Month: May 2017

Microsoft Relationship Sales Solution

Microsoft Dynamics - LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team Lead and Contact widget display.
Microsoft Dynamics – LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team Lead and Contact widget display.

Microsoft announced Relationship Sales, a bundled version of MS Dynamics for Sales Enterprise Edition and LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team.  The new bundle will be available for sale on July 1st.  The service is priced at $135, which is “about one-half the cost of competitive solutions in the market,” according to Microsoft EVP, cloud and enterprise group Scott Guthrie.

LinkedIn also announced a set of insight enhancements for its MS Dynamics connector. Insights help sales reps by

  • Leveraging signals across email, CRM and LinkedIn to get contextual recommendations for the next best action within Dynamics 365 for Sales, facilitating introductions directly through the company’s network and sending InMail, messages and customized connection requests.

  • Engaging buyers with tailored content throughout the account lifecycle and getting account and lead updates, including news mentions and job changes.

  • Building strong relationships with existing contacts through access to LinkedIn profile details including photos, current roles and work history.

The new service displays company and contact intelligence across Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity records.  Insight features include icebreakers, TeamLink introductions, Lead Recommendations, and LinkedIn intelligence.  Daily synchronization ensures that active accounts and contacts are shared between the services and that Sales Navigator activities (e.g. InMails, messages, notes, tags, and call logs) are uploaded to Dynamics 365.

“Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 will dramatically increase the effectiveness of salespeople by tapping into their professional networks and relationships, giving them the ability to improve their pipeline,” said Guthrie.

“Microsoft has been focused on integrating its acquisitions and the LinkedIn to Dynamics 365 [to] Office 365 is the latest [iteration],” said Constellation Research Principal Analyst Ray Wang.  “Customers already use these three products in disparate fashion spending time doing arm chair integration. What they’ve been looking for is the ability to take the data and insights in these three products and put them to work.”

Wang believes that cross-platform functionality can be quite useful.  For example, “How do you find out who knows whom inside a company? Traverse your Office 365 data, your [Dynamics 365] CRM database and your LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and you realize Joe and Abdul have known each other since university days. Let’s put Abdul on the sales call.”

As LinkedIn member content is view only, Relationship Sales does not provide any member content enrichment or data maintenance.  Thus, Relationship Sales would need to be used in conjunction with other services such as Insights Enterprise (InsideView OEM with MS Dynamics) or D&B Hoovers for CRM to obtain a full sales intelligence and data maintenance solution.

Microsoft Dynamics - LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team Account widget display.
Microsoft Dynamics – LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team Account widget display.

InsideView: Insights Enterprise for MS Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics Insights Company Prospecting
Microsoft Dynamics Insights Company Prospecting

InsideView is now offering an Insights Enterprise edition for Microsoft Dynamics which adds prospecting and several other enhanced features to Insights, their Dynamics OEM partnership.  Insights Enterprise is available for Dynamics CRM and 365 for $49 per user per month in the US and Canada.

Company and contact prospecting is an InsideView strength.  Along with standard firmographic and biographic variables, InsideView’s list building feature includes selects for agents (sales triggers), connections (who knows who), and the presence of emails as well as social handles.  Users can save searches; upload lists as Accounts, Contacts, and Leads; add companies or contacts to Watchlists, or download lists of up to 500 records to Excel (users are allocated 500 record downloads per month).  Up to twenty records may be uploaded directly to Dynamics at a time with the system preventing duplicate record uploads.

Other new or expanded features include up to five Watchlists for following prospects and obtaining custom news alerts, custom field mapping, social media stream personalization, and family tree display.  Enterprise customers receive direct InsideView training and support.  Finally, Insights Enterprise includes InsideView’s iOS mobile app which previews relevant contact and firmographics in context of calendar appointments.

“For the end user it is not about [a sales tool’s] flashy bells and whistles. They want the right information about companies and contacts they care about,” said Heidi Tucker, VP of Global Alliances.  “They want to make it real time and relevant. That’s what’s valuable for the prospects I’m calling on today.”

Insights is also available through Microsoft partners.

“I’m pleased about the expanded functionality and availability of Insights Enterprise,” said Chris Huntingford, Pre-Sales Consultant, Hitachi Solutions Europe. “In addition to helping us sell more Dynamics CRM Online and 365 installations, our on-prem clients who have not yet converted to an online environment can now take advantage of Insights Enterprise, a comparable — in fact enhanced — alternative to Insights, which is only for online environments.”

