Recently, there was a news report on how a lot of families are dealing with the (possible) recession by growing their own fruits and vegetables. Makes perfect sense. It cuts down on expensive gas, its self-replenishing, and you can grow what you need. It also is tasty and satisifying. What’s the point?

There is a term in sales called “low-hanging fruit,” identifying prospects and customers that you can capture and sell to quickly without a lot of background work or negotiation. In sales, being able to identify which businesses are due for some type of re-marketing or outreach, can reduce the chances of existing easy revenue slipping through the cracks. Its easier to sell repeat business than it is to start from scratch.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a restaurateur and you keep contact with your frequent patrons that come to your restaurant. CRM Solutions like LongJump’s Sales Force Automation suite would enable you to pull data from your cash registers and let you analyze across both data sets when one of your regulars hasn’t paid a visit in a few weeks.

How can you use this valuable customer information? Add an email marketing campaign with LongJump Campaign Manager to repeat each week for all your missing regulars with a “we miss you” type message, a coupon for something unique like a free bottle of house wine with dinner for two, and a tantalizing list of new menu items.

If they come, again push that register data back into LongJump, and send that customer a thank you, with the same offer that they can pass along to one of their friends.

You’ve now created a low-cost, self-replenishing, referral-driven campaign.

Before CRMs, contact managers were the norm. They sat like an unattached rolodex on the sales rep’s computer, usually built as a part of their email client. But contact managers put too much sales information on an island, making sharing and management of customer information difficult. They also significantly put your data at risk. A hard drive crash or stolen computer can debilitate you for weeks.

If you’re a team of 10 or more, relying on contact management software to run your business is a lot like dialing up each member of your team individually and asking “how’s it going” and trying to condense that into actionable intelligence.

Part of what makes real CRMs so powerful is establishing a sales portal for all necessary information regarding accounts. This involves pooling data from various internal business systems and often requires a commitment to help from IT departments. LongJump can provide all the necessary integration points, enabling internal organizations to establish the necessary project requirements within their teams to get the data.

Data integration is critically important to getting sales teams to actively use the tool because of the time-savings they achieve by gaining a 360º view of a customer in single screen, including their orders, customer issues, credit status, finance notes, contract detail, credit limits, contacts, etc.

This complete view of the customers is what enables people to break away from emails, spreadsheets, physical file folders and sticky notes as the convenience choice. And it allows the business itself to maintain a record of account activities and contacts for seamless hand-off to other Reps or teams when assignments change. LongJump provides that view of all the customer data you need.

LongJump is designed to integrate with existing enterprise data using a variety of methods (including REST-based Web Services). And once that data comes into the platform, a series of actionable processes can be put into place, automatically triggering workflows, emails, tasks, SOAP messages, changes in the data, or even internal scripts to further automate business processes. And LongJump’s reporting engine enables even the most basic user to design reports based on mashed up data.

In short, there is no comparison to LongJump with your run-of-the-mill contact management software.

Partners Drive Day-to-Day Relationships with Client, Enjoy Upsell Opportunities and Earn Multi-Year Commissions

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Friday, April 25, 2008 – Today at the Web 2.0 Conference and Expo, LongJump, a provider of highly customizable, interconnected on-demand business applications, unveiled a “Jumpstart Partner” reseller program.  The new program serves the requirements of resellers, developers, and consultants with either a vertical market focus or a functional business area focus, such as CRM or HR. LongJump helps partners implement their technical expertise and best practices and provide customized consulting services and training to businesses.

LongJump’s Jumpstart Partner Program is ideal for resellers who want to leverage a true multi-tenant, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and deliver custom database-driven applications that meet their customers’ needs.  The program was designed to provide partners with an exceptionally attractive incremental revenue channel where they can monetize LongJump’s platform with their own premium services.

“To stay on the leading edge, resellers want to participate in the growing SaaS market. Therefore, LongJump plans to invest aggressively in our partners through lead generation campaigns, business opportunity referrals and generous multi-year commission plans. We believe that resellers will find LongJump a true partner in growing their business and maximizing revenue-building opportunities,” noted Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s CEO.

Although SaaS-based solutions are growing in popularity, resellers who have customarily delivered on-premise solutions have looked to leverage the ease of delivery of SaaS but still maintain a strong connection with their customers and provide premium services. With its new program, LongJump will maintain the customer relationship merely from a technology perspective, but the day-to-day relationship with the customer will be owned by each partner.  LongJump’s robust enterprise-grade feature set and uniquely affordable price point also gives partners the opportunity to upsell their services across the entire organization.

