...Case 15 SaleSoft, Inc. (A) Synopsis Greg Miller and Bill Tanner, Executive Vice President and CFO, founded SaleSoft in July 1993 with the objective of marketing PROCEED, a Comprehensive Sales Automation System (CSAS). While PROCEED had received very favorable responses from prospects, converting interest to actual sales was taking a long time with only five PROCEED systems having been sold to-date. In September 1995, with limited funds and the need to show performance before seeking additional venture capital, Gregory Miller, the president and CEO of SaleSoft, and William Tanner, the executive vice president and CFO, now need to decide the future course of action for their company. They are faced with the question of whether or not to introduce a Trojan Horse product. This product can be developed, with some work, using the existing modules of PROCEED's Sales System that have already been developed. Trojan Horse (TH) could potentially distract SaleSoft from its primary objective of becoming a leader in the high end of the Sales Automation (SA) software industry. In addition, there is a risk that it might cannibalize sales from the PROCEED product that SaleSoft is currently marketing. Finally, TH can potentially prevent SaleSoft from forming relationships with consultants whose support is critical to the success of PROCEED. Yet, TH might offer an easy way for SaleSoft to get into new customer accounts, gain quick sales, and generate much needed revenues. The situation...
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...Break-even Analysis PROCEED: Financial Analysis for Salesoft Number of prospects = 20 (given) Expected number of final buyers = (1/4) of 20 = .25*20=5 No of users per final buyer = (200 + 600) / 2 = 400 Sales Revenue per user (400 users per buyer) = $ 2,400 (given) Sales Revenue (expected) = 2,400 * 400 * 5 = $ 4.8 million Development cost for remaining modules = $ 1 million (given) Profit = $ 3.8 million Trojan horse: Financial Analysis for Salesoft Expenses R&D cost = $ 200,000 (given) Marketing expense = $500,000 (given) Total cost = $ 700,000 Revenue Miller Revenue per user = $ 1,000 (given) Break even number of users = 700,000/1,000 = 700 For average firm size of 70 users, Number of buyers required = 700/70 = 10 (For break-even) Number of buyers required to meet the profit PROCEED make = 4,500,000/1000 = 4,500 For average firm size of 70 users, Number of buyers required = 4500/70 = 64.285 ~ 65 (For meeting the profit PROCEED make) Tanner Revenue per user = $ 400 (given) Break even number of users = 700000/400 = 1750 For average firm size of 70 users, Number of buyers required = 1750/70 = 25 (For break-even) Number of buyers required to meet the profit PROCEED make = 4,500,000/4,000 = 11,250 For average firm size of 70 users, Number of buyers required = 11,250/70 = 160.71 ~ 161 (For meeting the profit PROCEED make) Conclusion Salesoft can make more profit if it proceed with Trojan horse if the number of users is more than...
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...QUESTION SaleSoft Inc is faced with making a tough, time constrained and strategic choice to either continue with it’s PROCEED software development or redirect the efforts of the entire company’s workforce to deliver the Trojan Horse (TH) product in time for the sales automation conference. The decision taken will have to be absolutely exclusive and is expected to have a critical impact on the company’s future and indeed it’s very viability. MEMO TO SALESOFT MANAGEMENT I would recommend the company to 1. Fully redirect all of it’s efforts to get Trojan Horse (TH) product to market quickly so that they can showcase it at the SA conference. This would be necessitated by the financial situation of salesoft Inc as analyzed in this document. They can concentrate on getting the PROCEED product out after demonstrating TJ. 2. Adopt a customer oriented value-based pricing for Salesoft and price it at a higher entry point of $1000 for the computer hardware market. 3. Clearly choose the computer hardware industry as their target market segments and spend minimal time and effort in getting involved with selling to financial sector industries. 4. Realign their internal sales organization to cater to the needs of the TH customer base more effectively and strongly consider the possibility of offshoring some of the software development to lower cost locales like India and China to reduce the cash burn-rate. CASE ANALYSIS It is evident from the case that Salesoft Inc has very...
