SOCIALPRISE: LEVERAGING SOCIAL DATA IN THE ENTERPRISE

March 18, 2008

InsideView advances a new technology framework with the introduction of SalesView, one of the first applications designed for the Socialprise

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. —March 18, 2008—InsideView today advanced the concept of Socialprise as a new framework for understanding the way in which the rich, unstructured data of social networks and media are beginning to transform the enterprise. In support of this concept, InsideView is announcing a new product, SalesView, specifically designed to mash-up social data with enterprise-grade search and intelligence capabilities, to help sales teams automate prospecting, accelerate sales cycles and ultimately close more deals.

As the amount of data available on the Internet has exploded, partially magnified by increased convergence of previously disparate “professional” and “personal” sources, so too has the need for business to be able to harness this data in order to gain a competitive edge. Business processes often require relevant business intelligence that, until recently, could only be aggregated from a limited number of traditional, subscription-based sources. Social networks and other user-generated content on the Internet provide the opportunity to gain unprecedented insight into personal and professional relationships, with greater depth and breadth than was even imaginable a few years ago. The promise of greater insight can only be realized if the business user can practically digest the massive volume of data from an ever-growing number of subscription and non-subscription sources.

InsideView is working with a number of third-party CRM vendors to deliver SalesView, including Microsoft, which plans a future integration of SalesView with Microsoft Dynamics CRM™ Live. “We are very excited about collaboration opportunities with InsideView,” said Mark Corley, senior director of CRM Channel Strategy of Microsoft.   “B2B solutions like SalesView add another layer of data and relevancy to CRM applications by providing detailed and real-time information on all companies and individuals. CRM users can access this information to proactively find new sales opportunities by identifying key events (acquisitions, management shake-ups, etc.) and taking immediate action. The kind of mash-up envisioned by InsideView and its Socialprise initiative affords CRM users huge gains in productivity by consolidating all key data elements into one application or portal, as opposed to making users search multiple sources and pulling all that information together manually.”

“InsideView’s concept of collecting the wealth of social data available outside the enterprise, and connecting it to enterprise applications, can deliver significant value to users,” said Sue Aldrich, analyst for the Patricia Seybold Group. “As the value and extent of this social data continues to climb, and more people are learning to leverage it, companies need to move quickly to both understand and take advantage of social applications within the enterprise. InsideView is on the leading edge of bringing practical mash-ups into the enterprise that can help the sales and marketing teams achieve their goals.”

Socialprise applications are a natural convergence of social media and enterprise applications, and emerge as a mash-up of both the information and user experience of these previously separate universes.  Socialprise applications enable organizations to discover and distill highly relevant information from an expanding sea of structured and unstructured data sources and present it in the meaningful context of specific business processes. They address both content aggregation and presentation—and inject it with a healthy dose of collaborative functionality for enterprise-wide applicability.

“Enterprises are inherently social because they are comprised of relationships between employees, and among sales people, customers and partners,” said Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer of InsideView.  “As social applications are reaching critical mass both in users and content, it is not a matter of if but when they will mature into becoming a core part of every enterprise application. InsideView recognizes this inevitability by introducing SalesView, the first Socialprise application designed to capture the burgeoning social data inherent within the enterprise.”

InsideView has published a new whitepaper, “Socialprise:  Leveraging Social Data in the Enterprise,” in concert with the release of SalesView, to further explore this emerging business paradigm, discussing its benefits and use cases in customer facing environments.

For more information and to access the complete whitepaper, please visit InsideView’s change agents at www.insideview.com