New Tool Eases Price Quotes For Multivendor Solutions

Darren McBride, CEO of Sierra Computers, a Reno, Nev., solution provider, would love to get his hands on a multivendor solution configuration/quoting tool that would make his sales reps more productive.

McBride said those price quotes can take less than an hour for a simple computer configuration to several days for a more complex solution. He has looked at a number of tools, but none has passed muster with his sales team.

"I'm willing to spend the money," he said, "but I wouldn't invest in anything unless my purchasing and sales account executives think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread."

McBride isn't alone. For years, solution provider CEOs and sales reps have complained about the time-consuming and byzantine process of putting together multi-vendor technology solution sales quotes. In fact, by nearly all accounts, the majority of sales reps still use a mish-mash of vendor configurators and then dump the output into an Excel spreadsheet. That means reps often skimp on adding products to a quote for fear of compatibility issues.

What's more, they're often forced to run even the most basic solutions through presales engineers, who may face a logjam of quotes to approve and end up spending an inordinate time on smaller, less profitable deals rather than nailing down the big ones.

Leslie Swanson, president of Exalt Solutions, Cambridge, Mass., believes she can change all that.

Exalt, a multivendor solution configurator/quote provider, has already been tapped by Westcon Group and CDW and is finalizing a deal with Salesforce.com for its AppExchange. The company also is hoping that a $2 million investment from CRN parent United Business Media in March will help propel its platform to a critical mass of vendors, distributors and solution providers.

As part of the deal, UBM acquired newly issued shares of Exalt representing a 25 percent equity stake and an option to purchase an additional 15 percent. In addition, CMP's Channel Group, which publishes CRN and crn.com, is working with Exalt to market its Solutions Sales Platform.

Swanson said Exalt's service eliminates the timely back-and-forth between sales rep and sales engineer, taking multivendor solution quotes that used to require days down to minutes. In addition, she said, the platform provides more visually compelling quotes because of its 3-D dynamic visualization capacities. And its XML foundation and architecture offer the ability to dynamically change pricing and configuration rules in a fast-moving market.

"Our system is on-demand and browser-based, so you don't have to worry about having to use a clunky spreadsheet," said Swanson. "Some of the solutions quotes I've seen literally have dozens of tables and tabs and are filled with errors. Think about a VAR having to quote an HP server with a particular rack and networking equipment. You might have to combine four or five configuration tools, use Visio or AutoCAD and navigate a half-dozen different Web sites. It's a very ugly process."

Ugly indeed. Swanson believes as much as 75 percent to 90 percent of multivendor solution quotes are still compiled with a spreadsheet or word processing application.

One of the big advantages of the Exalt platform is it allows vendors and distributors to solve the configuration conundrum without a huge capital investment. Exalt is selling the service on a subscription-fee basis typically for $15,000 to $25,000 a month.

Next: How Exalt's tool benefits VARs

A number of companies have tried to step up to the sales quote dilemma, including online product information specialist CNET Channel Online and e-commerce portal software provider VarStreet. The difference, Swanson said, is Exalt is an XML-based software-as-a-service platform marketed to vendors and distributors with its main competition being in-house-developed solutions.

She sees others tools as focused primarily on product sales with an old-line desktop architecture.

"Now you can develop a quote in a fraction of the time with more attachments, cut down the error rate and provide rich output material," she said.

That's certainly the case for Hilltop Technologies, a Suffield Conn., Avaya Gold Business partner specializing in VoIP systems that is using the Exalt platform provided by Westcon Group. Owen Wilson, CEO of Hilltop Technologies, said that before his six sales reps moved from a spreadsheet-based system to Exalt in April, quotes could take up to 48 hours and configuration errors were not unheard of.

"This is interactive and instantaneous," he said. "It's easy to use, accurate and builds additional value with products we might have missed."

Since moving to the new platform, Wilson said his reps have more confidence and can include add-on products and peripherals at the time of the initial sales quote. "It's a big help in knowing what data product can be added to the configuration," he said. "With the suggestion from the tool, it's fantastic."

Westcon Group Chief Marketing Officer Duncan Potter said Westcon is rolling out the Exalt platform to Avaya IP Office VARs and Nortel BCM providers. It also hopes to add Extreme and Trend Micro to the mix. Potter said the Exalt solution is one of a number of deep investments the Tarrytown, N.Y., specialty distributor is making that differentiates it from broadline players.

"We are in the process of redefining the whole ragged term 'value add'," he said. "Our core mission comes down to really making our customer, the VAR, more effective, more efficient and more competitive and therefore more profitable in the way they execute the end-user sales cycle. If we do that we have a very significant differentiation over anyone else out there."

David White, vice president of client strategy and enablement at Madison, Wis.-based Beacon Technologies, said he currently uses multiple configurators from different vendors for eight out of 10 quotes. And sometimes he uses CDW for product configuration. But he was impressed with a recent demo of the Exalt platform and said he would expect to see a 10 percent to 12 percent increase in sales productivity.

"It's going to make your sales staff more efficient. Tools like this reduce [presales] engineering overhead to do a quote. If you have one [presales engineer] support person to five salespeople, you'll be able to do a lot better than that. And you are going to get more opportunities because you are putting the best value and best configured solution in front of your customers."

Ultimately, White said he would like to see the Exalt platform become a standard.

"Right now the hardest thing is we don't have a single tool that can go cross-platform," said White. "What I'm hoping is the tool can be used to configure all kinds of solutions and give me ideas on how to save $8,000 to $10,000 for a multivendor configuration."

McBride, for his part, said he would be interested in checking out the Exalt platform, but noted that it is no small problem the tool is taking on for VARs.

"You have to convince me this is going to help me configure dissimilar products, and it better be good so that it impresses me over and over again," he said.