Reading - UK - 23 April 2009 - Workbooks Online today announces its entry into the UK market, offering small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) an integrated suite of CRM and Business applications, delivered via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) over the internet. Workbooks Online provides a single technology platform that enables small businesses to grow revenue, increase productivity, reduce operating costs and improve their overall performance, something that has previously been the privilege of big business.
Accessed as a web-based service from anywhere with an internet connection, Workbooks Online brings together customer relationship management (CRM) and back-office accounting applications – that up until now have required disparate systems such as Salesforce.com and Sage that are unable to 'talk' to each other without costly implementation and upgrades. Together, the Workbooks Online applications enable best practice in sales and marketing, sales order management, customer service, invoicing, purchasing and supplier management, and company management.
John Cheney, CEO and founder of Workbooks Online, comments: “Larger organisations have historically been able to benefit from fully integrated technologies by purchasing high-end business software like SAP or Oracle. But SMEs with less spending power have been left with standalone applications for accounting and sales and marketing that can’t communicate with one another. As a result, many have separate islands of sales, financial and customer data across applications such as Sage, Salesforce.com, Goldmine and Act! In the majority of cases it’s a mess – it’s disjointed and disorganised. Despite the best efforts of managers building spreadsheets to plug the gap, all-too-often business opportunities are compromised or missed altogether.
“This is where we come in; delivering enterprise-class business process functionality at SME prices. We help organisations shorten the prospect-to-cash timeline by enabling them to better manage their business – helping them to win business more quickly, provide great products and services to their customers and ultimately keep cash flow healthy by invoicing and collecting cash on time. In addition, because it’s delivered as a service, SMEs avoid capital outlays to buy hardware and software, or undergo lengthy and expensive integration programmes. We’re launching Workbooks Online at exactly the right time to help SMEs not only survive, but to prosper in the current market conditions and beyond.”
Michael Starnes, Operations Director at EST Marketing is already a Workbooks CRM customer and says: “Because of the nature of the work we do [telemarketing], we have had exposure to a number of well established CRM systems currently in the marketplace, but we have found them far too rigid for our business model. Workbooks provides us with great flexibility and includes certain functions such as the ability to map matrix-style relationships between people and organisations, vital to understanding our prospect and customer landscape but often missing from traditional systems.
“Workbooks has already helped us improve the way in which we manage our prospects and sales pipeline and as our reliance on the system grows believe it will help enforce best practice across the whole business.”
Fran Howarth, Principal Analyst at Quocirca, comments on the launch: “As companies of all sizes look to cut capital expenditures in favour of more predictable operating expenses, the provision of this new service from Workbooks Online provides the tools that smaller businesses need to improve productivity and raise their competitiveness. These new tools, underpinned by one common platform, provide them with the same efficiencies that have long been available to larger organisations—without the need to run standalone applications for each business process being automated, allowing them greater visibility into all of their business operations. With this, they will be able to more quickly and accurately service the needs of customers, suppliers and business partners.”
Workbooks Online offers UK SMEs the following application suite:
Workbooks CRM helps SMEs win business more quickly. It improves the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing, increasing the flow of leads and measuring marketing ROI. Sales force automation (SFA) within Workbooks CRM improves and measures sales team performance and boosts productivity by streamlining sales processes including quoting for new business. The application also unites best practice processes and technology to help organisations deliver first-class service and support to their customers – whilst at the same time reducing delivery costs.
Workbooks Business enables organisations to move from order-to-cash more quickly by adding back-office accounting capabilities to Workbooks CRM. The solution improves productivity by automating key sales ordering and accounting functions. It also reduces sales cycles and minimises credit risk by ensuring greater visibility of customer, supplier and partner financial status throughout the prospecting and order process.
Workbooks Financials will be launched later in 2009 and will enable organisations to manage all aspects of accounting & reporting including ‘multi-divisional’ and company structures arising from daily transactions such as sales, purchases and payments.
Workbooks Online is founded by a team of entrepreneurs with a track record in creating and building successful technology companies. This includes John Cheney (CEO), James Kay (CTO), Jenny Robb (CFO) and Edward Berks (Sales Director) – previously co-founders of BlackSpider Technologies, the UK email security company acquired by SurfControl in July 2006.
Workbooks Online provides a suite of easy-to-use business applications designed specifically for small and mid-size organisations to run their business - already fully integrated and delivered via Software as a Service (SaaS). Workbooks CRM and Workbooks Business comprehensively support organisations’ business lifecycle, including sales, marketing, sales order management, invoicing, customer service and purchasing and supplier management.
Workbooks CRM and Workbooks Business help organisations to improve the performance of their business; with real-time visibility of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Workbooks Online solutions help to increase productivity through efficiency gains and provide the framework to better manage business risk. Workbooks Online applications are built on the WorkbooksOne™ technology platform as a pre-integrated suite of applications. This removes the traditional requirement for small and mid-size businesses to select, purchase, implement, integrate and manage separate CRM and back-office software and associated hardware; in contrast Workbooks Online is ready for use as soon as organisations subscribe - and starts to deliver value immediately. Founded and led by an experienced team of SaaS entrepreneurs , Workbooks Online delivers low up-front and ongoing costs and delivers unlimited scalability and guaranteed reliability.