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Centra Solutions Address Sales Knowledge Management Issues Outlined by Industry Study LEXINGTON, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 9, 2004 -- Enables Best Practices Approach to Sales and Marketing Issues Highlighted by CSO Insights Study of $100-Million FirmsCentra (NASDAQ: CTRA), a leading provider of specialized application software and services for online business collaboration, today outlined how organizations can address the sales knowledge management challenges published in a recent study conducted by CSO Insights, a research firm that specializes in benchmarking sales and marketing excellence. The study, based on input from more than 100 firms with $100 million or more in revenues, found that firms that excelled at Sales Knowledge Management achieved a 25.1 percent increase in the number of their sales reps meeting or exceeding quota than other firms. By utilizing Centra for Sales Effectiveness and the Centra Knowledge Center (CKC), organizations will be able to address many of the key issues outlined in the study. "It is clear from talking to many of the study participants that we need to utilize more innovative methods for getting knowledge and insights on how to effectively sell into the hands of sales people in a much more timely and dynamic fashion if they are going to remain competitive. One of the key trends the study surfaced was a significant increase in the number of sales organizations that are successfully leveraging Web-based collaboration and meeting technology to support sales training, sales strategy sessions and customer meetings," noted Jim Dickie, CSO Insights Partner and co-author of the report. Key sales issues facing companies revealed in the study include: -- The number one sales knowledge management challenge companies face is developing a continuously evolving process that adapts as the sales environment changes. -- More than 60 percent of participants said that they lacked the appropriate tools and processes in place to keep pace with changes in each customer's marketplace. -- More than 65 percent of participants felt that they lacked the appropriate Sales Knowledge Management (SKM) processes to keep pace with changes in their competitive landscape. -- More than 90 percent of companies surveyed lacked a formal, enterprise-wide best practices sharing program in place. Plan, Execute, Evaluate - Three Steps to Successful Online Business Initiatives Centra has leveraged its experience by compiling best practices from its customers and integrating business workflows with a complete technology platform that delivers end-to-end online management solutions and addresses the three key phases of any online business initiative: planning, execution and evaluation. Centra solutions allow organizations to effectively transfer knowledge throughout an organization's extended supply chain by facilitating online collaboration that delivers increased business value and ROI. -- Centra for Sales Effectiveness - Created for the VP of Sales or Sales Operations, this solution is designed to assist sales forces and channel partners to win more opportunities through greater productivity and marketing intelligence. This solution provides a unique competitive advantage by marshalling corporate knowledge, best practices and resources along every step of the sales cycle. This solution enables organizations to accelerate field readiness when launching new products or responding to competitive actions, deliver product and sales methodology training, assess and track sales rep product knowledge and competency, conduct online sales presentations and meetings, provide individualized coaching sessions, launch products, gain channel mind share and establish continuity by creating a channel knowledge center and measuring channel partner effectiveness. -- An Integrated Learning Content Management System - A key element of Centra's solutions is the Centra Knowledge Center, a highly customizable learning content management system. The knowledge center offers 24x7 access to a searchable database of customized and third-party content, including initiative and project requirements and plans, tutorials, recorded training sessions and best practice FAQs to enable users to quickly search, store, manage and deliver information in a readily accessible, centralized location that can integrate with any SCORM or AICC compliant library. With Centra for Sales Effectiveness and CKC, organizations can deploy enterprise-wide solutions that provide up-to-date, on-demand information as it relates to changing sales environments, a customer's marketplace and competitive landscape and organizational best practices. "The sales knowledge management issues outlined by the CSO study are real and universal," said James L. Freeze, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Centra. "We are designing our Sales Effectiveness solutions to reflect these challenges by gaining input from hundreds of forward-thinking companies who use Centra to address the productivity of their sales teams." Centra's portfolio of collaboration solutions enables groups of people to work faster, smarter and more efficiently by allowing dispersed workers to communicate and collaborate in real time using fully integrated voice-over-IP technology (VoIP). In addition, Centra's solutions can be installed as a behind-the-firewall packaged application or accessed through Centra's secure ASP network. Centra's unique leadership approach was recently recognized by leading analyst firm Gartner Group within the report titled "Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing," which evaluated Web conferencing vendors on their vision and their ability to execute on that vision. About Centra Online business collaboration solutions from Centra create workforce efficiencies and enable organizations to share and exchange business-critical information with geographically distributed customers, partners, prospects and employees. Centra's solutions integrate real-time collaboration and departmental business processes with specialized applications that increase sales effectiveness, improve collaborative learning and accelerate enterprise application rollouts and customer acquisition initiatives. Currently available in 12 languages, Centra solutions can be deployed as on-site software or through its ASP service and are supported by an active ecosystem of value-added partners, including Siebel, PeopleSoft, SAP and Deloitte Consulting. Organizations across every major industry and market sector choose Centra, including Wyndham International, Weyerhaeuser, Underwriters Laboratories, BMW and Stanford University. Headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, Centra serves a worldwide customer base throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information, visit www.centra.com. Centra is a registered trademark of Centra Software, Inc. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. |
