#1 most frequent
United States of America
90.0%9 installations of 10
What is RO Innovation?
Upland RO Innovation automatically serves up the best customer references to elevate brand awareness and win more deals.
Categories & Use Cases
Product Demos
Who Buys & Uses RO Innovation
#2 most frequent
Estonia
10.0%1 installation of 10
Look elsewhere
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We are supposed to be using Upland RO Innovation to manage our references and marketing assets database but I believe it has been a disaster from start to finish. We were promised many things that they continue to fail to deliver on and I feel like their product is unbelievably unintuitive.
Pros
- N/A
Cons
- Unintuitive user interface
- Defensive meetings with Upland RO Innovation staff when requests for improvements are shared
- Searching features are clunky, outdated, and unhelpful
Most Important Features
- We heard rumors they were piloting a way to use multiple salesforce instances but have not seen any updates or mentions of success
Return on Investment
- Lack of ability to implement references program
- Stalled deployment of program
Other Software Used
Influitive, Salesforce CMS, monday.com
Boulder Logic Great for Automating a Manual Process
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
iCIMS is currently leveraging Boulder Logic to manage its customer reference program. The program is owned by the Customer Marketing department, but primarily supports our Prospect Sales team. Boulder Logic helps cut down on the manual process of tracking, searching, and fulfilling references. Since we've implemented Boulder Logic, we've been able to cut down on the number of coordinators assisting with the program - and also scale as our business grows (and requests for references increase).
Pros
- Automation: We used to track references manually via excel and outlook. With Boulder Logic we've automated much of the process so that requests are triggered directly to account managers for approval.
- Tracking: We now have greater viability into who is requesting references, how many references they are requesting, who denies the most references, and what the most common reference requests types are. This helps us proactively enroll hard to fill references.
- Attentiveness: The team at Boulder Logic has been receptive to suggestions we've made on how to improve the system.
Cons
- Reporting: Some of the reporting within BL is a bit wonky. As someone who isn't in the system every day, I have difficulty pulling reports that I might need to provide to my VP.
- Configurability: Some fields in BL are super configurable - some are hard coded, which causes some issues when we're looking to make changes to better suit our sales organization.
Return on Investment
- Increase time to fill: All references are filled within 2.5 days or less. For a program that isn't managed by one person, full time, we look at this stat as a win for our organization. BL def. helped us in cutting down the time it takes to find a reference.
- Increased employee efficiency: The customer marketing team still owns the day to day administration (approvals) of the system, but we've drastically cut down their effort. We no longer need to search for the reference (the sales reps now do this themselves) - and the triggers to the account managers have been a huge help in cutting down the time to approve.
- Greater visibility: BL has allowed us to capture denial reasons - which means we know why a references is being denied - which means we can hide them from coming up in future search results.
Alternatives Considered
reference edge and RO Innovation
Other Software Used
Eventbrite, GoToWebinar, Drupal, Halogen Software
BL Review easy all the way
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Boulder Logic is being used for tracking references, when they are used and we are using it to contact the references at the contact level.
Pros
- The contact workflow / email is well done and easy
- Searching for a reference is pretty good as well
- Tracking who is a reference on new potential deals is nice not only to know but to see how they interact with our potential buyers
Cons
- It could be cool if there was some automated built in surveys that could be used and attached to the reference. For example very short quick survey to the potential customer about how they felt about the reference, a short one to the sale rep involved to show if it was a good fit to bring the reference and potential customer together. Then show those collective results on the reference record and when searching for a reference.
- I would like a better way to build and track points for those at the contact level of a reference and a the account level.
Return on Investment
- I think our ROI has not been fully realized but its not a BL issue its an internal issue.
- Linking BL to chatter may help since this seems to be the first place sales reps go to ask for or discuss a reference.
Alternatives Considered
AccountEdge
Good tool, but requires behavior change.
Pros
- The system provides more visibility into available references and prevents references from being over-used. It allows the client (reference) to choose how often they can be contacted in a given time period and provides a closed-loop feedback mechanism to make sure the client is providing positive responses.
- Allows account executives (sales people) to easily request references based on: product Used, customer vertical, location, account size, expertise, etc.
- Uses a “Five Star” method to show how relevant the answers are when a results are returned from a search.
Cons
- BoulderLogic is merely a tool. You have to have a culture and cadence around reference management, which may include rewarding employees who cultivate new references. You should also have a culture of expressing gratitude to the clients providing stewardship them. If that culture doesn’t exist, the tool won’t be used because the results will be “zero” upon searching and you could get by with reporting from Salesforce.
- I seem to recall that integration may be a weakness. For example, if your search for a reference included the ability to see which other clients use a specific product, you’d expect that list to be accurate. I am not sure that if a client purchased an additional “module” of our software and this was noted in the CRM, that BoulderLogic would reflect this new purchase automatically. I’d have to confirm with the administrator.
Return on Investment
- Faster response time for sales to get references. It still relies on an account manager to “manually” approve references and this can be a bottleneck. This is at least based upon how we have set-up the workflows in our company. Also, if you don’t have a culture of cultivating references, the results will show.
