About us
Iphen develops and markets integrated solutions enabling organizations to quickly deploy, support and administer US, global or "geographically distributed" sales operations. (Iphen is a Sales Process Utility™.)
We manage our clients' telecommunications, sales & business Information Technology and sales support so that they can better focus on their relationships, processes and marketing.
Our customers are midsize enterprises, startups, spin-offs, and the divisions or branches of larger organizations (notably those expanding into new territories or new technologies).
Our services are available in 3 languages. Our solutions are Internet-based and primarily built on Open-Source technologies.
Iphen is privately owned and based in Fort Worth, Texas.
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What we do
Iphen provides organizations with all the technology, advice and services they need to quickly deploy, and/or run a US or global sales operation. In essence, Iphen helps Sales Organizations make more sales through better organization. We do this in a way that fits the unique needs and limited means of midsize sales operations. We provide the logistics, our clients focus on the front line.
- We combine your & our know-how to build the processes you need
- We select and implement ad-hoc technologies [more]
- We recruit your sales and support personnel, if necessary [more]
- We write high-level policies and detailed procedures [more]
- We train your people and ours, when necessary [more]
- We manage your systems, sales support and helpdesk
Why Iphen
Most of today's business applications were designed for a world that is fast disappearing. Globalization, the ever-growing complexity of technologies and markets, the atomization of large organizations into highly specialized and flexible entities all call for new solutions.
- Sales Technology that works
IT consultancies acknowledge that 70% of all CRM Implementations fail. "Traditional" Sales Software (i.e.: CRM or Customer Relationship Management) rarely works for midsize organizations. The phenomenon finds its origin in the misalignment of interests that exists between the promoters of commercial sales software (vendors and consultants), the organizations that buy them, and the sales people that use them. For productivity to increase as a result of a software implementation, processes must be defined and people embrace them. This model does not fit the reality of sales departments where people are bound by quantitative objectives and where data and processes tend to be unstructured. The complexity and rigidity of traditional sales software is at odds with the nature of midsize organizations which thrive and survive in ever-changing markets because they are nimble, flexible and focused. With CRM, the traditional pillars of successful software implementations (People, Process and Technology) have mutually exclusive aims. What it takes to make technology work in the sales department of midsize organizations is an entirely new paradigm. This is what Iphen delivers with its technology and SPU™ model.
- Technology that meets the needs of midsize organizations
Sales technology works for single user systems (although at the cost of time spent away from customers and with questionable productivity gains). It can also work well for large enterprises that can afford to sink vast amounts of time and money into the systems that they need to "simulate" one-to-one relationships with their customers (through integration, automation, data-warehousing etc...). Success is more elusive, however for midsize organizations which have different needs and limited means.
In order to sell and create loyalty, they rely on empowered sales people who listen to their customers, understand or uncover what they need and help adjust products and services to those needs.
Midsize organizations are highly flexible and responsive. Their requirements in terms of sales technology are both different and diverse. A downgraded version of a large enterprise CRM system is not what they need. With its vast experience with midsize industrial and service organizations, Iphen has what it takes to understand its clients. Our technologies are designed for midsize organizations and our methodologies render their adoption and use possible, swift, and affordable.
- Technology that is disruptive
Sales Technology should be disruptive and enable new market-defining business processes that create true and lasting competitive advantage. It should be an instrument of differentiation for the firm and one of empowerment for users. The paradox of commercial sales Software is that it is neither. What "traditional" vendors and consultants have to sell is a standard fare that they offer to all (i.e.: greater efficiency and visibility via CRM systems). While it should theoretically foster or stimulate competitiveness, commercial sales software inflicts uniformity (expensive similarities). Worst of all, it subjects sales people to processes and data-entry requirements which have little to do with their job. It puts a screen between them and the customer.
What Iphen delivers goes beyond mere gains in efficiency because the expertise of our associates goes beyond IT expertise. Combined with the power of our business model, our very own domestic and international sales development experience gives us the rare ability to delve into our clients' businesses and to devise with them new ways to generate new revenues and increase profitability.
- Technology that fits the way firms think & operate today
When computing first appeared in midsize organizations, it was on the shop-floor, with Mini Computers and Production Information Control Systems. With the emergence of the PC and plummeting hardware costs, MRP software (Manufacturing Resource Planning) gave way to ERP systems which aimed at serving all the departments of the Enterprise. Moving away from "production-centric", systems became more "accounting-centric".
Things have changed again today. Manufacturing facilities are offshored, non-core processes are outsourced and "tech" firms have become global. The heart of the company is shifting towards sales, marketing, R&D, and ultimately towards the customer. From "self-centric" or "company-centric", Business Management Systems are becoming "customer-centric". With Iphen, the customer is never more than a click away from related information so customer focus permeates the organization. Iphen's systems not only help the organization capture new business and run its business, they also help it adapt and transform itself as markets change.
