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nGenera Launches Alternative Strategies for Marketing and Sales in a Challenging World Economy

Posted on: Tuesday, 3 March 2009, 08:00 CST

Provides Multi-Million Dollar Syndicated Research Program and On-Demand Collaborative Selling Applications

AUSTIN, Texas, March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- nGenera(TM) Corporation, maker of a unique platform of enterprise 2.0 business solutions, announced today a new integrated offering targeted at marketing and sales organizations. The offering includes a new installment of its renowned, syndicated research entitled "Marketing and Sales 2.0: Enabling the New Customer Experience." Accompanying the research program is a suite of on-demand Collaborative Selling applications and managed advisory services. Together these create a comprehensive solution to help companies transform '1.0' marketing and sales practices and compete in a '2.0' world.

The syndicated program and applications are available immediately. Initial subscribers include Accenture, Cisco, Ogilvy One and PricewaterhouseCoopers. An on-line executive briefing event for members and interested parties is scheduled for March 17 and 18 and will provide an overview of the 2009 research agenda and applications suite. For more information on this event, contact educationinfo@nGenera.com.

Multi-million dollar Investigation of New Marketing Strategies

"Web-enabled mechanisms that drive engagement and collaboration are altering traditional relationships of customers to sales, the brand and the enterprise," said Joan Bigham, executive vice president, strategy and director of the Marketing and Sales 2.0 research program. "We will be working with companies who plan to invest in this transformation, despite the recession, to widen their market advantage."

The multi-million dollar initiative is built upon two groundbreaking nGenera programs, Enterprise 2.0 - Unleashing the Enterprise and The Net Generation - Strategic Investigation, which include the last five years of web development and the Net Generation's coming of age. More than three dozen companies, led by IBM, SAP and Cisco, participated in these programs, which explored 100 strategic topics and lighthouse cases including platforms for innovation, global talent markets, social networks as operating systems, collaborative knowledge, the wiki workplace and prosumerism - all of which are available to the program members.

"The Net Generation uses digital tools to pass the time, play, learn, communicate and even think in new ways," said Don Tapscott, chairman, nGenera Insight. "As a result, they develop new kinds of consumer needs, behaviors and relationships to brands."

The Marketing and Sales 2.0 program will help subscribers look over the horizon at the intersection of these forces and their impact on marketing and sales. In addition, membership includes a license to nGenera's Collaboration Hub, a web-based, enterprise platform featuring the nGen Collaboration(TM) application for building internal and external communities. Through the nGenera platform, members will participate in an online community of experts and peers; access to multi-million dollar research on issues that today's Next Generation Enterprises face; and receive customized on-site and virtual executive briefings led by nGenera research faculty. The program includes member-attended conferences and unlimited access to Web events and research via the nGen Collaboration online community. nGenera recently added online discussion forums to its research programs to enable expanded dialogs between members, reduce dependency on in-person interactions, and facilitate a body of member and faculty co-created content.

Members of the Marketing and Sales 2.0 advisory panel and selected faculty include:

• Don Tapscott, best-selling author of Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital and chairman of nGenera Insight, who also led the earlier research on Enterprise 2.0 and Talent 2.0;
• Keith Ferrazzi, founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, who was also dubbed one of the world's most "connected" individuals;
• Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne;
• Peter Hirshberg, a veteran of high tech and luxury product marketing and founder of Technorati;
• Bruce Rogow, executive fellow of Gartner and Differentis and principal at Odyssey; and
• Sean Moffitt, shaper of Canadian brands such as Diageo-Guinness and Molson Canadian in the past 15 years and is president of Agent Wildfire Inc.

