Last week the ASCII Group gathered its members, including a good slice of MSPs, to the Boston area for its ASCII Boston Summit.
Since solution providers and vendors were all gathered round, why not give out a few awards, voted on by members right then and there?
One of the biggest kudos was for Best Software Solution, an honor picked up by QuoteWerks, a proposal and sales quoting tool from Aspire Technologies, Inc. and used by some 66,000 people.
ASCII holds these summits around the country, and QuoteWerks won the same honor last year in New Jersey.
The ASCII group has nearly 30 years of reseller and solutions experience. It started in 1984 to represent a chain of Ashton-Tate-owned computer stores. At the time, Ashton-Tate literally owned the PC database market with its popular dBase product. The stores, then struggling in a tough computer reseller market due to the move away from storefronts and towards VARs, banded together to get better deals on purchasing.
ASCII has grown since, and while still offering purchasing services, now counts as members VARs, IT solutions providers and MSPs.
QuoteWerks fits right into this market. “QuoteWerks provides the tools necessary for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Value Added Resellers (VARs) to create professional looking quotes and proposals with speed and efficiency. QuoteWerks integrates with leading CRM, PSA, and Accounting solutions like Autotask, ConnectWise, MS Dynamics CRM, Outlook, QuickBooks, Sage 50 and others and also with IT Distributors like D&H, Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, Tech Data and others to streamline the sales quoting and ordering process,” the company said.
The 20-year-old Aspire was started by John C. Lewe IV, and originally called Creative Software, while QuoteWerks was previously named QuotePro. The idea behind QuoteWerks is to not force sale people to use Microsoft Word and Excel, or similar tools, to do the heavy lifting of quotes and proposals, but to have something purpose built for those needs.
QuoteWerks can import data from GoldMine, ACT!, ConnectWise, Autotask, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Maximizer, TeleMagic, SugarCRM, Outlook and Outlook BCM, as well as Salesforce.com and SalesLogix. Users can also opt for QuoteWerks’ own contact database.
“You can easily import your product information into QuoteWerks. QuoteWerks can link to product database sources like external databases, Excel spreadsheets, or text files. You can also just type product information directly into the quote. If you use QuickBooks or Peachtree, QuoteWerks can even quote products that you have stored in QuickBooks or Sage 50 - US Edition/Peachtree,” the company said.
Edited by
Alisen Downey