Guidance and confidence. These are two hallmarks of the value proposition dealers can provide to their clients when conducting an assessment of their potential ECM, document capture and software requirements. Astute and accurate guidance, when properly delivered, instills confidence to the end user that their pain points are being adequately addressed. The result can be a lasting relationship that enables the dealership to dig deeper into its tool bag as customers seek to build out their capabilities.
Wouter Koelewijn,
Y Soft Scanning Division
We’ve queried a selection of ECM and document capture software authorities to shed light on the subject of diagnosing a customer’s needs and utilizing proper strategies to foster the selling of these solutions. Our panel of software experts consists of Wouter Koelewijn, senior vice president and managing director of Y Soft’s Scanning Division; James Shearer, director of sales for Laserfiche; Jeff Segarra, senior director of product marketing for the Nuance Document Imaging Division; and Tom Franceski, vice president and general manager of DocStar, an Epicor company.
What is the most important information a sales person can learn when meeting with a customer to analyze its ECM needs?
Koelewijn: Understand the customers’ paper document processes first, then apply technology to automate them and adapt the technology over time.
James Shearer, Laserfiche
Shearer: Find out about a specific pain point in the organization, and then figure out how to alleviate it. A dealer doesn’t need to know the technical details of the organization’s business processes, but if they can identify a process that takes up significant employee time, or that everyone in the organization hates because it’s inefficient or cumbersome, they can work to improve that process, get an initial big win and build credibility.
Segarra: Sales people need to gain a full understanding of the customer’s document workflows. Once they get the full picture of the customer’s internal processes, they are able to see where content management and document capture software fit in and where it can drive improvements.
Tom Franceski, DocStar
Franceski: What is the volume and complexity of their document-driven processes today? Do they feel or know they have a problem? Have they yet quantified that problem to understand its direct and indirect financial impact? Have they identified adjacent problems areas of focus that can be addressed down the line to realize even more ROI after they address their top priority challenges? Typically, translating their challenges into physical time/money spent on their current document driven processes helps to establish the cost of the problem and the potential benefit of the solution.
What types of strategies do the most successful dealers use in selling your solutions?
Shearer: Going back to the horizontal processes, many of our dealers have found success by focusing on one commonly used business process, automating and streamlining it for a customer and then duplicating that success. Once a dealer has sold something, they capitalize on that good reference and learn by their mistakes. With each deal, they add to their knowledge of the technology, the customer, the industry, etc.
With ECM specifically, dealers are able to sell more and offer more services when they lead with improving business processes rather than simply taking their customers paperless. Going paperless is often a byproduct of making organizations more efficient. It’s really the processes that drive the efficiency, improvements and high ROI.
Franceski: They include taking a consultative approach, reference selling and standardization of solutions using best practices for their target market. Other tools include educational workshops/lunch-and-learn sessions, open house viewing of their own use of the solution in day-to-day operations, and of course, a deep expertise in target markets.
Jeff Segarra, Nuance Document Imaging Division
Segarra: Dealers that take a customer-centric approach are most successful. They learn about customer workflows and how documents are used to get jobs done. Everything they do is consultative in working closely with customers to address their document and business process challenges.
Koelewijn: Y Soft developed the Global Operational Excellence Framework to assist dealers in successful deployments. GOE is a set of processes, templates and activities that are project managed by Y Soft and the partner. It is proven to ensure that the customer requirements are understood and the solution fits their environment. With GOE and the fact that it is a consultative sale, together Y Soft and the partner are successful. Y Soft makes the GOE Framework available to partners and together the process is carried out. For dealers, they learn how to successfully deploy workflow solutions and eventually can do it on their own with the methodology they’ve learned.
