Complex engineer-to-order firms get specialist sales portal

The system has now been extended with a Quotation and Proposal Management software component, which provides: a centralised quotation database; customer and contact information; knowledge-based document configuration; automated generation of complex proposals based on document; proposal revision control; knowledge-based workflow automation; and complex costing and pricing. Cincom describes its portal as designed to fill the gaps in CRM- and ERP-based systems when it comes to guided selling, channel and distributor collaboration, sales and product configuration, project and bid management, and contract and order management. It says that the new component enables sales teams to spend more time closing deals and less time producing documents. The company also says that it is easily integrated with a product configurator, business rules engine, workflow management and other components. Cincom Acquire was nominated for Microsoft’s 2008 Office Business Application of the Year.