“Sales Cures All”, as I started my business 10 years ago these words were uttered by my father more than any others. They remain equally important, however the world in which we sell has changed. For IT service an hourly rate chart and a basic billing agreement was all that was needed 10 years ago. Today the majority of sales are made using Quotes and Proposals. Since those quotes and proposals are the lifeblood of any IT service company they are the first topic of importance for the first Autotask Lifecycle series of articles. Here are the Quote / Proposal systems that will be presented:
- Autotask Native Quotes
- Varstreet
- Quosal
- QuoteWerks
Let’s begin by talking about the basic components of a quote, first, the items being quoted. The above software’s offer a range of item listing powers ranging from basic lists to shopping cards to custom web programmed options delivered to unique clients. For Autotask users it’s important to be able to source products and services that are already defined inside of Autotask. Some of these companies will need to take this a step further to quote product direct from distributors like Ingram Micro, Tech Data, D and H and Synnex.
The idea of having electronic interfacing between the distributors and the quoting tool is enticing because it allows a quote to be created without being limited to one distributors catalog or strapped to one distributor’s price point.
Next is integration with Autotask, certainly the better the workflow both from the Quoting tool to Autotask and vice versa the better.
I’ll start with Autotask Native Quotes in my next Article.
