Part I of this blog post series talked about my encounter with BigMachines, a provider of slick software-as-a-service (SaaS) configure, price, and quote (CPQ)/quote-to-order (Q2O) solutions during my recent attendance of Gartner’s CRM Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona (US). Prior to analyzing recent events at BigMachines, Part I explained the general value proposition of on-demand Q2O and CPQ software solutions. Part II will continue with a discussion of recent developments at BigMachines.

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I recently attended Gartner’s CRM Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona (US). During the conference, I bumped into several old acquaintances who are working for various customer relationship management (CRM) software vendors. One of the vendors that attended the conference was BigMachines, a provider of inventive software-as-a-service (SaaS) configure, price, and quote (CPQ)/quote-to-order (Q2O) solutions.

Generally speaking, Web-based product configurators empower user enterprises to sell more, faster to their customers. These customers can be either other businesses or individual consumers.

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The first part (Part II) of this blog series described the opportunities for software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand applications, especially in the current difficult economic milieu. Part II and Part IIa then analyzed the top five SaaS assumptions (misconceptions) recently outlined by Gartner.

Part IIa and Part IIb also analyzed the major technical considerations that any vendor has to go through before it can embark on delivering a SaaS offering. This final part will will conclude with the Internet hosting service considerations as well as with key success factors (KSFs) for SaaS providers. Read the rest of this entry »

The first part of this blog series described the opportunity for software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand enterprise applications, especially in the current difficult economic milieu. But before any vendor can embark on delivering a SaaS offering, it must understand several misconceptions about SaaS.

Part two then analyzed the first two of the top five SaaS assumptions that Gartner recently outlined in its research.  Read the rest of this entry »

Part IV of this blog series further analyzed Webcom ResponsAbility, the on-demand workflow automation and business process management (BPM) solution. Anyone interested can take the product for a free trial test drive here. The vendor just released the ResponsAbility p4 release.

Competitive Offerings Do Exist

Still, Webcom’s first-to-market (or close to) BPM on-demand advantage has already been challenged by the solutions from Skemma, Appian [evaluate this product], Lombardi [evaluate this product], Colosa ProcessMaker [evaluate this product], Pipevines, and The Process Factory (powered by Cordys), to name only a few. Read the rest of this entry »

Part III of this blog series introduced Webcom ResponsAbility, the on-demand workflow automation and business process management (BPM) solution. Anyone interested can take the product for a free trial test drive here.

Other Real Life ResponsAbility Use Examples

In addition to the examples described in Part III, another example of the ResponsAbility software in use can be found in Grayhill, Inc. an electronics manufacturer from Lagrange, Illinois (US), servicing industrial and government customers. While the company has been a long-term WebSource CPQ user for sales configuration purposes, the ResponsAbility sibling was later introduced for managing several processes, among them for product returns or return merchandize authorizations (RMAs). Read the rest of this entry »

Part II of this blog series continued the introduction of the concepts of workflow automation and business process management (BPM). It also zoomed in on similarities and subtle differences between the two related software categories. Finally, the idea of on-demand workflow and/or BPM solutions was introduced.

To that end, Webcom Inc. has leveraged its vast expertise earned while addressing many complex sales quote-to-order (Q2O) process issues (i.e., channel quote approvals, special pricing approvals, special non-standard product feature request approvals, etc.) and has created a brand new workflow engine, which can be (and is already) used for many generic business processes. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series introduced the notions of workflow automation and business process management (BPM). It also tackled the similarities and subtle differences between the two related software categories.

Microsoft, for example, informally demarcates the Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) focus on “internal processes” from Microsoft BizTalk Server’s “external BPM” use. Namely, the first tool (somewhat of a BizTalk spin-off) is used for automating processes within an enterprise (and its enterprise resource planning [ERP] system), whereas the latter is intended for inter-enterprise process orchestrations across several disparate enterprise applications. Read the rest of this entry »