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About SalesOutlook
Free Utilities
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 In
1997, two friends and seasoned technology veterans recognized
that organizations of every type and size relied heavily
on their email systems and messaging applications. They
determined that the reason was, and it still is today, because
email is the most convenient, flexible, reliable, and cost-effective
way to communicate, share information, collaborate, and
interact electronically. This is especially true across
diverse geographies and time zones.
The Need for
Improvement
This presented many benefits, problems and
challenges for organizations. Relational Databases are awesome
tools to manage information that has structure and defined,
consistent relationships. For example, Salespeople manage
one or more accounts. Accounts normally place one or more
orders over their lifetime, and each order is normally for
the purchase of one or more products.
Notice the repeating "one or more" phrase?
That describes a one-to-many relationship commonly found
in structured data. Nearly every application you buy uses
a database of some type and provides structure to information.
But email messages, their attachments, and the volumes of
text they contain is not always structured data. How do
you protect, manage and re-use that information?
Capitalizing
on an Opportunity
Many experts suggest that as much as 80 percent
of all organizational knowledge (its critical business information)
is not structured data, and it is not managed by nor is
it contained within a relational database. So, where is
it then? How is it being managed?
Nearly 80 percent of all of an organization's
business information lives within, and is managed by, the
organization's messaging platform. This valuable information
is in the organization's email system. So how do you control
it, access it, share it, and re-use it? In other words,
how do you leverage this valuable asset?
Realizing that a tremendous opportunity awaited
the organization that could bring structure, control, and
re-use to 80 percent of all business information, our founders
set out to create a software application to help
organizations manage unstructured information assets. In
1997, they established netPro, Inc. to build and market
SalesOutlook to address these
needs.
Success in
the Market
After more than 18 months of research, development,
and testing, SalesOutlook 1.0 was released as a commercial
software product in 1999. By the end of its first short
year,
SalesOutlook was named a "Must See" application at the 1999
Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC). SalesOutlook was
just a few months old, and it was an infant as compared
to what it is today. Yet, even as an infant, it was recognized
by the Microsoft-sponsored, Exchange and Outlook Magazine
as a product you simply must see. SalesOutlook is truly
a break-through knowledge management and collaboration technology!
Since that time, the SalesOutlook product
has grown up and netPro, Inc. has changed its name to SalesOutlook,
Inc. The number of people using our products kept growing
too. By the end of 2000, more than 800 people in over 20
organizations licensed SalesOutlook, and in 2002 that number
jumped to more than 2,200 people in over 140 organizations.
In 2002, SalesOutlook was recognized as the People's Choice
for CRM by MSD2D at MEC 2002 and again in 2004 at
Microsoft Tech Ed. By the end of 2003
the install base exploded to more than 2,500 customers
on six of the seven continents. In 2004, SalesOutlook
was extended to support non-English languages, Windows
Roaming Profiles for Terminal Server and Citrix support,
and SalesOutlook, Inc. expanded its network of
SalesOutlook Certified
Partners in North America and Europe supporting over
4,000 customers worldwide.
Each day more and more knowledge workers
around the globe use SalesOutlook
to be more effective and to cultivate fruitful
customer relationships.
Preparing
for the Future
Today, SalesOutlook
is our flagship product, and our programmers are busy designing
and developing new products to leverage the benefits of
Microsoft .NET, SOAP, UDDI, and XML Web Services. They are
also exploring new technologies such as SharePoint
technologies, ActiveSync along with hand-held, wireless, and voice-interface
technologies. The future of interaction appears to lie in
the realm of integrated, voice-activated software that runs
on smart cell phone-like devices. SalesOutlook, Inc. is
preparing for that future.
As our organization is rapidly building relationships
with new customers, it is also growing relationships with
other technology companies and consulting organizations
to serve those customers through the
SalesOutlook Partner
Program. Establishing a quality sales, delivery, and
service channel will enable even more organizations, in
diverse geographies and time zones, to enjoy the benefits
of using SalesOutlook while staying secure in the knowledge
that highly qualified and well-trained specialists are standing
by to give them a hand whenever they need assistance.
The bottom line is that SalesOutlook, Inc.
is a provider of technology products and services that your
organization can rely on and grow with for many years to
come. Let SalesOutlook provide your organization "information the way you
want it when you need it."
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