SellingPoint Team

Using Custom Order Numbers

JeremiahT — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:52:16 GMT

Getting your order numbers to look right and match the formatting required by company policies is made easier in SellingPoint now due to custom order number masks. SellingPoint will generate a unique number which can be formatted in any way required, giving a professional appearance to all online orders.

With custom order numbers you can:

Enter an order number mask which defines the format of the order number
A order number mask can include alpha-numeric characters including symbols such as dashes
Use the pound symbol (#) as a place holder for a randomly generated number, which length is determined by the order number digit length. This number can be a maximum of 9 digits long. For example, this mask set with a digit length of 9:
C###-###-###
could become this order number:
C161-515-260
While SellingPoint checks that you will not have duplicate order numbers in the system, be sure to use longer order numbers that change often to ensure you do not run out of order numbers

Using SellingPoint to Distribute CAD Files and Spec Sheets

JeremiahT — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:33:53 GMT

Have you ever found the need to make CAD drawings available to architects? Or perhaps specification sheets available to sales people? Distributing those in an organized way and keeping everyone on the correct version is no easy task. A convenient place to put those resources would be with their respective products in SellingPoint, since SellingPoint already takes care of the distribution and versioning of you products now. Now you can, by attaching them directly to your products.

You will find that this new feature is available in SellingPoint Management Studio version 5.0.2318 and newer. Simply open your SellingPoint catalog of products, choose a product, and notice the "File Attachments" tab across the bottom. Clicking that will give you the opportunity to attach as many files as you need, no matter what their type. Your SellingPoint users will then be able to download these files right off the web site.

SellingPoint Sales Edition (5.0.723)

JeremiahT — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:19:46 GMT

Vesigo Studios has released SellingPoint Sales Edition, build 5.0.723. This new version makes it possible for manufacturers using the SellingPoint System to distribute their catalogs and SmartQuote Interviews to dealers, sales people, and other high volume customers. This Windows application can be installed on a laptop or other computer where there may be intermittent Internet connectivity. This allows order entry and quoting to be accomplished offline, in the field with no loss functionality.

The latest version of SellingPoint Sales Edition can be downloaded from here.

Introducing SellingPoint System v5

JeremiahT — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:21:29 GMT

Since its introduction in 2001, SellingPoint has been steadily growing in features and abilities, helping companies bring their product catalog online. After working with a number of customers with specific needs, we have been able to incorporate those requests into the next version of SellingPoint. This new version adds a tremendous number of features to the already long list of capabilities in SellingPoint. In subsequent posts, we will detail each of these new features and what they can bring to a manufacturing business.

One of the biggest changes to SellingPoint in this version is the all new plug-in architecture, making it possible to work with data from other manufacturing design packages. In the past, SellingPoint only supported Microvellum as a data source for automated import of product information. We are pleased to announce that several other partners, in conjunction with the development team at Vesigo, are making progress with plug-ins which extend the reach of their data into SellingPoint. This exciting new opportunity opens up the possibilities for many other companies to reuse their existing investments in their manufacturing design package. You can contact us at info@sellingpointsystem.com for more information on specific plug-ins.

We look forward to continue to push the envelope with SellingPoint and bringing manufacturing companies the tools they need to streamline their dealer, customer, and order information.

Turn existing company paperwork into digital SmartForms

JeremiahT — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 06:08:28 GMT

As we mentioned in previous posts, one of our big goals in this new version of SellingPoint was to allow our customers to continue using their existing business processes in the digital world. In addition to custom CRM and workflow possibilities, we've added a whole new feature named SmartForms. The concept is simple: Allow companies to turn their existing paper forms into digital ones that can be integrated into the whole SellingPoint experience.

Forms such as expense reports and travel requests are common for a salesman to be required to fill out on a regular basis. How are these forms submitted back to the company and how do they get entered into the companies computers. With SellingPoint SmartForms its easy to take these existing company forms, turn them into digital versions, and then publish them our to salesmen through a SellingPoint Exchange account. This ensures that everyone always has the latest forms in ample supply.

One of the exciting features of this technology is its native support for Tablet PC and other pen based computers. This makes it very natural to fill out forms as the experience is almost exactly as filling out a normal paper form with a pen. Using handwriting recognition, SmartForms will turn the handwriting on the form into text, numbers, dates, or drawings depending on the kind of data that particular field on the form expects to see.

The benefit of SmartForms becomes very obvious when it comes to submitting the results back to the company. No longer does the company have to wait for forms to be mailed in or monitor faxes and try to decipher handwriting. No more is there a need for an employee to enter by hand the information on these forms. With SellingPoint SmartForms, as soon as a user submits a form, the results are delivered electronically to the company and the data is put where its needed. And since SmartForms supports the concept of workflow, the data can be routed to the appropriate databases and acted upon by the appropriate individuals. That makes it possible to have a form such as a travel request approved or rejected in real time.

In future posts we will go into more detail on how SmartForms are created and what can be done to get the most out of them.

See your whole company with SellingPoint CRM

JeremiahT — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 06:07:40 GMT

The largest addition to SellingPoint are the CRM (customer relationship management) tools that bring a whole new new to your company. As its name implies, the goal of customer relationship management is to enable companies to manage each and every customer experience better. Ideally, your company could provide each customer a personalized experience based on the customer's unique history of interactions with you. However many companies find it hard to embrace CRM strategy across the entire organization and create consistently great customer experiences.

SellingPoint brings this powerful business tool to manufacturing companies in a very flexible way. Our team understands that each business operates differently and that plays a big role in the way that something like CRM can be implemented. For instance, the terms customer, account, client, and dealer could all describe the same kind of record. SellingPoint allows you to name that kind of record the way you want. In addition to changing the labels on fields, its possible to add, remove, change just about any field in the system while at the same time adding validation rules and other requirements to a given field.

What about business processes? Every company has a specific way in which they work and a carry out tasks. For instance, there may be a particular series of steps that need to be followed before a lead can be turned into a customer. These steps will vary in detail from company to company, but SellingPoint CRM will easily handle your unique processes.

SellingPoint can automate this process with a concept called workflow. By setting up the tasks that must be accomplished by various people in the company step by step, SellingPoint CRM enforces the your specific business processes. This preserves consistency across the company and makes it possible to see the current status of a given record as it moves through the workflow process.

We'll have more details on the various features and possibilities of customization and workflow in future posts.