Cameleon EasyQuote Eases Salesforce.com Order Processing

Access Commerce on Thursday released Cameleon EasyQuote for Salesforce.com's (NYSE: CRM) AppExchange, an on-demand sales quotation system that aims to provide salespeople with an easy-to-use interface for handling complex business needs.

The product can help sales teams optimize the complete opportunity-to-order process, as well as provide quotes and orders and shorter quotation cycle times.

Using Web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax, it includes an advanced quotation spreadsheet, catalog search, product and service configuration, pricing and promotion application and proposal generation, the company said.

Easy But Advanced

Cameleon EasyQuote allows users to work with complex quotation processes, manage catalogs and advanced pricing rules, or simply help to sell products and services, according to Matt Holleran, vice president, AppExchange partners, Salesforce.com.

"There are existing solutions that are not able to handle the level of complexity that Cameleon EasyQuote can handle," Kurt Haller, executive vice president of Access Commerce, told CRM Buyer.

Companies can use the product "in conjunction with their e-commerce solution. Manufacturers can interact between sales team and dealers and distributors, and then pass quotes and orders back and forth between systems," Haller said.

In addition to the advanced features complementing Salesforce, Cameleon EasyQuote can be customized without programming. Its user interface, business processes and proposal documents can be modified to meet various customer requirements, while minimizing implementation time, costs and maintenance efforts, according to Access Commerce.

"The big thing is the advanced quotation form. It allows the user to create folders for quotations -- nested folders -- and then they can really interact with the quote form similar to how they would work with a spreadsheet," Haller noted.

In addition to the quote form and advanced pricing, Cameleon EasyQuote can apply various pricing rules -- promotional, customer contract based pricing, discounting, and many types of geographical-type pricing. "It manages aggregation of multiple price rules," said Haller.

The product also "makes it easier and more efficient for salespeople to manage their workload and generate compelling, nice looking documents and proposals that they can e-mail to customers," concluded Haller.

Build It and They Will Come?

The big problem with companies trying to implement CRM systems is that although management wants it, salespeople don't use it.

"It is not the only quote configuration tool in the tool box, but companies look for simple apps to encourage and train salespeople to use Salesforce in the first place," Denis Pombriant, founder of Beagle Research, told CRM Buyer.

"It is a quasi front end-back end type solution, meaning that it's used by front-office salespeople but relies on back-end systems like catalog systems, parts lists and other databases," he added.