FAQs

• General Product Questions
• Administration Questions
• How to Get Started Questions
• Reporting Questions
• Importing Questions
• Security and Scalability
• Registration Questions

General Product Questions

Q. What does sales-i do?
A. sales-i gives sales and marketing teams the support they need to increase sales and profits by alerting them whenever a sales opportunity arises.

Q. My salespeople aren't comfortable with IT, won't sales-i just confuse them?
A. sales-i has been designed by salespeople, for salespeople and delivers alerts in familiar email and text formats. We handle the technical side - all your team has to do is handle the sales leads!

Q. What platforms do I need to run sales-i?
A. As long as you can access the web, you can run sales-i. There's no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade. Your subscription includes everything you need, so unlike some software, there are no nasty surprises or hidden costs.

Q. What does sales-i cost?
A. Following your free trial you can invest in sales-i on a low-cost, minimum commitment, monthly subscription basis.

It's all fully inclusive and, with none of those hidden extras so common with traditional software, you know exactly what you're getting and why - just like sales-i itself. Please contact our sales team for a tailored proposal. tellmemore@sales-i.com or call us on 0870 446 SELL

Q. What happens if I need to add more users?
A. Additional users can be added at any time and are activated instantly.

Q. What happens to my data if I decide not to purchase after the FREE 30-day trial?
A. If at any time during your 30-day, risk-free trial, you decide you're not ready to proceed you can use the housekeeping routines to purge your data. All data will be purged from our system 30 days after your trial expires in any case.

Q. How do I buy sales-i?
A. You may sign up for our 30-day, risk-free trial and purchase online from within your trial account. Alternatively, you can email our sales team on tellmemore@sales-i.com or call us on 0870 446 SELL

Q. It sounds too cheap. How can sales-i offer this great service and make money?
A. We use the latest SaaS (Software as a Service) technology to provide a totally scalable business model. We don't need fancy offices, expensive salespeople, or armies of techies, and that means we can pass savings on to our customers.

Q. What's the typical return on investment and how quickly will we see it?
A. sales-i's ROI can be huge. Users are reporting reductions in customer leakage of 20% (on a $5m turnover this equates to $100,000 - $8,333 monthly) and an uplift in gross profit of up to 2%. By highlighting missed sales opportunities as soon as your data is loaded sales-i delivers value from day one.

Q. I can see how sales-i could work for salespeople, but I'm a sales manager. How can I benefit?
A. sales-i is ideal for everyone from individual salespeople to sales managers and top executives. Managers need visibility into the activities of their reps and their standing with customers. With sales-i's powerful reporting capabilities, Sales Managers can be confident that their teams are producing at full capacity. sales-i also makes it easy to train new employees and make existing employees more productive with easy access to sales best practices.

Powerful, real-time reporting and dashboard tools make it easy to keep executive management up to speed without having to manually aggregate data.

Q. I've already got Business Intelligence and CRM tools. My IT guys could write sales-i!
A. Classic software solutions simply do not help field based B2B sales forces.

CRM only works with 'soft' contact data rather than 'hard' transactional buying pattern data. Business Intelligence tools rely on the initiative of an IT literate user asking the right questions. sales-i proactively delivers an 'out of the box' sales intelligence service today.

One click then automatically takes the user to a dashboard providing all the information they require on: product mix, range gaps, link-sells and product leakage. Most of our customers have other BI tools, but choose sales-i for the front line sales battle.

Administration Questions

Q. What administration tools are included in sales-i?
A. sales-i's advanced administration tools let you manage the service easily. sales-i includes an Administration Console with easy-to-use tools for deploying and maintaining users, while giving much more granular control over individual users' permissions. These tools make the solution easier to administer than conventional applications.

Among other features, sales-i allows you to:

• Control security permissions and functional privileges.
• Establish tiered system administrator hierarchy that reflects the company organization and culture.
• Manage usage through rules governing data access and visibility.
• Audit all user activities.
• Continually monitor resources using advanced utilization tools.

How to Get Started Questions

Q. How do I get access to sales-i?
A. Because sales-i is an on-demand service delivered over the Internet, there is no hardware or software to buy, install, or maintain. Just point your browser - Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher) or Netscape Navigator (version 6.0 or higher) - to the login page and enter your username and password.

Q. Is any training required?
A. sales-i is designed to be easy to learn and can be used immediately. Our customers find that using sales-i is similar to using other Web sites - extremely intuitive and user friendly. If you know how to use the Web, you will know how to use sales-i.