- Technology designed with global markets in mind
US technology startups must be global from inception. They cannot wait until they are well established at home to think, produce, source and market globally. Doing so would allow foreign competitors with lower R&D and production costs to beat them in the US market.
Iphen makes global development swift, affordable and manageable for midsize organizations. Our systems are designed with international markets and subsidiarity in mind. They are web-based, multi-location, multi-time-zone, multi-currency,
multi-tax,
multi-team and multi-lingual. They integrate the information and processes that are universal throughout all the locations and departments of the enterprise, and they easily communicate with the systems that handle what is not universal (and thus should be managed locally or externally, e.g. Payroll, Accounting, Manufacturing...).
- Technology that facilitates sales in the United States
Deploying, and managing a sales force in North America takes time, knowledge and money. Vast territory, high labor costs, intense competition, high service expectations as well as legal and cultural pitfalls (for foreign investors) make the task as challenging as it can be rewarding.
With Iphen's turn-key telecom and business management technologies in place, all that remains to set up a sales operation is to hire sales people. Iphen's tools are internet based so sales people can live and work close to their customers and yet operate as if under one roof. With our portal, eTraining, and eCommerce solutions, partners and customers can remain informed, purchase and collaborate 24/7. Gains in efficiency and visibility keep more margin and market feedback in-house that might otherwise be left to distributors. "Share-of-mind" with independent representatives and resellers is maximized. Ad hoc shareholder oversight is facilitated. Investment dollars are spent wisely, and managers and employees on the ground are supported adequately.
- Technology that can be deployed rapidly and cost-effectively
Business Model
Traditional mid-market sales software is notoriously difficult to implement and prone to failure. At Iphen, we believe that this stems from the peculiar business model of software vendors whose income derives more from marketing dollars spent before the sale than from customer satisfaction and "fundamental" R&D.
Iphen's SPU™ business model (Sales Process Utility™) introduces a new paradigm and a new level of accountability in the industry as it ties the income of the provider to the new revenue stream generated through the use of the technology. The SPU™ model is built on the following three related principles:
- All-in-One People, Process and Technology
"Traditional" sales software does not work for midsize organizations. Technology typically gobbles up all the resources and time allocated by companies to their software implementations. Very little attention is paid to People and Processes. Organizations are left stranded with technology that is at odds with the way people work and businesses operate. [Read our Case study]
At Iphen, we believe that the integrity and coherence of the "People, Process & Technology" chain is a sine qua non for success in matters of sales technology. Not only should each link in this chain be as strong as the others, but it should also be designed and built to fit the other links.
This is why our services cut through the entire chain. We define processes with our clients, we implement fitting technology, and we provide Sales Support Associates to man both technology and processes. Everything works. True ROI materializes in the form of new revenues achieved cost-effectively and without
pernicious side effects.
- Segregation of tasks
Sales people are often a company's best paid employees. At Iphen, we think that they should spend more time in front of customers and less in front of computers.
This can be achieved through the segregation of sales activities into two categories of tasks: (1) low value-added tasks, which are clerical in nature, identical in every organization, and can be partially automated and (2) high value-added tasks, which can only be handled by sales people in the field because of their industry knowledge and customer relationships.
Our services cut through the "People, Process and Technology" chain along the line that divides those two categories of tasks. Our helpdesk and sales support associates handle our clients' sales IT and related processes so that our clients' employees can spend more time with more customers (and focus on our clients' technologies, rather than on sales technology). With our support, all they need is a cell phone to leverage the best sales technology and increase their productivity.
- Osmosis
The success of traditional sales software is contingent on user adoption and education. In most sales environments, sales people can barely afford the time it takes to learn new products. They do not have time or mindshare for software training. Unlike most other employees, they are goal-driven; they are not bound by procedures. All it takes to derail an implementation is a
PC-challenged sales person or one who shows brilliant results but defies software procedures.
No such stumbling block exists with Iphen because with us the user does not have to be the sales person. It can be a trained Iphen associate whose primary expertise lies in the technology used and in the function performed (Sales Assistance, Inside Sales, Customer Service, Logistics, or Supervision). Training is no longer necessary and systems can be used immediately. Our associates are bound by procedures and software instructions while your staff need only comply with high-level reporting policies. Most of what your sales employees and their Iphen assistants need to learn, they will learn from each other. We
substitute
osmosis for training and empowerment for user adoption.
Open Source
To build, maintain and use a Sales IT infrastructure that is fit for midsize organizations, cost-effective, secure, reliable, scalable, interoperable and manageable, one needs software that shares the same characteristics. This is why Iphen relies primarily on Open-Source software for its applications and for the operating systems and middleware on which they run (for both servers and desktops).
- Freedom from vendor lock-in ("Open-Source or double source")
The cost of business software, the costs resulting from malfunctioning software, and the opportunity costs incurred by not using software can be very significant. So software should be procured and managed like any other good or asset: cautiously. Yet, "commercial" software cannot be procured from multiple sources. It cannot be insured. The TCO, performance and interoperability of software cannot be determined until long after it has been purchased. It cannot be returned, exchanged, inspected, fixed, sold or even discarded (this would involve an admission of failure). Wrongdoing is hard to prove, so vendors cannot be sued. Buyers are locked-in and coerced into purchasing more products from their vendor and into using "integrated solutions" that do not allow further integration.