InsideView has offered an OEM edition of their service within Microsoft Dynamics for around five years.  Tucker described the shift in sales and marketing since the beginning of the partnership as one of moving from a shotgun approach to precision sales and marketing via ABM:

The biggest change we’ve seen over last 5 years is the focus from more of a one to many approach  in sales and marketing – thinking the more data or prospects the better – to now much more of a targeted approach. We’re all so over-messaged in every aspect of our lives…we now see a return to a much deeper level of engagement, especially in B2B. [A sales professional] wants to see who [his or her] buyer is, who that team is, and bring real business value to them. The only way to do that is if you have the news and intelligence in a more meaningful way than competitors.

Dynamics clients outside of the US and Canada are now eligible for discounted pricing.  A landing page is listing up to 50 seats of Insights Enterprise for $10,000 / €9,500 / £8,000 per annum.  Additional seats are priced at $10 / €9.5 / £8 per month. The limited time offer runs through June 30th and includes onboarding, training, a dedicated customer success manager, and technical support.

When Insights was launched five years ago, the InsideView offering was more US-centric in its content coverage, but the firm has expanded its coverage significantly, particularly in Europe, with 5 million companies and 16 million executives outside of North America.

Tech Profiler, InsideView’s set of technographics for 525,000 companies spanning 2,100 hardware and software products, is available as an Insights Enterprise premium beginning at $5,000.  Tech Profiler is presented as an additional Insights tab.  Users can filter by product category or perform keyword searches.

Tech Profiler Filtered for Project Management and Vertical Markets.
Tech Profiler Filtered for Project Management and Vertical Markets.

However, tech variables are not available in Insights Enterprise Build a List.

DiscoverOrg Data Quality Put to the Test

DiscoverOrg contact and firmographic intelligence displayed within SFDC.
DiscoverOrg contact and firmographic intelligence displayed within Salesforce.com.

Sales Trainer Steve W. Martin recently ran an independent study of DiscoverOrg contact data quality which found that the vendor lives up to its high quality data claims and SLA.  According to Martin, “DiscoverOrg had no foreknowledge that I was measuring their data accuracy and no influence over the sample data set I used.”

Martin randomly selected 100 contacts from a file of 10,000 and conducted the study himself.  He evaluated seven fields and found very high data quality levels:

  • Full Name Accuracy was 99%, including spelling.
  • Contact Company name was 98%
  • Title Accuracy was 96%
  • LinkedIn URL accuracy was 97%.  The three contacts that lacked LinkedIn URLs confirmed that they did not have LinkedIn profiles.
  • Seniority Level accuracy was 100%
  • 97% of the emails were deliverable with only a 3% bounce rate.  As contacts decay at a 2% rate per month, 97% is at the upper end of expectations.
  • Twitter Handles were correct 100% of the time, but only 10% of the contacts had the field populated.

With the exception of Twitter handles where there is likely a significant underpopulation of the field, the dataset lived up to its 95% SLA and data quality claims.  It should be noted that Martin did not evaluate DiscoverOrg’s technographics, org chart relationships, responsibility data, or event alerts.  These are other areas where their editorial data distinguishes the firm.

“This study confirms what I have personally heard from a wide cross-section of the technology companies I work with,” said Martin.  “DiscoverOrg provides highly accurate contact data. In addition, this study was based on a small subset of the data that DiscoverOrg provides. Of primary importance to my clients are the detailed IT organization charts, the identification of the different technologies installed, recent trigger events such as personnel changes, and the direct phone numbers of contacts.”

These types of studies are often expensive to conduct and difficult to construct when comparing vendors.  I performed similar studies as internal benchmarks when I worked at OneSource (now D&B Hoovers) and for clients since becoming a consultant and no vendors approach this level of data quality (Note: I have never evaluated RainKing which utilizes similar data collection methods).  What is clear is that the smaller universe, editorially-crafted DiscoverOrg file of 60,000 companies and 1 1/2 million contacts clearly has higher contact data quality than other vendors (again, excluding RainKing).  When discussing DiscoverOrg and RainKing with clients, I describe them as using traditional artisanal research methods which entail focusing on a smaller universe of companies and contacts at these companies.  This approach makes for a strong fit for firms employing an ABM approach to target large accounts, but may be insufficient for more transactional marketing approaches which are more sales development and demand generation focused.  Both cost and lack of coverage of SMBs would be issues at those firms.

“Bad data is costly and can be the single point of failure in an otherwise successful campaign,” says the firm on their website.  “We don’t just pay lip-service to the quality of our data. We contractually guarantee it. We know that success in every sales and marketing effort begins with highly accurate, verified data that your team can trust.”