In consultation with leading institutions, agencies and thought leaders around the world, the program is organized to explore five arenas of change for Marketing and Sales 2.0:

• A Preview of the New Marketing - a look over the horizon at forces that are changing the global marketplace and driving the collaboration of marketing, sale and IT functions within an enterprise;
• Web-Enabled Collaboration and Co-Creation - the age of prosumerism, engagement at the instant truth, changing customer focus to customer experience, and collaborative selling;
• Engaging the Net Generation - addressing the age of co-innovation, using a community to build a brand, and using social gaming to reach the Net Generation;
• Customer Relationships and Social Media - managing molecular media, social CRM, the mechanics of virtual relationships and mobile marketing; and
• Economics, Measurement and Analytics - new metrics of marketing, analytics as the new competency for marketing management, the measurement of the brand and integrated sales.

"All of the top marketing leaders I've seen, who have accomplished something along the way, excel at change management because of the massive organizational component," said Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO at Ogilvy One Worldwide. "Marketers who are really transformative understand this change and can bring other people along within their companies." This research will help transformative marketers manage these changes.

nGen Sales: Radically increase sales productivity through Collaborative Selling

In addition to the launch of Marketing and Sales 2.0, nGenera is also introducing the Collaborative Selling solution, a new suite of services, content and applications built upon its enterprise-class collaboration platform including nGen Wikiforce(TM), an on-demand mash-up of nGen Collaboration and the leading SaaS CRM application, Salesforce.com.

"To be competitive in a Web 2.0 world - one that is simultaneously more resource-constrained and more interconnected - it is clear that salespeople can no longer be individual contributors, using only their own personal strengths to position and win customer relationships," said Eryc Branham, nGenera vice president for products. "Our experience shows that a research program like nGenera's Marketing and Sales 2.0 will yield new insights for the participating member companies that will have profound implications on the way they engage with their internal sales and marketing teams, customers, business partners and the marketplace. But, even before the first research insights are produced, our experience has shown that an application like nGen Wikiforce can already make a dramatic impact on improved sales results."

In its study entitled "Sales 2.0, Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration," The Aberdeen Group documents the benefits of collaborative selling: "By connecting sales reps to subject matter experts, allowing them to collaborate on project or procedural documents, or simply reduce the amount of time spent looking for answers to frequently asked questions, organizations can shorten sales cycles and improve overall sales productivity." The report concludes: "By integrating select social media solutions into an existing CRM, companies can maximize the communication and collaboration benefits of their existing sales automation platform."

nGenera's Collaborative Selling solution delivers on this intersection of social media and CRM and instantly gives customers the power of a collaborative network of marketing and sales intelligence. In addition to the Marketing and Sales 2.0 research program, Senior Executive Concourse and Sales 2.0 advisory services, nGenera's Collaborative Selling solutions include:

• nGen Wikiforce - a plug-in to the Salesforce.com CRM application that enables collaborative selling both inside and outside of sales teams
• nGen Salesmap(TM) - a visual sales methodology tool that allows a sales executive to quickly identify the best collaboration opportunities for an account or deal, and
• nGen Simulation(TM) - for modeling and applying "what if" scenarios to sales and channel transformation across an enterprise.

For more information on nGenera's Marketing and Sales 2.0 program, please visit www.nGenera.com.

About nGenera

nGenera Corporation serves the global 2000 with a platform of innovative research, executive education, advisory services and collaborative applications providing breakthrough capabilities in customer experience, talent management and leadership performance. nGenera Customer Interaction Management's award-winning solutions are a key component of nGenera's nGen Customer offerings, which provide companies the means to accelerate and sustain growth by understanding and creating differentiated experiences for and with customers, partners and employees. In addition to its nGen Customer offerings, nGenera's on-demand, business innovation platform includes unique, high impact applications for Sales Management, Talent Markets, Incentive Compensation and Business Simulation. For more information, visit www.ngenera.com.

The trademarks nGenera, nGen Collaboration, nGen Wikiforce, nGen Salesmap and nGen Simulation are property of nGenera Corporation, all rights reserved.

Contact: Ann Reichert, (858) 254-3676 areichert@nGenera.com

SOURCE nGenera Corporation

Source: PR Newswire

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