FirePond
www.firepond.com
FirePond is in the business of helping other businesses sell better. Focusing on manufacturers, FirePond has four major product offerings.
- ISS - Interactive Selling Suite
- Interactive Selling Suite Insurance
- Interactive Configuration Suite
- FirePond On Demand
Interactive Selling Suite
Firepond’s Interactive Selling Suite (ISS) provides salespeople and customers a powerful tool that greatly simplifies selling and purchasing. ISS was created with the lead-to-order process in mind. There are modules that accommodate each step in the sales process. Using a flexible architecture, companies can implement the modules needed to meet their specific needs and sales processes:
- Lead Management / Opportunities
- Needs Analysis
- Product Configuration
- Pricing
- Quotations
- Financing
- Proposals and Presentations
- Contracts
- Order Submission and Tracking
The ISS system can be implemented in many ways including a connected (client/server) environment, a mobile environment, or for Internet use. It is multi-language and multi-currency enabled and comes with implementation templates that work out-of-the-box.
Interactive Selling Suite Flexibility
ISS is a highly customizable, quickly deployable application that can be run standalone (mobile environment), client/server (using several J2EE application servers), or over the Internet (hosted deployment). ISS provides import/export capability for the transfer of configuration data, customer data, and order data. This allows ISS to integrate smoothly with existing systems and processes, rather than becoming a resource drain, and ultimately simplifying the entire sales process.
Interactive Selling Suite Insurance
Firepond’s Interactive Selling Suite for Insurance (ISSi) was built to map directly to the process of selling insurance, adapting to each unique sales channel – brokers / agents, direct sales, or via the Internet. It features processes and controls that allow insurance companies to ensure selling consistency, eliminate errors, control brand dilution, and optimize enrollment and renewals. The system also protects sensitive customer and product data, and can be a valuable component in complying with government mandated privacy regulations.
Interactive Configuration Suite
Firepond’s Interactive Configurator Suite (ICS) is a set of data maintenance tools, shared libraries and APIs that supply configuration capabilities to an application. Specifically, the ICS includes:
- Product Data Manager (PDM) - Used to create, populate and maintain the configuration database. Data entry personnel do not need to be programmers. Since the rules are easy to create and understand, there is less chance for error. And if there is an error, it is easier to locate and correct. The Product Data Tester (PDT) allows the data to be tested to ensure it produces the desired results.
- Importers - A variety of importers provide the ability to import data from a variety of sources. The PDM also directly imports XML and ODBC data sources.
- Configuration Engine - The “brain” behind the product configuration and pricing process. The engine uses many “solvers” to ensure the product and option selections are valid, and that the correct pricing is applied.
- SDK - The software development kit includes a variety of APIs to integrate the Configuration Engine into existing applications.
- ERP Connector - An optional ERP Plug-In allows users to import ERP data (in an XML format) and export PDM data (to an XML format) to an ERP system such as SAP’s R/3.
The Configuration Engine, and the data set created with the PDM, are used by Firepond’s front-end selling systems such as ISS, ISSi, and Firepond OnDemand. However, several Firepond customers had existing sales systems and wanted only to integrate the Configuration Engine into their systems. The ICS Software Development Kit provides many options for integrating Firepond’s configuration technology into existing systems.