Selectica's Latest Launch to Accelerate Sales Contract Management

Selectica, a provider of sales configuration solutions, today announced the latest release of its Selectica Contract Lifecycle Management product, as well as the availability of Selectica Guided Selling for Salesforce through Salesforce.com's AppExchange.

Contract Blueprints, a key feature of the new release, is designed to get users speedily harnessing the power of preconfigured contract types. "It's the flexibility to turn on the switch and use eight different types of contract templates spanning sales, employee, or real estate agreements; NDAs; or procurement agreements," explains Kamal Ahluwalia, chief strategy officer for Selectica. "Your workflow is already set up. Your user [and access] profiles are already set up. Your signature is available out of the box."

In addition to the Contract Blueprints, CLM 5.4 improves upon the application's integration with Microsoft Word so that users can validate or create contracts without leaving the system. There are also improvements in audit trail capabilities, as well as personalization through dashboards, rules, and directories for system users.

According to a recent Gartner Research report, "Configure, Price, and Quote [CPQ] Tools Help Redefine the Sales Experience," CPQ tools are critical to sales automation, and have expanded beyond direct sales channels to become an integral part of e-commerce, contact center, and partner channels. Sales configuration technology can also help reduce cycle times and quoting errors, while allowing you to identify feasible product combinations, Gartner reports.

Selectica's spring release of its cloud-based Guided Selling solution was geared toward ushering sales opportunities through the pipeline while simultaneously allowing users to update and manage complex product information. By using the Guided Selling product and Contract Lifecycle Management together, Ahluwalia points out that customers will have access to a complete, end-to-end sales, contract, and renewal process.

Now, with Selectica Guided Selling for Salesforce, teams using enterprise social network Chatter can further collaborate on contract proposals and quotes, which "makes it really easy for enterprises to go from one end to the other and manage their businesses extremely well," Ahluwalia says.