Ideas SX™

Ideas SX is a Business Process Management (BPM) application for the design, sale, manufacture, implementation and support of complex products and solutions—adding productivity and accuracy to every process.

It provides collaboration, workflow, and security to help teams perform their functions with increased effectiveness and success. It optimizes performance and significantly enhances the customer experience. Ideas SX is key to companies who sell and support solutions, rather than parts.

Manage Complexity
Ideas addresses the critical needs of complex equipment suppliers—both manufacturers and VARs. It ensures accuracy by leveraging knowledge throughout the organization and by eliminating errors through automation. It integrates departmental functions and is, itself, integrated—not a patchwork of Excel, Visio, and custom coding. Ideas SX consists of four major modules—Design, Sales, Installation, and Technical Support—that draw from an expert Knowledge Warehouse of product and site information. Ideas SX also includes two key tools: Modeler to simplify the creation and maintenance of knowledge, and Manager to control collaboration and security.

Benefits

• Increase sales revenue by generating more quotations and opportunities to close.
• Maximize productivity with rapid and accurate system designs and automatic generation of professional proposals.
• Increase customer satisfaction by improving proposal content and overall customer response time.
• Energize collaborative sales and design processes with improved teamwork solutions.
• Accelerate operations by seamlessly transitioning from proposal to manufacturing and installation.
• Empower technical support with centralized customer information and advanced technical knowledge.

Knowledge Management
Process improvement relies heavily on accurate product knowledge. Modeler provides a simple, orderly means to create and maintain a powerful, current product Knowledge Warehouse.

The Knowledge Warehouse easily captures complex configurations, services, spares, and documentation without the need for programmers. It also maintains accurate customer installation and change information—making technical support more efficient and creating more effective upsell opportunities. Money spent on technical publications and training is reduced, while knowledge is better dispersed and applied.

Security & Collaboration
Using Ideas, information and functions are properly distributed and protected with fine granularity. Through Manager, users are granted access and capabilities based on their role or group membership. Designers design, salespeople quote, and managers approve. Both pricing and cost information can be put into the Knowledge Warehouse, and discount approvals can be restricted to management. Multiple price sheets for various levels of customers and VARs are automatically used. Workgroups can be created, workflow can be directed, and all groups can do their work effectively.

Customization & Integration
Through its gateways, Ideas provides easy integration with CRM, SFA, and ERP systems via industry standard interfaces: XML, xCBL, common brokers, or its plug-in architecture. Companies can keep current processes intact and, now, automate the difficult process of designing, pricing, quoting, and supporting their most complex products and solutions. Ideas can export to many commonly used software applications including Microsoft Word, Excel and Visio.

For greater customization, Ideas provides a powerful plug-in architecture to extend its functionality and integration.

Architecture
Ideas runs in a client-server architecture for performance and convenience. It uses standard ODBC-compliant databases and can provide a rich source of data for customer analytics. Ideas is designed to minimize IT costs with features such as automatic installation, self-updating, and self-healing.

Value
Ideas SX increases top-line performance and reduces operational expenses. It replaces many disconnected functions used today—Excel, Word, E-mail, homegrown tools, separate "partial-solution" packages, and many meetings—with a single, integrated process for pre-sales and post-sales effectiveness.