We have placed a great deal of focus on details to accommodate integration requirements with virtually any financial system. There is of course the option to customise products and their use in Caspian modules ranging from enquiries to sales invoices.

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Sales order processing and discounting

Caspian is not an accounting system however it can cater for the most demanding sales order processing requirements and integrates its sales orders with inventory systems and sales ledgers. Ideal for larger SME's and departmental and multi site mid size organisations limited by the un-usable accounting systems and their costs. Field-based sales staff could also capture sales orders off-line and on customer's site/offices, supported by fast synchronisations. Sales orders can also be uploaded from an external system, distributed, analysed and used far more effectively than any alternative methods. Sales orders can be captured directly or uploaded inclusive of multi currency. eCommerce integration and modules enable sophisticated ordering, re-ordering and invoicing options.

Invoices and credit analysis

Caspian has a complete sales invoicing system inclusive of multi currency, conversions and links to sales orders and quotations. There are numerous payment options, controls and rules andthere are also summarised and detailed credit analysis. Sales invoices at transaction level inclusive of line numbering can be uploaded and linked to sales orders and/or quotations.

Sales analysis and histories

Whatever options used with Caspian for capturing and/or uploading sales transactions, chief among the major benefits are Caspian options for single and/or multi dimensional analysis, these are extensive analysis options and methods, which automatically present both data and graphs with just one single click in Microsoft Excel.

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Competitors tracking

Few organisations can afford to ignore their competitors. Smarter organisations get to know their competitors, learn from them and target their weaknesses, in sales, over optimism can be very costly and demoralising. Supporting the sales staff and their decisions with intelligent and pro-active information about competitors can be very effective and profitable. Knowing when to walk away from projects where you have the least chance of winning, based on historical competitor activities and intelligence can be a very powerful enabler.

PDA, XDA & Web Phones

PDA, XDA and XDA2 devices for wireless communications undergo significant improvements very quickly. In many organisations, they are now being considered or adopted as the primary tool for provision and capture of information. They are becoming the way many sales staff can work smarter and more efficiently without the need to start-up their laptop/notebook PCs. Caspian ActiveSynch provides an extensive range of standard and highly customisable options.

Telesales scripting

Internal sales staff and small customer contact centres need to increase their performance through more flexible and comprehensive telesales systems. Designing and implementing call flow and management systems needs to be done by the business users and controlled by the IT staff. Caspian call flow telesales and customer services system is a combination of business user and IT systems which are fast to deploy, can manage change and improve productivities.

Telephony integration

Caspian can provide telephony integrations for incoming and outgoing calls as well as call blending and integrations with call distribution systems. Combined with Caspian call flow builder, there is no limit to the extent and range of requirements that can be designed and developed.

Graphical reports and analysis

With Caspian you'll find you will be able to place significantly more of your own and everyone elses time into analysis rather than administrating, trouble shooting and administrating data. There are so many modules and options to meet the needs of diverse requirements. Best of all are Caspian's integrations with Microsoft Office applications, not because you don't know how to use Excel, but because you don't have the time. You need drill down style information, quickly and on demand. You want to get the information wherever you are and at any time. You need to see the numbers as well as graphical versions. You need Caspian to better understand your own and your company's performance, customers, prospects, products and marketing campaign successes, leads and status. You'll find Caspian a perfect partner in your journey for a never ending range of requirements for analysis.

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Knowledge centre

So much useful information is buried in WP documents, emails and files. Far more information needs to be available, more comprehensively and effectively than ever before. Caspian InfoCentre and Knowledge Management systems will enable you to centralise any type and amount of information; information on sales qualifications, price lists, customer profiles, product specifications, marketing information. No limits.