CONCENTRA CORPORATION ANNOUNCES CONSULTATIVE SELLING SYSTEM FOR THE INTERNET; WebPoint a Breakthrough in Unassisted Selling on the World Wide Web.DCI (Display Control Interface) An Intel/Microsoft programming interface for full-motion video and games in Windows. It allowed applications to take advantage of video accelerator features built into the display adapter. Field & Sales Force Automation Automating the sales activities within an organization. A comprehensive SFA package provides such functions as contact management, note and information sharing, quick proposal and presentation generation, product configurators, calendars and to-do lists. Expo, BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Sept. 11, 1996--Concentra Corporation (Nasdaq: CTRA CTRA Canadian Therapeutic Recreation Association CTRA College Terrace Residents' Association CTRA Canadian Telecommunications Resellers Alliance CTRA Committee To Restore America ), a leading supplier of sales and engineering automation software solutions, today announced that they will reveal the first Consultative Selling Consultative selling emphasizes customer needs and meeting those needs with solutions combining products and/or services. A consultative salesperson typically provides detailed instruction or advice on which solution best meets these needs. System developed to operate over the World Wide Web. WebPoint and CatalogPoint are based on Concentra's product configuration system, SellingPoint, and together they provide a complete environment for unassisted product selection, configuration, and purchase over the Internet. "Despite all of the talk about electronic commerce over the Web, the actual volume of purchases has been quite small," said Dave Lemont, Concentra's Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. . "This is because buyers need to interact with their vendor before they'll put their money on the line." WebPoint eliminates this problem by enabling prospective buyers to interact with an intelligent electronic catalog catalog, descriptive list, on cards or in a book, of the contents of a library. Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh was cataloged on shelves of slate. The first known subject catalog was compiled by Callimachus at the Alexandrian Library in the 3d cent. B.C. that provides real-time feedback and advice on product and option alternatives. Concentra's Functional Modeling Makes The Difference Concentra has solved this problem through a technology known as functional modeling. Functional modeling lets the seller create applications that query prospective customers about their true business needs and then interactively collect information that is used to custom configure See configuration. (software) configure - A program by Richard Stallman to discover properties of the current platform and to set up make to compile and install gcc. Cygnus configure was a similar system developed by K. an ideal product. Through this customer feedback facility, customers can quickly and easily zero in on the best solution to their functional requirements See information requirements and functional specification. (specification) functional requirements - What a system should be able to do, the functions it should perform. . WebPoint Puts The Buyer In Charge WebPoint, which includes Concentra's CatalogPoint, provides a very friendly environment to assist an untrained user who is shopping over the Web. Users "point and click" their way through a structured needs assessment scenario. Through this capability, users can easily provide WebPoint with all of the information needed to fully define their product or business requirements. WebPoint provides a full consultative selling environment through an interactive dialog that alerts the buyer to additional options, requirements, or constraints CONSTRAINTS - A language for solving constraints using value inference. ["CONSTRAINTS: A Language for Expressing Almost-Hierarchical Descriptions", G.J. Sussman et al, Artif Intell 14(1):1-39 (Aug 1980)]. . WebPoint will also warn the user when they've asked for an option that is inconsistent with their original requirements and then provide the user with the option of changing their requirements on the fly. This fully interactive capability lets buyers explore a wide variety of potential product options and functionality, before they place an order. Designed For Implementation And Maintenance Like every SellingPoint module, WebPoint and CatalogPoint are developed and fully maintained in a single object-oriented environment, dramatically easing application development and maintenance. WebPoint integrates with leading dynamic technologies such as Sun Microsystem's Java and Microsoft's ActiveX. About Concentra Concentra Corporation is the leading provider of object-oriented sales and engineering software solutions. Using Concentra's software, market-leading companies worldwide in the aerospace, automotive, industrial equipment and high tech industries are creating customer-driven product designs, product configurations and sales proposals ahead of their competition. Headquartered in Massachusetts, the company operates from offices across the US, Europe and Asia. For more information, contact Concentra Corporation, 21 North Avenue, Burlington, MA 01803-3301, Tel: (617) 229-4600, Fax: (617) 229-4700, or info@concentra.com. CONTACT: Andy Lavin/Eileen Shell A. Lavin Communications (212) 354-2266 alavincom@aol.com OR Janet Page Marketing Communications Marketing communications (or marcom) are messages and related media used to communicate with a market. Those who practice advertising, branding, direct marketing, graphic design, marketing, packaging, promotion, publicity, sponsorship, public relations, sales, sales (617) 229-4669 jpage@concentra.com Booth No. 1932, Level2, Hall C |
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