Toshiba America Business Solutions Accelerates Sales Channel Performance with Jive Social Business Software

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ --

Company News

• Jive, the Social Business Software (SBS) leader, today announced the early success of Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc's (TABS) sales channel community, powered by Jive.
• In just under three months, the Toshiba eXCHANGE community has surpassed 1,800 members, including certified resellers, partners and Toshiba subsidiaries.

Toshiba's Business Goals

• Toshiba recognized that in order to drive shorter sales cycles and improve sales capacity among resellers, partners and subsidiaries, the company had to provide a higher level of channel support without increasing costs.
• For Toshiba's geographically dispersed teams, knowing when an item will be delivered or the specific circumstances of a customer's environment can make the difference between a successful sale or no sale at all.

Early Success

• For TABS, success of the eXCHANGE program is being measured by metrics that show a high level of community engagement. So far, the response has exceeded expectations, with participants indicating that the information gathered from eXCHANGE is helping to close active sales deals.  In addition:
  • Users have created over 50 groups that have started 735 discussions communicating sales best practices around overcoming objections and accelerating cycle times;
  • 186 blog posts were created, keeping the community up to date on key information;
  • 115 videos have been posted – from both TABS and eXCHANGE community members demonstrating answers to questions and solutions to common challenges.

Commentary

• "Toshiba eXCHANGE has the potential to change the way we do business at TABS," said Mark Mathews, president and COO of Toshiba America Business Solutions.  "For example, recently one of our dealers was able to close a deal based on Toshiba's environmental sustainability initiative 'Close the Loop', which aligned with key customer goals and values.  The dealer posted this to eXCHANGE, and it subsequently helped others in the sales field close deals as well.  This is the kind of information sharing that can truly make a difference in the bottom line of our organization."
• "Toshiba eXCHANGE is a powerful example of Social Business Software in action," said Ben Kiker, Chief Marketing Officer of Jive Software.  "We're pleased to be a part of TABS' initiative to streamline interactions with their channel, and we look forward to helping TABS expand the eXCHANGE community."

Resources and Links:

• Screenshot of Toshiba eXCHANGE community home page
• Example of eXCHANGE blog with community comments
• "Close the Loop" Video
• Product details for Jive's community software

About Jive Software

Jive frees people to engage in open, natural business conversations and workflows that typically are trapped inside of emails, phone calls or meetings. As the leading enterprise-class suite of SBS applications for Global 2000 companies and governments, Jive combines social networking software, collaboration software, and community software into the first solution to effectively manage employees, customers, and partners on a unified platform built for tens of thousands of users and millions of page views.

SOURCE Jive Software