iCentera Sales Enablement Platform Posts 50% Growth, Continues Climbing In 2010
- Written by Demand Gen Report Team
- Published in DemandGen Reports
iCentera announced that it achieved 50% annual revenue growth from 2008 to 2009 - the sixth consecutive year of double digit revenue growth for the provider of a leading SaaS-based sales enablement platform.
With more companies looking to reduce sales costs but still increase revenue, iCentera’s CEO Craig Nelson explained that sales enablement and sales effectiveness are finally becoming buzzwords in board rooms.
"Since registering the www.salesenablement.com domain in 1998, we’ve seen the sales enablement market evolve from evangelism to demonstrating real-world value creation and ROI for our customers," said Nelson. "Virtually every business is feeling the pressure to drive sales effectiveness and profitable revenue growth and progressive companies are recognizing that it takes an integrated effort across the organization and their sales channels to achieve these goals.”
Based on demand through the first quarter of this year, Nelson added that the growth rate is expected to continue through 2010, fueled by the Minneapolis, MN-based company’s recent release of the iCentera 7.0 service.
Nelson’s forecast for growing demand for sales enablement space is also echoed by leading industry analysts. For example, Forrester Research’s April 2009 Report, “Uncovering The Hidden Costs Of Sales Support,” found technology vendors are spending, on average, 19% of their selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs or $135,262 per quota-carrying salesperson in support-related activities.
Jim Dickie, Managing Partner at CSO Insights, added that his recent research shows sales enablement support several key initiatives for companies large and small. "According to the results of our recent Sales Performance Optimization 2010 study, the top three objectives in 2010 for sales organizations are to: increase revenues, capture new accounts, and increase sales effectiveness," said Dickie. "Of most interest to us is item number three: increasing sales effectiveness. Our case study work continues to show that if you can positively impact sales effectiveness, it can support all of the other items on this list. Sales enablement platforms, such as iCentera's, are increasingly being recognized by CSOs as a critical tool to drive sales effectiveness while strongly contributing to the achievement of other key sales goals."
iCentera currently supports more than 170,000 active subscribers who have created more than 10,000 targeted portals to communicate, transfer knowledge, and track internal and external behavior using a single messaging platform. Some of the world's largest and most aggressive industry leaders, with deployments ranging from 50 to 25,000 subscribers, have adopted the iCentera Sales Enablement platform. The company’s customers include NetApp, Infor, NBA, Thomson Reuters, Omniture, Eloqua, and Tyco Electronics.