Q. Is there training available if I need it?
A. Training is not required - but we offer access to free online training tutorials by logging into sales-i.com and clicking Help and Training.

Q. What involvement is required from my company's IT department?
A. There is no hardware, software, or network equipment to purchase and the application is accessed through a standard Web browser. So, your IT department does not need to be involved once they have managed the initial process of importing your company's existing account data.

Q. How quickly can my company be up and running?
A. With sales-i, you can be up and running immediately. It typically takes less than 24 hours to set up and customize your sales-i solution.

Q. What is the job of the sales-i System Administrator?
A. The administrator is responsible for setting up your sales-i service, which means adding users, establishing their roles, configuring alerts. This task can be completed in just a few minutes.

Reporting Questions

Q. Do I need a report writer to create and run reports?
A. sales-i provides you with easy to use, out of the box packaged sales intelligence- to instantly analyze and report on your customer sales data.

Q. Can I get my report information out of sales-i?
A. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel and other desktop applications by selecting the "Export to Excel" button in the display of every report.

Q. Can I create alerts and dashboards for an at-a-glance view of critical metrics?
A. sales-i provides instant access to the real-time data and analysis you need to run your business, including benchmarking and critical metrics for customers and salespeople.

Step-by-step wizards help you define alerts to monitor your business. Easy-to-use data visualization tools enable you to identify trends using charts, tables, and other graphics. You can set up multiple, customized alerts so that everyone gets exactly the information needed depending on their roles and responsibilities.

Importing Questions

Q. How do I import my existing data into sales-i?
A. The sales-i Data Agent provides an import wizard to move your data (customer, product and sales history files) from any business system that can save its data in the CSV (comma separated value) file format. The import wizard takes you through the import process step-by-step, allowing you to specify how your data will be organised once it is in sales-i. You can use the import wizard to move historical data into sales-i initially and then update with current data at any time on an automated basis.

Q. How often can my organization import data?
A. The import wizard is built into sales-i and can be used as often as desired. Typically 2 years data will be loaded initially to allow year on year sales comparisons.

Q. How long does it take to import a file?
A. The length of time required depends entirely on the amount of data to be imported. We recommend you review the import directions that are provided in the help section of sales-i

Q. Does sales-i offer services to help me import my data?
A. The sales-i support team can supply implementation services to help you get up and running, including data management services. If you cannot manage the process in-house our team helps you migrate your data quickly, efficiently, and effectively for an industry standard hourly rate so you can quickly optimise the value you receive from your sales-i.com applications.

Security and Scalability Questions

Q. How can I be sure my data is secure?
A. The sales-i security infrastructure, policies, and procedures have been tested and evaluated both by third-party security experts and our customers' IT organisations - and among those are some of the world's most security-conscious businesses. We welcome that scrutiny, because we devote significant resources to maintaining a world-class security infrastructure.

Q. How can I be assured my data will be kept private?
A. sales-i is committed to keeping your sales data private and secure. To this end, sales-i has expressly stated how we will handle your private data. For a greater understanding of the legal obligations sales-i adheres to regarding data privacy, please refer to the sales-i privacy policy as well as the sales-i master subscription agreement.

Q. Will a salesperson be able to see the data for the whole company?
A. It's up to you- most of our customers will restrict a salesperson to be able to only view their own customers...as well as security this avoids any temptation to be distracted or to 'play'.

Q. Does sales-i ever view or use my data?
A. No. As stated in the sales-i privacy policy we will not review, share, distribute, print, or reference any such Data except as provided in the sales-i Master Subscription Agreement, or as may be required by law.

Q. What happens when the sales-i database goes down?
A. We know that your business depends on immediate access to the information you need, and we're devoted to ensuring that it's always available, quickly.

Our uptime numbers and average response times rival those of the best in the business - for both business and consumer sites. We have built redundancy into all our systems to minimize any system failures, and all components are proactively monitored and managed so that faults are detected before system outages.

If there are ever system outages due to issues beyond our control, we have established numerous escalation procedures to notify the proper personnel in the event of any system outage and remedy any issues as quickly as possible.

Q. How scalable is sales-i?
A. sales-i has almost limitless scalability and capacity to take on your additional user and data requirements as your company grows.

Registration Questions

Q. How do I sign up for sales-i?
A. You can sign up online, here. The process is completely safe and secure. Additionally, if you prefer, you can also sign up with us over the phone. Sales and support representatives are available on 0870 446 SELL