As we are moving more and more into international sales, we are building better sales tools for a wide channel. One of those tools is our Demo Dashboard. It is a tool for sales people which gives an overview of some of the functionalities of the DMP FLO Suite, in an easy interface. And since a big part of our sales strategy has always been to have successful (and profitable) customers, we're opening this tool up for our existing customers as well. After all, the demos they have to do are often similar to our own.
Why a demo dashboard?
It's a wide system, with a lot of uses. And having a content management system that allows our customers to create new applications doesn't really help. Because this opens up even more possibilities and functionalities. The demo dashboard groups some of these functionalities, and provides access to a number of applications. Each application comes with a written demo script for the sales person. This way, he does not need in depth knowledge about the entire system.
For our customers, it is very similar. Many of them focus on a couple of areas of the FLO Suite (e.g.: digital asset management and web2print). But still it can be useful for them to be able to demonstrate other areas to their prospects or customers.
Digital Asset Management
We usually start our demos with an overview of the digital asset management solution. First of all, we show the basic DMP FLO Suite implementation: assetFLO. We walk through the interface, and show some of the more generic functionalities, such as searching for metadata, resampling images, etc.
Next up we show a couple of alternative interfaces on top of assetFLO. Our own document center (http://docs.flo-suite.com) is one good example of this: PDF files stored in assetFLO, but presented to end users and customers in a simple interface.
Finally, we show the portfolio PDF file. This is a PDF file with dozens of samples of output generated with the FLO Suite templates in database publishing workflows. Some of it using InDesign Server templates, other samples with PDF templates. This is visualized in the flash viewer (flipping through the pages on screen usually convinces some people very quickly). The samples contain stationary, supermarket Point Of Sales materials such as posters, catalogs, brochures, direct marketing output, mailings, websites, real estate ads, and so on. By seeing which parts get the best reactions, we know what to focus on in the rest of the demo.
Database Publishing
Next up, we show a number of database publishing solutions. We start of with some simple things like business cards, but a few minutes later we're generating complex materials like catalogs, supermarket brochures, direct marketing brochures, financial reporting sheets, and so on. Depending on the target audience, we'll focus on the creative part (extracting a brochure as an InDesign package, ready for creative finishing) or the automatic part (generating complex forms ready for publishing in a matter of seconds).
artworkFLO
Following this, we see if it is necessary to go over our artworkFLO functionalities. We usually give this demo in the same way as the other parts: start with the basic FLO Suite interface, in which we use InDesign Server to edit InDesign documents online. But after that, we continue with one of the custom interfaces built on top of artworkFLO. This shows how these InDesign documents can be put online in a status management solution, which makes a lot of communication redundant.
Content Management
After that, we typically go over our content management module. We show a live website, and the underlying content management solution (showing how changes in the content management system reflect on the website). We also often show a first application here (for example sending of e-cards). We show the end-result (a simple application for end users) and the development environment (our own content management system). This typically is enough to give a first glimpse of the flexibility of the FLO Suite.
Web2print
More of this flexibility is shown in the web2print demos. By showing a couple of web2print applications, filled with different types of InDesign Server or PDF templates, we show that any logical solution can be built with our system. This is illustrated even more when we make the link between the web2print solution and it's environment in the content management module.
External Applications
To top it of, we often show some demos of links with external applications. While they are rarely used in production environments, they do show how versatile and flexible the entire solution is. A link between a database in the DMP FLO Suite and Google Maps, for example. Individual branches are shown on the map, but are also used to populate PDF templates with variable data. Or downloading images from external systems like Flickr or Amazon and importing them into the asset management system.
Contact
If you feel that this could be a good tool for your own sales people, feel free to contact us and we will set up this demo either on one of our servers or on your own.