The Jumpstart Partner Program has two participation tiers: a Silver Medalist and a premier Gold Medalist level.  Certified partners benefit by having more leads directed to them by LongJump.  There is a one-time program fee for certification, but to kick-start its program, LongJump will waive the program fee for the first 20 partners who sign up at the Gold Medalist level.

As part of its Jumpstart Partner Program, LongJump will provide comprehensive sales tools and materials, sales support for complex deals, lead generation and qualification programs, training and certification designed to rapidly prepare partners to build applications and provide custom implementation services to their existing customers or new ones.  LongJump also plans to participate in co-marketing initiatives with Gold Medalist partners.

For parties interested in signing up, they can visit http://www.longjump.com/partners/partnership-contact.htm.

LongJump Extends its Platform-as-a-Service Reach into Global IT and Telecom Industries using Jamcracker’s On-Demand Ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Friday, April 25, 2008 — Today at the Web 2.0 Conference and Expo, LongJump, a platform for highly customizable, interconnected on-demand business applications, announced a partnership with Jamcracker, the on-demand services delivery company.  As part of the partnership agreement, LongJump will offer its suite of on-demand applications through the Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN).  LongJump’s applications will be available to Jamcracker’s global ecosystem of IT and communication service providers, resellers and consultants, who can quickly provision the on-demand applications as a value-added service to their small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers. 

As part of LongJump’s distribution strategy, Jamcracker will expand LongJump’s awareness and reach internationally to telecom providers and the service provider channels that are increasingly seeking turnkey SaaS solutions to offer to their existing SMB customer base.  SMBs accounted for about one-third of the approximately $12.7 billion spent by North American and according to Saugatuck Technology, a Westport, Conn.-based research firm, SMB adoption of SaaS applications rose from 9% in 2006 to 27% in 2007.

“We are pleased to add the LongJump SaaS development platform and its suite of value added business applications to the Jamcracker Service Delivery Network,” said Steve Crawford, vice president of marketing at Jamcracker.  “LongJump provides the most commonly requested sales and marketing applications, is highly customizable, and can scale as a business grows.  It is a welcome addition to our ecosystem of on-demand services.”

“Jamcracker’s growing on-demand distribution network is at the forefront of SaaS service delivery,” noted Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s founder and CEO.  “This partnership places LongJump prominently within SaaS marketplaces and brings the LongJump platform and applications within reach of more business everywhere. Using LongJump, businesses and teams can share information, collaborating more efficiently and productively leading to increased revenues.”

LongJump’s suite of interconnected applications span core business functions, which provide better integration and similar functionality to larger application providers but at a more affordable price while still having the ability to scale as a business grows. Most recently, LongJump has extended its suite with powerful components such as the industry’s first cloud Database-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Workflow-as-a Service capabilities.  Workflow automation is important to business because organizing and sequencing how work gets done can accelerate communication and collaboration between team members, across company departments and between suppliers and partners.  Up until now, this powerful type of functionality has been previously cost prohibitive to establish, deploy, and maintain.

About Jamcracker
The Jamcracker Services Delivery Network enables Telcos, Internet Service Providers, VARs, MSPs and SaaS vendors to profitably deliver on-demand services to businesses of all sizes. Founded in 1999 by K.B. “Chandra” Chandrasekhar, the founder of Exodus Communications and chairman of e4e Services and Aztec Software, Jamcracker’s mission is to enable on-demand service delivery on a global scale.  Jamcracker is a privately held company with headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and offices in Bangalore, India. For more information, visit www.jamcracker.com.

LongJump’s introduction of its new Workflow Designer had some great comments from the media. Its ability to map, route and automate business processes is something everyone can easily understand and see value from. Plus, its uniquely simple visual design definitely breaks away from most web-based applications.

Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch says in “LongJump Wants You to Stop Pushing Paper Around the Office“:

“This process would ordinarily be accomplished over email or even physical slips of paper that make their way through various ‘in’ and ‘out’ boxes around the office. Now it can all be handle in one central online location with variously designated user accounts for employees.”

Leslie Poston of Profy says in “LongJump Releases New Features“:

“Workflow is a nice addition, not only because it helps all of the features of LongJump work together well, and go to work for you, making sure emails are sent, events are added to the calendar, customers are served promptly and more, but also because it does the same with the third party applications.”