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...Case Study – SaleSoft Case Study – SaleSoft Section C – Group 11 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SaleSoft, Inc. is a 2 year old company in the Software Automation industry. It was founded by Gregory Miller in 1993, who is the CEO. The company currently markets a product called PROCEED which is a Comprehensive Sales Automation System (CSAS). It integrates and automates various functions across the organization which helps in bringing down order cycle time and improving efficiency. However, the product is still incomplete and will take around 8 months and USD 1 million dollars to be completed. SaleSoft also recognizes that a portion of its consumer base wants a product that is based on the completed part of PROCEED (Sales System) but offers greater functionality (Sales Forecasting). This product, called Trojan Horse (TH), if developed will take 3 months and USD 200000 to be completed. It is much cheaper than PROCEED. However, SaleSoft doesn’t have the resources to either develop or market the 2 products simultaneously. Further, it has already spent a substantial amount of money on the development of PROCEED. But the sales of PROCEED are not satisfactory and customers are demanding a complete product. SaleSoft now faces a dilemma whether to continue developing PROCEED or to switch over to TH. While analysing the data, it was observed that the demand for TH was mainly from one of the decision making party, i.e., Sales VP, in the overall Buying Centre consisting of the...
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...Introduction to the case- Greg Miller (President and CEO) and Bill Tanner, (CFO) founded SaleSoft in June 1993 with the objective of marketing PROCEED, a Comprehensive Sales Automation System (CSAS). In the past 18 months PROCEED had received very favorable responses from prospects. However, converting interest to actual sales was taking a long time with only five PROCEED systems having been sold to-date. In September 1995, Gregory Miller was faced with the question of whether or not to introduce a Trojan horse product. Trojan Horse (TH) could potentially distract SaleSoft from its primary objective of becoming a leader in the high end of the Sales Automation (SA) software industry. In addition, there was a risk that it would cannibalize sales from the PROCEED product that SaleSoft was currently marketing. Finally, TH could potentially prevent SaleSoft from forming relationships with consultants whose support was critical to the success of PROCEED. Yet, TH might offer an easy way for SaleSoft to get into new customer accounts, gain quick sales, and generate much needed revenues. With limited funds and the need to show performance before seeking additional venture capital, Miller and Bill Tanner, executive vice president and CFO, had to decide whether to continue trying to sell PROCEED to select customers, or to make an all out effort to launch TH to a much larger customer base. PROCEED VERSUS TROJAN HORSE Points in favor of PROCEED- 1. Well into development phase...
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...HARVARD CASES Case 14 WESCO Distribution, Inc. Synopsis In June 1997, Jim Piraino, VP of marketing for WESCO Distribution, Inc., is preparing for a yearly review meeting with WESCO CEO Roy Haley. Haley wants the firm to reach annual growth goals of 6% to 8% in revenues and 12% to 16% in profitability over the next five years. The centerpiece of this growth strategy is the National Accounts program, which WESCO has developed to serve its major industrial customers in response to recent changes they have made to their business processes. However, as of June 1997, the NA program has not delivered the expected increases in sales and profitability. Jim Piraino has to give Haley his recommendations for the future of the NA program, in particular, whether WESCO should continue to pursue NA business with the intensity it has in the past, or whether to assume a more reactive stance and offer the NA program only when it is requested by current customers. As well, he must account for how WESCO will achieve the desired increases in profitability and overall revenues when its current program already seems to be encountering difficulties in generating the desired numbers. Use Although the "customer" is at the heart of marketing strategy, "effective customer management" is still not a very well understood concept in industrial marketing practice. This case can be used to explore the difficulties encountered in developing and implementing new ways...
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...Study – SaleSoft Section C – Group 11 Consumer Behaviour Section - C Group – 11 Name Aman Srivastava Deepak Sudhakar Krishna Bajaj Prasanna Patange Richa Singh Saikiran Pollamarasetty Vivek Gupta Roll Number PGP2011532 PGP2011617 PGP2011696 PGP2011770 PGP2011823 PGP2011843 PGP2011944 PGP 2011-13 Page 1 Case Study – SaleSoft EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Section C – Group 11 SaleSoft, Inc. is a 2 year old company in the Software Automation industry. It was founded by Gregory Miller in 1993, who is the CEO. The company currently markets a product called PROCEED which is a Comprehensive Sales Automation System (CSAS). It integrates and automates various functions across the organization which helps in bringing down order cycle time and improving efficiency. However, the product is still incomplete and will take around 8 months and USD 1 million dollars to be completed. SaleSoft also recognizes that a portion of its consumer base wants a product that is based on the completed part of PROCEED (Sales System) but offers greater functionality (Sales Forecasting). This product, called Trojan Horse (TH), if developed will take 3 months and USD 200000 to be completed. It is much cheaper than PROCEED. However, SaleSoft doesn’t have the resources to either develop or market the 2 products simultaneously. Further, it has already spent a substantial amount of money on the development of PROCEED. But the sales of PROCEED are not satisfactory and customers are demanding a complete product. SaleSoft now...