Proprietary lock-in is everywhere (API, file formats...). It is at the heart of the vendor business model. Innovation is stifled and biased. Flexibility is lost for the purchasing company.
This does not happen with Open-Source software as it can easily be tried and modified and is highly interoperable and interchangeable. With Open-Source, software is an asset, not a liability.
- Transparency and candor, WYSIWYG
With Open-Source Software, it is not only the code that is open and transparent, it is also the organization that develops it. What You See Is What You Get, in real time and before it is too late.
Open-Source Projects have public forums, bug lists, and roadmaps. They publish mailing lists of their users, developers and contributors. You can see how many people have downloaded the software and its documentation. You can see how many have registered in the forums and how many posts they get.
Prospective users can spot a show-stopper before investing time in a piece of software.
With closed-source software, information is scarce. Forums are locked behind a password and accessible after the fact when too much time and money has been spent to consider going back. Open-Source projects usually let less time go by between the discovery of a flaw and its fix or patch.
The source code of proprietary software is hidden, so there is no way to know what bugs or security vulnerabilities may exist and how or when they are fixed.
- Reliability: robustness, stability, scalability and security
Open-Source software (OSS) matters because it is robust, stable, safe and scalable. Most of the internet and most new corporate applications run on OSS. Linux won the server war (IBM™). OSS dominates the middleware field. OSS applications challenge established vendors everywhere. Major organizations like IBM, Sun™, AT&T™, SAP™ or MIT contribute patents, coders and money to OSS Projects. Google runs on "hundreds of thousands" of clustered instances of Linux and MySQL.
The reliability of OSS is a direct result of its highly effective and resource efficient development technique: OSS projects are initiated, developed and maintained publicly by the users who need them. High modularity allows parallel development. Quality is controlled and maintained through self-interest, peer review and peer pressure. Each user's PC is a new testing environment.
The more co-developers, the faster the software evolves. (An estimated 6 million developers contribute to OSS projects - over 1 million in North America.) Stable production versions are available alongside betas and code integration happens
frequently so that bugs can be fixed sooner and more easily.
- Modularity: interchangeability and interoperability
Whereas proprietary software tends to be all-encompassing, Open-Source Software (OSS) programs generally address small pieces of functionality. They are easier to build, use, combine, debug, update and replace, and they do a better job. The scope and functional perimeter of an OSS is determined (by the needs of the users) to provide the highest level of utility at the lowest organizational and development cost. OSS is thus highly modular, and it is so in a smart fashion. In contrast, the scope of commercial software is determined by concerns of marketability, selling price and profit maximization which lead to over-integration, arbitrary modularization, high overheads and poorer quality (reluctance to fix or discard). A series of OSS tools integrated or manned in a modular fashion provides better results, requires less skills, preserves flexibility and enables outsourcing.
The modularity experienced at the user level stems from the modular nature of the OSS development model which allows concurrent engineering, division of labor, decentralized development, and innovation via "module based evolutionary dynamics".
- Third and last product generation: better design
The first sales applications were client/server packages built for call-centers or small to midsize sales teams. With the saturation of the ERP market, vendors like SAP™, Siebel™ or Oracle™ acquired and developed sales solutions for their enterprise customers. Once the enterprise CRM market itself showed signs of saturation, they turned to the mid-market with downgraded versions of their large applications. This first generation of sales software produced as much frustration as it did hype and hope. Concepts were often flawed and promises empty. Most implementations failed. With the Internet came a second generation of sales applications that were web-based and sold as a Service. This new business model brought a much needed dose of accountability but it did not modify products significantly.
It is with Open-Source Software, with its free middleware, its accelerated development techniques and its low TCO that things have finally changed. The customer participates in the design and creation of this third generation of sales applications.
His needs are met. Both software features and architecture reflect the way organizations operate today.
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership
With proprietary software, midsize organizations sink significant licensing costs into processes that are not yet fully defined before securing any people buy-in. They generally fail. People should come first (if anything because the user
is what is most expensive in using software), and Processes should preempt Technology. Open-Source Software (OSS) is free and its Total Cost of Ownership lower than that of proprietary software. This makes Sales IT affordable and success possible as it de-emphasize the importance of technology in the "People, Process and Technology" chain.
OSS is free because its cost is born by the users who contribute to its development and because of its efficient production methodology. In order to build critical mass and momentum, software vendors need to invest as much as 90% of their costs in promotion. OSS projects do not. Sharing ideas and writing code is their only cost. Their productivity is maximized by modularity. They
need not invent new data formats if free standards exist. Their creativity is nourished by their user experience. Marketing happens naturally. Growth happens virally. They have no overhead and do not need to generate a profit.
