If you are contemplating the implementation of sales force automation (SFA) or customer
relationship management (CRM) software, then you need to understand that the majority of
these projects, especially in larger corporations, fail miserably.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is that rather than adopt a software
solution that costs thousands of dollars per seat and suffers from feature overkill,
experiment with something less costly and complex. Better to err on the side of lowering
your expenses, then to spend a fortune and see your project fail.
Now there are many off-the-shelf products to choose from and a visit to your local
software store will reveal an endless list of such products. Some are better than others.
Many look alike. A good tool is intuitive and focuses on doing a few things well rather
than doing too many things poorly.
Ascent 32
appears to be a pretty intuitive product. Navigation buttons are along the left side of
the screen and provide your options for things such as Contacts, Opportunities, and
Activities. These tend to be common to virtually any class of SFA/CRM tool. But Ascent 32 also
includes a quote builder and a sales queue screen, so you can generate quotes on demand
and get a snapshot of what's in the sales funnel at any given time. Features such as these
tend to appear in more expensive products.
Overall, Ascent 32
appears to be a fairly easy-to-use tool. They have made animated online tutorials
available to assist new users in getting up to speed on the system. Their online brochure
mentions their ability to integrate with other systems including ERP and more extensive
report generation. The system comes with multi-level security and includes the ability to
integrate with your modem for phone dialing, fax software and email. This is pretty good
functionality for an off-the-shelf product, and overall it appears more intuitive and
simpler to use than many of its better known competitors.
It should be noted, we only looked at a single-user version of this product, so we
can't speak to how well data synchronization, data management, or integrated reporting
work. What we were impressed by was the fact that this lesser known product is priced
nominally at only $90/seat (even less in volume) and it is carried by many well known
retailers including including Staples, Dell, Outpost.com, Beyond.com and CompUSA. The
product must have some level of acceptance to be carried by so many well known retailers.
To download a free single-user copy of the software, please click here.
Ascent 32