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...Salesoft Inc. (A) Case Study: Group 5 Anis Desai, Ankush Huddar, Gaurav Vaish, Jeet Bhatt Kislay Kumar, Sidharth Utreja Implications for Marketing Organisation Executive Summary The product under analysis, PROCEED is a complete end to end customized solution to integrate Sales, Marketing and Service processes developed by Salesoft. The product is targeted at high end customers. Situation Analysis Customers: The targeted customer base includes Software Industry, Computers, Office Equipment, Commercial Banking, Diversified Service Companies, Electronics, Electrical Equipment, Diversified Financial Companies and Life Insurance Companies etc. and market potential is very high. Competitors: The probable competitors include Action Systems, Sales Book Systems, Sales Technologies, Saratoga Systems, Penultimate Irvine. These companies utilize different platforms for the product and provide either vendor or client customizations and the even the primary system focus is either accounts or opportunity. PROCEED is the only product providing vendor and client customizations as well and focusing on accounts as well as opportunities. Company: Salesoft, headed by Greg Miller having an extensive experience in the field of application softwares including sales and marketing, product development, services and general management, was founded in July 1993 to develop and market CSAS Systems. Context: CSAS is a product aimed at removing the inefficiencies in Sales, Marketing...
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...HARVARD CASES Case 14 WESCO Distribution, Inc. Synopsis In June 1997, Jim Piraino, VP of marketing for WESCO Distribution, Inc., is preparing for a yearly review meeting with WESCO CEO Roy Haley. Haley wants the firm to reach annual growth goals of 6% to 8% in revenues and 12% to 16% in profitability over the next five years. The centerpiece of this growth strategy is the National Accounts program, which WESCO has developed to serve its major industrial customers in response to recent changes they have made to their business processes. However, as of June 1997, the NA program has not delivered the expected increases in sales and profitability. Jim Piraino has to give Haley his recommendations for the future of the NA program, in particular, whether WESCO should continue to pursue NA business with the intensity it has in the past, or whether to assume a more reactive stance and offer the NA program only when it is requested by current customers. As well, he must account for how WESCO will achieve the desired increases in profitability and overall revenues when its current program already seems to be encountering difficulties in generating the desired numbers. Use Although the "customer" is at the heart of marketing strategy, "effective customer management" is still not a very well understood concept in industrial marketing practice. This case can be used to explore the difficulties encountered in developing and implementing new ways...
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...Preparation Questions for the Cases to be used in the Program Please use the questions below in your preparation of the cases. Salesoft Inc (A) – HBS Case 596112 1. What is your plan? Do you plan to continue with PROCEED or will you introduce the TH product? Provide support for your plan. 2. What is the buying cycle for PROCEED? Who are the people involved in the purchase of a CSAS solution? What is the role of consultants? 3. Quantify the benefits of CSAS to a customer using the information given in Exhibit 7. 4. What value does TH provide a customer? How is this different from the customer value delivered by PROCEED? 5. What is a Trojan Horse? How does it facilitate customer acquisition and retention? 6. How will you price TH? 7. How do you think SaleSoft’s organization structure will affect its ability to sell PROCEED or TH? Case: WESCO Distribution Inc., HBS case No. 9-598-021 1. What is your action plan? Do you recommend that WESCO be proactive in managing its NA program or would you prefer that WESCO adopt a passive approach? 2. Where and how does WESCO add value to its suppliers? Its customers? 3. Why did WESCO start the NA program? What are its benefits to WESCO? 4. Why do you think the NA program is it not delivering on its promises? 5. What does Case Exhibit 5 tell us? Is there something that we can learn about the issues involved in implementing the NA program? 6. What about the NAM capacity...
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