SAP Releases Sales OnDemand
SAP this week released its Sales OnDemand solution in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The solution, which SAP first unveiled at its annual SAPPhire User Conference in May, had been in beta testing for several months prior to this week's full release.
SAP Sales OnDemand is designed from the ground up with the input of sales professionals to specifically support the way they work and help them sell more effectively. It is built on the SAP Business ByDesign platform, allowing for in-memory computing technology and support of mobile devices, and combines the advantages of social, mobile, and cloud applications to provide users with the following:
- Built-in social collaboration tools that enable sales professionals to work with their sales networks to share best practices, manage accounts and close deals;
- Real-time information updates relevant to current opportunities and accounts that allow sales professionals to manage their activities and analyze their performance;
- The ability to update and manage account information in seconds from anywhere;
- Support of mobile devices, including BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad, allowing sales professionals to work anytime, anywhere; and
- Integration with SAP Business Suite software that enables customers to adapt and improve business processes, specifically for their sales teams.
Sales on Demand also offers rich, real-time analytics functionality and allows salespeople and their managers to track and update sales data, contacts, leads, proposals, account histories, etc., through an intuitive interface.
Bill Hou, vice president for Sales OnDemand at SAP, called the release "an exciting new milestone for SAP and our customers," noting that it is the first of a series of new "people-centric" applications from SAP available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis and the first application built on SAP's Business ByDesign platform.
"This is the first enterprise application that salespeople might find useful and fun for their daily work," he said in an email.
"Words are difficult to describe the new user experience," he added.
Pricing ranges from $40 to $80 per user per month for SAP Sales OnDemand with Microsoft Outlook integration, SAP ERP integration add-in, mobile applications, and analytics. A free trial of the solution is available at www.sap.com/salesondemand/freetrial.