Delivering Integration Between Best-of-Breed Partner Relationship Management and Customer Relationship Management
SAN MATEO, Calif. - October 25, 2004 - BLUEROADS Corporation, a channel management software company, today announced the availability of BLUEROADST Integration Interface for Salesforce.com, which delivers seamless bi-directional data integration between Salesforce.com, the leading on-demand customer relationship management solution, and BLUEROADS 5. The pre-packaged integration gives customers the ability to synchronize and share data between BLUEROADS and Salesforce.com through a point-and-click mapping interface that requires no additional coding effort.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are fundamentally designed to manage direct sales engagements between a sales representative and a buyer. This one-to-one model revolves around collecting and sharing data throughout the customer lifecycle. Partner relationship management (PRM) systems, on the other hand, are designed to manage a complex ecosystem comprised legally independent partner organizations. This one-to-many model revolves around aligning business processes across the entire value chain from vendor, to partner, to customer. Both PRM and CRM have their place. Both business models, indirect and direct, require respective systems to obtain peak performance. While Salesforce.com is designed to support the direct sales process, BLUEROADS 5 is designed to support complex, multi-tier indirect sales processes.
"Companies tackling CRM projects see application integration as their biggest challenge and consider integration capabilities to be vital to CRM technology," said Yankee Group senior analyst Sheryl Kingstone. "This partnership offloads the integration burden from the customer and enables companies to maximize the business value these best-of-breed solutions provide."
BLUEROADS has developed a pre-packaged integration for Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition that supports bi-directional data integration and synchronization using the Sforce XML-RPC 2.0 API. This integration allows customers to capture sales opportunities within Salesforce.com and pass channel-specific opportunities to BLUEROADS 5 for active follow-up by channel partners. Using the Sforce web services APIs, opportunities are imported into BLUEROADS 5 where partners actively participate in the sales process. As partners provide updates on sales opportunities, BLUEROADS 5 sends the information back as updates to Salesforce.com. BLUEROADS supports both scenarios where data can originate within salesforce.com or BLUEROADS 5.
"BLUEROADS understands the importance customers place on having pre-packaged integrations," said Axel Schultze, president and CEO of BLUEROADS. "By joining forces with Salesforce.com and the Sforce partner program, we're enabling our joint customers to easily and successfully leverage their investments in on-demand CRM."
The BLUEROADS Integration Interface for salesforce.com is available immediately. For more information contact BLUEROADS at 650-349-8500 or visit www.BLUEROADS.com.
About BLUEROADS 5
BLUEROADS 5 helps companies market and sell more effectively through indirect channels. By empowering individual partner reps to actively participate in closed-loop sales and marketing processes, BLUEROADS 5 enables companies to increase channel performance and predictability. The product is architected with complex channel structures in mind. Its Active Participation Network maps processes across the globe and down to the individual partner rep in seconds. BLUEROADS' partner-centric methodologies streamline and simplify channel process to encourage rapid use adoption. Analytics ties it all together, enabling companies to measure, model and tune initiatives to maximize channel investments.
About BLUEROADS Corporation
BLUEROADS provides channel management software and expertise that enable companies to market and sell more effectively through indirect channels. BLUEROADS 5 empowers individual partner sales representatives to actively participate in closed-loop sales and marketing processes, enabling companies to increase Return on Channel Investment. BLUEROADS' impressive customer list includes Hitachi Data Systems, Nortel Networks, Sophos, Sun Microsystems, SurfControl and many more. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California and privately funded by El Dorado Ventures and ArrowPath Venture Capital. For more information about how BLUEROADS is helping companies create active channels with higher returns visit our website at www.BLUEROADS.com or call 650.349.8500.
