May 2008: Enhancing the Sales Process with Real-time Business DemographicsQuote of the Month“ The general notion is that the Web provides another location for core business processes using outsourced infrastructure and reusable business processes that are accessible on-demand. These Web-born systems/architectures provide better development speed, access to pre-built resources, and much more value when compared to traditional enterprise approaches. These are the reasons SOA proves itself on the platform of the Web more so than within the enterprise these days…it's just faster, easier, and provides more initial ROI.” – David Linthicum / SOA World Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) Gains Momentum Note from the PresidentJoin us at these upcoming events What's New at StrikeIron
What's New in Web Services?
StrikeIron Thought Leadership
Note from the President: Enhancing the Sales Process with Real-time Business DemographicsStrikeIron's Web Services Marketplace is a great source of live business demographic data sources that can help an organization extract more ROI out of their CRM systems and sales teams. These Web services provide integrated, detailed information about prospects which can be leveraged for a clearer view of prospects and enable easy use of information for more effective customer acquisition. Utilizing external data sources from the Web can enhance the simple name and address information from an organization with key contact names (to ensure you are selling at the right level), revenue history, company size, SIC code information (for targeted messaging), subsidiary and parent company information, and even credit scores that enable time savings by limiting time spent to only those prospects with credit ratings you are willing to accept. It's much better to determine that right off the bat, rather than wait until six phone calls and two proposals later that a company has poor credit. Within the StrikeIron Web Services Marketplaces, we have many different business demographic data sources available for integration into CRM processes such as from Cortera, D&B, Cengage Gale, and others. There are also several Web services available for address verification, phone number verification, and even email verification which helps organizations filter out leads from non-existent email accounts and domain names, thereby preventing a lot of wasted time. Each of these can easily be integrated into any CRM system, Outlook, or anything that can consume a SOAP or REST-based Web service. We have even gone so far as to integrate Cengage Gale business demographic data into Salesforce.com. With a couple of mouse clicks, all of the detailed information described above can be auto-filled into any desired prospect or contact record, especially useful just moments before a call. This addition to the AppExchange also includes all of the source code for it so it can be customized, including utilizing other data sources from StrikeIron’s Web Services Marketplace. Get it here: http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?NavCode__c=&id=a0330000004ZjewAAC And of course, we use these and other data sources ourselves for our own internal business processes as do many other organizations around the world that are leveraging real-time information via the Web for business success and without the data import maintenance and update headaches. And yes, you can try them without registration or purchase! Bob Brauer Join us at these upcoming eventsSIFMA: Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association 28th Annual Technology Management Conference & Exhibit June 10-12 in New York City. Visit us in Booth 4008. (SIFMA) What's New at StrikeIron?Boomi On Demand now available for use with StrikeIron Marketplace Services Boomi and StrikeIron Partner to Accelerate SaaS Adoption by Enabling Seamless Integration of Web Services. (Boomi) StrikeIron Hires New CFO Paul Boyer brings over 20 years of experience in leading high growth technology companies. (CFO) StrikeIron and Cortera Partner to Deliver Live Credit and Business Demographic Data Over the Web Credit Pulse and Business Vitals Web services now available for instant integration into credit, CRM and business applications. (Cortera) What's New in Web Services?Lite Services: Free data to accelerate SOA and WOA development StrikeIron created Lite Web services so developers would have a quick and easy way to leverage multiple data sources for use in mashups or other applications or Web sites without requiring registration, authentication or the purchase of a Web service. StrikeIron gives you the first 100 hits per service per day across all of the Lite Web services free! (Lite Services) Historical Foreign Exchange Rates Lite Provides historical foreign exchange rates for multiple currencies to a single currency. Rates are quoted either in U.S. dollars per foreign currency unit or in foreign currency units per U.S. dollar. Rates are updated monthly. (Historical) IP Location Lite Returns a world map with a dot representing the IP Address location. The country name is returned as part of the map. (IP Location) ZIP Code Information Lite Get county, city and state information for a given ZIP Code. (ZIP) StrikeIron Thought LeadershipThe Pay-as-you-Go SOA Challenge The "pay before play" model is the domain of the on-premise enterprise software vendors, including most SOA vendors. However, there has been a movement in the last few years to software-as-a-service (SaaS), open source, and now platform-as-a-service (PaaS). What's nice about these emerging models is that typically you pay for these products as you use them, as you need them to scale, and in accordance with the value to the business. (Pay-as-you-go) AJAX, RIA, SOA & Web 2.0 Mashups - Mash What? It's what you don't see about the emerging Web that has everyone excited these days. (Mash What?) Why Enterprise Architects Continue to Fall Short with SOA Generally speaking, the enterprise architects out there still don’t “get” SOA, and they continue to do a poor-to-average job of creating enterprise architectures that…well…support their enterprise. (Fall Short) Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) Gains Momentum Thus, the notion of WOA, or Web-Oriented Architecture, is really SOA that uses Web-based resources including services, applications, directories, tools, etc., and the general acceptance that it's okay to place business processes outside of the firewall. (WOA) |