- New video launch highlights rapid SaaS success thanks to Microsoft SaaS Incubation Centre -

Solihull, UK - April 21st, 2008 - sales-i, (www.sales-i.com) the real-time sales acceleration service for front line sales people today announced a new video launch with Microsoft that highlights the success story behind the three-way SaaS partnership of sales-i, Microsoft and NTT Online.

The new video, produced by Microsoft, tells the story of sales-i, its founder’s ambition to launch a SaaS based sales intelligence service for SMEs and the role played by Microsoft’s SaaS Incubation Centre and hosting partner NTT Online. sales-i founders, Paul Black and Kevin McGirl, developed the sales acceleration service whose aim is to help frontline sales professionals monitor customer behaviour and purchasing patterns in real time, providing e-mail and text message alerts to highlight sales opportunities. But despite the innovative concept, a conventional sales model charging companies for licences to use sales-i software carried too many risks for a start up business. Paul says: “As a new business, we needed to provide a strong service level agreement to users—a critical component of online service-based delivery. To be a true SaaS solution, the customer must also be able to cancel the contract. Otherwise it’s just software on demand.”

sales-i chose to offer its service as a SaaS deployment following a two-day business development session, delivered by NTT, dealing with the business and financial aspects of selling a SaaS product. The sales-i service came to market in August 2007. “SaaS seemed the perfect business model for us,” says Black. “We wanted to distribute our product around the world and train customers more easily. We hoped to register how they were using the software and what they weren’t exploiting fully.”

Robert Steggles, Marketing Director, NTT Europe Online, says: “The Microsoft Service Provider Licence Agreement helps ISVs to manage a subscription service on a monthly basis for users, and NTT has matched this with pay-as-you-go licences. With an adoption rate of 30 customers per month sales-i is a very positive endorsement of this SaaS model.”

To download the video, visit http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001264

About sales-i

sales-i© is a real-time sales acceleration service for frontline sales people. Through sales-i, sales professionals are empowered with real-time customer buying behaviour alerts which are delivered by email and text messaging, empowering them to make better informed, personalised and faster decisions which maximise repeat sales and reduce customer slippage. sales-i is a true Software-as-a-Service solution charged on a per-user, per-month, basis. Sales and marketing organisations rely on sales-i to accelerate their sales intelligence. This delivers protected customer share, better margins, visible cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and increased customer buying behaviour know-how resulting in more intelligent, profitable selling. sales-i is a privately held company with headquarters in Solihull, UK. For more information about sales-i visit www.sales-i.com or email tellmemore@sales-i.com

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