Clari Intros Sales Analytics Tool to Enhance Pipeline Visibility
Sales analytics in traditional CRM systems, like other types of analytics, have largely provided “after the fact” analysis instead of insights that can actually influence outcomes.
That is beginning to change, however, with a growing emphasis on real-time information. Clari, a provider of sales analytics solutions, last week introduced a new tool called Flow Analytics that Andy Byrne, the company's CEO of Clari, said provides “real-time access and analytics so managers and executives can better understand what is happening with their team and take smart, yet swift action to save or accelerate deals when needed.”
The tool allows managers and executives to see a forward-looking sales flow in addition to one focused on past deals, giving them a better understanding of trends and patterns in their sales forecasts and pipelines. As an example, managers can now click the “lost” category and examine the flow from “pipeline,” “best case” and “commit” to visualize patterns, take action to save deals where possible and reduce future losses.
Unlike more traditional CRM and business intelligence tools, Flow Analytics shows the entire history, data science score and customer activity of deals, according to the company.
“The pipeline and resulting forecast change constantly, but sales managers have never had an easy way to understand what drives those changes: which deals are won, lost or pushed out to a future quarter. Without this visibility, savable deals are frequently lost and patterns that could lead to more effective selling are hidden,” said Byrne via email. “Flow Analytics examines the thousands of changes within the CRM system and presents them on one simple, flexible view with no training or IT staff support needed.”
Flow Analytics can be used in conjunction with Activity Analytics, a tool that Clari introduced in September that looks at sales representatives' activity and prospects’ responsiveness, especially via email, meeting and document flow.
Clari, founded in 2012, is backed by Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures and counts companies like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Box and Juniper Networks among its customers. Enterprise Apps Today featured Clari in its Startup Spotlight in August of 2014.
Wayne Kernochan has been an IT industry analyst and auther for over 15 years. He has been focusing on the most important information-related technologies as well as ways to measure their effectiveness over that period. He also has extensive research on the SMB, Big Data, BI, databases, development tools and data virtualization solutions. Wayne is a regular speaker at webinars and is a writer for many publications.
