Accent Launches CRM Supercharger Application

Accent Technologies this week announced the release of its new CRM Supercharger application, which guides selling and sales performance by applying intelligent data analytics to sales and buyer engagement data.

Like all of Accent’s products, the Supercharger application is based on the Software as a Service model. It targets mid-sized to large business-to-business companies.

The Supercharger works with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and SugarCRM.

Salesforce and SugarCRM implementations are built natively, according to Pete McChrystal, CEO of Accent Technologies.

The Salesforce version is currently in production, and the SugarCRM version is scheduled for release late April. All others will be available through iFrame, he told CRM Buyer.

Supercharger Capabilities

The CRM Supercharger’s intelligent algorithms map email and calendaring data into the CRM package on which it sits.

It is driven by Accent’s Synthesis Analytics Engine, a big data analytics engine focused on B2B sales, which took the company more than three years to develop.

Among the operations the Supercharger can carry out:

• Evaluates, scores and qualifies sales opportunities based on the user company’s standard models;
• Uses machine learning to improve those models;
• Dynamically tests opportunity and buyer activity; and
• Pushes real-time notifications and prescriptive recommendations — next steps, relevant content to share with buyers, and even situational sales plays to run — directly to reps on its native CRM dashboard.

It also offers performance management through better deal and pipeline management, in-context coaching, and more accurate forecasting.

Pricing starts at US$50 per user per month.

Getting Better Results from Sales

“Accent is a sales enablement solution that primarily provides sales content management,” noted Cindy Zhou, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“Extending out to sales productivity is a natural next step,” she told CRM Buyer.

Artificial intelligence is “a critical aspect to supercharging seller performance so [sales teams] spend more time on selling and less on manual data entry,” Zhou said. “Intelligent data analytics helps sellers focus their time and attention on the challenges customers face, and deliver improved engagement.”

Improving engagement is crucial. Over the past five years, sales reps’ successes at meeting quotas have declined, falling from 63 percent in 2012 to 53 percent 2017, based on a study from Miller Heiman Group and CSO Insights.

Above and Beyond

Several existing CRM providers offer the features Accent’s Supercharger does, but most charge extra for them, Zhou noted.

Many of those providers “rely on point solutions within their app exchanges to deliver some of this functionality, usually piecemeal,” Accent’s McChrystal pointed out. “We view our CRM Supercharger offering as comprehensive, competing with [Salesforce’s] Einstein.”

Toe to Toe With Einstein

Accent’s Supercharger differs from Einstein in several ways, McChrystal said, including the following:

• Einstein relies solely on historical data to recommend future actions;
• Accent offers sales leadership expertise; and
• The Accent Supercharger uses visualizations to depict sales situations for fast, easy comprehension.

Reliance on historical data to recommend future actions “is dangerous in B2B sales because teams need to change objectives and strategies constantly,” McChrystal noted.

Accent uses standard models — desired behaviors and benchmarks — combined with historical data to guide sales teams. It uses machine learning to recommend adjustments to the standard models.

The ability to adjust the standard models is critical. Static infrastructure and failure to tightly monitor and actively control models are among the challenges model-driven companies face as they try to leverage data science, according to Domino Data.

“We use both historical data [and] the ability to account for new sales initiatives, product launches and targeted verticals,” McChrystal remarked. “Einstein doesn’t take new sales initiatives into account.”

Based on Einstein’s release notes, users need 1,000 leads created over the previous six months, and sales reps have to convert at least 120 leads during that period, McChrystal pointed out, “whereas, with our solution, you can get the benefits of opportunity/account scoring from day one.”