Phil Wainewright of ZDNet analyzes the entire customization trend in “Customization: curse or blessing?”

 ”Smart vendors are the ones that, like LongJump, go the extra mile and actually build applications that their business customers will find useful. This tackles both aspects of the curse of customization: you give people somewhere to start, and you constrain them into choices where you at least have some idea of what their needs are likely to be, so you can make sure you’ve built those needs into the platform already.”

David Sims of TMCNet says:

“Human Resources may establish a customized workflow process for new job candidates, whereby the workflow process takes the potential candidate’s record through multiple hand-offs and stages, including resume review, telephone interview, in-person interview and multiple interviewer sign-offs and approvals.”

Businesses are faced with a rising challenge today: There is more data that they have to deal with rather than not enough. This fact, coupled with the increased speed in which everything now has to happen, has meant that businesses more than ever have to take all of that data and automate as much of their actions as possible to maximize productivity.

Workflows themselves are nothing new. Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Business process reengineering, and Lean systems have all focused on some aspects of workflow management and improvement. By establishing and standardizing best practices, many organizations have streamlined the physical aspects of operational tasks.

But more often than not, the software tools to move that information across the organization (such as forms, faxes, emails and even intranets) have not kept up, involving additional complexity, consultation, and process-slowing human error. Systems that are built are often customized to such a point that changing them would cost businesses considerable time and expense. And in most cases, workflows are only built for the most important activities rather than the most common.

LongJump today introduces a graphical Workflow Designer to help businesses map out their data-driven, repeatable processes and route actions across an organization, enabling consistent best practices and streamlining delivery cycles. With the easy-to-use, web-based Workflow Designer, users sharing data and activities in LongJump are empowered to improve operational efficiency and quality and information flow.

With a simplified workflow metaphor, yet with extensive capabilities to support to virtually any business process, both simple and compless processes can be automated and routed throughout an organization. Everything from vacation and expense approvals to hiring processes to creative production projects, to service delivery can be mapped out in LongJump, its data stored, information and actions routed to key constituents, and its status maintained.

To learn more about how to create workflows using LongJump, click here for the feature guide.

Last year, LongJump gave a sneak peak of the customizable business applications platform at the Under the Radar conference presented in Mountain View, California by Dealmaker Media. Today LongJump is back as a member of the Graduate Circle comprising a hand-picked group of companies that have “graduated” from being under the radar and are gaining major momentum.

If you happen to be in Microsoft’s offices, do stop by the break area where we can show you some of the cool new stuff we’re working on. Our CEO Pankaj Malviya is also going to be presenting an update about our current successes as well as our vision and plan going forward.

By the looks of the companies showcased and our own momentum, it is an exciting time to be providing webware business services and applications as more of your typical backend operations and enterprise data moves necessarily to the web. The on-demand application promise is key to strengthening collaboration, management and information exchange between staff, departments, partners, and customers.

Vator.tv’s Bambi Francisco had a followup interview with CEO Pankaj Malviya and how LongJump was able to reach a point of self-sufficiency and profitability without backing from any venture capital firms.

Pankaj states that when you are bootstrapping on your own, the key is working every customer relationship to its full potential so you can build revenue as well as an enduring customer.

Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s CEO, is featured on vator.tv with Bambi Francisco discussing the company, how LongJump is helping small business, and the approach taken with LongJump and Relationals.

Pankaj discussed how the enterprise media industry successfully adopted Relationals CRM for managing customer relationships and sales operations as well as providing strategic business analytics.

LongJump, on the other hand, is focused on empowering the smaller and medium-sized companies and departments with a web-based application platform that offers customization, analysis, and policy-driven operations.

   LongJump has been shortlisted as a nominee for the Webware 100 in the Productivity category featuring products like application suites, groupware, and web platforms. It is an honor for us to be selected from what we understand was over 4,600 nominees. The top 10 winners are announced across 10 categories on Monday, April 21, the day before the Web 2.0 Expo opens (which LongJump is a sponsor at).

Rafe Needleman of CNet’s Webware once called LongJump “Back Office in a Box,” and we like that term. Rafe also indicated:

LongJump’s pitch is that the apps interconnect. People and companies that you use in one app can easily be found in another. Also, users don’t have to construct or modify the apps (aside from adding their company logo if they wish) for them to meet most basic needs.

You can vote for LongJump in the Webware 100 Productivity Category here.