Good tool, but requires behavior change.
October 16, 2012
Good tool, but requires behavior change.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Overall Satisfaction
- The system provides more visibility into available references and prevents references from being over-used. It allows the client (reference) to choose how often they can be contacted in a given time period and provides a closed-loop feedback mechanism to make sure the client is providing positive responses.
- Allows account executives (sales people) to easily request references based on: product Used, customer vertical, location, account size, expertise, etc.
- Uses a “Five Star” method to show how relevant the answers are when a results are returned from a search.
- BoulderLogic is merely a tool. You have to have a culture and cadence around reference management, which may include rewarding employees who cultivate new references. You should also have a culture of expressing gratitude to the clients providing stewardship them. If that culture doesn’t exist, the tool won’t be used because the results will be “zero” upon searching and you could get by with reporting from Salesforce.
- I seem to recall that integration may be a weakness. For example, if your search for a reference included the ability to see which other clients use a specific product, you’d expect that list to be accurate. I am not sure that if a client purchased an additional “module” of our software and this was noted in the CRM, that BoulderLogic would reflect this new purchase automatically. I’d have to confirm with the administrator.
- Faster response time for sales to get references. It still relies on an account manager to “manually” approve references and this can be a bottleneck. This is at least based upon how we have set-up the workflows in our company. Also, if you don’t have a culture of cultivating references, the results will show.
Product Usage
80 - Account Executives, i.e. sales people - they are the reference requestors
Account Managers - manage reference approval, main point-of-contact with client post sale
Account Managers - manage reference approval, main point-of-contact with client post sale
1 - 1 manager as main business user
IT team supports tool
IT team supports tool
- Customer reference management to aid sales
Evaluation and Selection
We were using reporting in Salesforce.com to track references.
I was brought in to evaluate once was narrowed down to BoulderLogic.
Implementation
- Vendor implemented
Training
- In-person training
Support
Reliability
Integration
- Salesforce.com
Single sign-on.
Vendor Relationship
I believe there was volume discount based on “banded” approach.