What is clear is that this quality-centric approach to gathering data has proven successful.  Both RainKing and DiscoverOrg have high growth rates and regular Inc. 5000 membership.  DiscoverOrg closed last year with $71 million in annualized recurring revenue so is almost assured of making the Inc. list for the seventh year in a row.

Martin published his results online as a PDF.

RainKing Federal IT Dataset

RainKing Org Charts provide headshots, social media links, contact information, and organizational position.
RainKing Org Charts provide headshots, social media links, contact information, and organizational position.

RainKing officially release their Federal IT dataset on April 18th.  The new offering covers federal agencies including Defense, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Veteran Affairs, Treasury, Transportation, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, State, Energy, Social Security Administration, and NASA.  Quasi-governmental agencies such as the USPS, Fannie Mae, and Amtrak are also covered.

The 2016 tracked spend hit $76 billion.

“The federal government represents a massive opportunity for software and technology companies to tap into a steadily growing market,” stated RainKing CEO John L. Stanfill. “This new dataset will be valuable in helping our customers quickly identify and connect with the right decision makers across the federal government.”

Profiles span a broad set of governmental and technographic data including

  • Org charts which “are equal in depth to the rest of the database, mapping decision makers (executives), influencers, procurement officers, etc.”  Org charts span departments, agencies, and sub-agencies.
  • Complete profiles and contact information for these individuals
  • Current IT budget
  • Technologies-in-use and those responsible for them
  • Daily investment signals for active projects, RFPs, and upcoming technology investments –including the decision maker for these projects
  • Location details for headquarters and other offices within the departments/agencies
  • Other relevant department/agency information

“Unlike with other sources of Federal projects and initiatives, RainKing’s intelligence focuses on the actual decision makers and budget holders, not just the government procurement managers,” said the firm.

RainKing maintains a sixty-day editorial review cycle and plans to continue expanding their Federal coverage.  The firm currently provides 100,000 Federal, State, Local, and Education decision makers.

“This dataset is different than any other existing solution, because in one view, our clients can not only search for active projects and RFPs, and pinpoint the actual decision makers responsible for those projects, but they can also gain insight into the existing technology environment within the agencies and bureaus. This is immensely valuable from a competitive standpoint,” said Jennifer Kitchen, Chief Content Officer at RainKing.

Customers can purchase the dataset individually or alongside other RainKing files spanning 60,000 global companies and one million executives.  They pre-sold over fifty clients.

RainKing has been rapidly growing its company and contact coverage over the past few years.  Their editorially-gathered dataset now spans over one million financial decision makers across nearly 60,000 global organizations.

The RainKing Prediction Engine suggests and ranks contacts.
The RainKing Prediction Engine suggests and ranks contacts.

Bureau van Dijk Orbis Enhancements

Saved Searches is one of the new features added to BvD Orbis.
Bureau van Dijk Orbis Build a List

Bureau van Dijk rolled out the latest set of enhancements to its Orbis company research and financial analysis platform.  Orbis was re-platformed last year and given a modern user interface.  New features include a document ordering module, improved peer reporting, and enhanced customization.  The new document ordering module assists with KYC/AML and company research by delivering original images of business documents, such as certificates of incorporation, shareholders’ details, and annual reports.  The new module was built in partnership with aRMadillo (FKA RM Online) and delivers reports “usually within an hour.”  Users can even order reports for companies not found in the Orbis database.

Customization features include calculated variables which can be shared across the account group, chapters, and classifications.

“The new interface arranges company reports into “books” that are further organised into “chapters”, that contain related information,” said CMO Louise Green.  “This feature lets you create your own customised chapters, which could include: your company logo or other images; widgets from the profile page; worksheets with selected financials; and any of your own fields that you have imported into Orbis.”

Custom classifications allow users to map their own industry and geographic codes to ORBIS data.

Bureau van Dijk recently released a 2:33 demo of seven key workflow improvements that were implemented in last year’s release:

  1. Favorite Search Criteria
  2. Instant Currency Switch
  3. Alert Management and Quick Alerting
  4. Quick View of a Company
  5. Random Sorting and Sampling
  6. Pivot Analysis
  7. Corporate Ownership Explorer

The Orbis database, which is available for Orbis financial analysis, MINT sales intelligence, and Catalyst workflow product lines, now spans 220 million companies across 200 countries.

Bureau van Dijk Orbis Company View
The Bureau van Dijk Orbis Company View is customizable.