CONFIDENTIAL Memorandum – Revised 03/09/2000 2:55 PM

Date:March 9, 2000

To:Jim Trecek

CC:Clint Parr, Karl Meyer, Dianne Shelton, Doug Worley, and Phil Crowdus

From:Tom Keenze

Subject:Sales Resource Portal (SRP) A White Paper

Background:

Internet technology is changing business in an astounding number of ways. One aspect of this change that has huge potential benefits for Williams, with its large distributed sales forces, is a new concept called the Sales Resource Portal (SRP).

According to a recent Booz-Allen & Hamilton survey of 600 global CEO’s, “the most promising way to use Internet technology is through private Web sites (or corporate Intranet portals – CIP’s) that can be accessed by select groups of constituents – employees, suppliers, customers and alliance partners.”

Merrill Lynch forecasts that the Corporate Portal market will grow from $4.4 billion in 1999 to more than $14 billion by 2002. Field and Sales support alone is projected to be a $4 billion segment, about 28% of that total.

Just as consumer portals like Yahoo!, Excite and Netcenter have organized vast amounts of public information through a single, personalized view, corporate portals will organize and aggregate vast amounts of corporate information and provide access through a single personalized view based on the users profile.

Business Case:

Bill Gates, in his book, Business @ the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System, noted that “How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose. The winners will be the ones who develop a world-class digital nervous system so that information can easily flow through their companies for maximum and constant learning.”

The Williams Sales Resource Portal would be an interactive channel used for gathering distributed and currently unorganized rich media content, logically organizing it, and linking it to databases or processes already active in our various businesses. The goal would be to facilitate sales by putting needed resources at the fingertips of the sales forces and providing tools for their managers.

As you know, various Williams subsidiaries have tried implementing Sales Force Automation tools. Vyvx tried IntellAgent; Communications Solutions tried iSales. Several companies are either using or considering Siebel’s customer relationship management (CRM) package. We have had failures, and some of them have been quite expensive. Industry statistics show that 80% of sales force applications fail. There are several reasons for this high failure rate: no buy-in by top management; requiring the sales force to enter the same information in more than one place; not making the application the center of a sales person’s universe; and not designing the tool with the idea of making the sales person more productive, thus making him or her more money.

The application of the corporate portal concept for automating sales, marketing and communications is a very cost-effective way to help sales and marketing teams connect with customers, agencies and business partners. Since the facilitation those connections is the Mission of the Customer Resources Group, it is natural that we should develop the Sales Resource Portal for Williams. Using the Portal concept, we will effectively nullify the primary reasons for implementation failures usually associated with sales force automation projects.

To accomplish this, the portal must be designed in such a way that sales people will want to use it as their primary working tool; the first place they go in the morning, return to time and again during the day, and the last place they go before quitting for the day.

In the increasingly complex markets we serve, it is more necessary than ever that our “feet on the street” fully comprehend any relationships that may exist between our company and his or her potential customer. Since much of the information they need cannot be derived from within their own business unit, it is appropriate that the Sales Resource Portal, a tool necessarily containing information that crosses company lines, be developed within the Customer Resources Group. The Portal would incorporate existing WCRG databases, as well as Team Player, the Customer Information Center (Business Partners), the iWeb (Intelligence Web), and many other information sources available within and without the various business units. Williams desperately needs that ‘common information backbone” that was recommended by Dr. Mike Hammer in his book, Re-engineering the Corporation”.

The Williams Sales Resource Portal can be used to provide sales incentives or rewards, and even incentives for using various features of the Portal. Williams business units could offer points for using various features on the Portal, and then allow the points to be traded for merchandise in the company store, for instance. Similar incentives can be offered through the Portal to employees for taking advantage of training and for other behavior modification purposes. An excellent example of this type of incentive program has been successfully employed at the iWon consumer portal:

Williams financial success, and that of its many stakeholders, will be greatly enhanced if we can facilitate the delivery of timely information to the sales forces that will help them understand the relationships that exist between the various Williams business units and their customers. In addition, centralizing company collateral such as press releases, brochures, presentation materials, logos, etc., will be of significant value in reducing sales cycles and in Williams’ current brand management effort.

Project Goals:

  • Complete implementation of Web enabled WCRG Databases
  • Plan and implement a series of enhancements:

 Integrate Business Partners Data

 Integrate iWeb (Marketing Intelligence)

 Integrate the Team Player program

 Integrate links to Outlook functions such as E-mail, Task management and Contact Management

 Add Business unit news and press releases

 Add links to facilitate making travel arrangements

 Give users the ability to add their own custom features to their Portal View, such as Favorite Links, Quotes for Favorite Stocks, Weather, etc.

WCRG Goals:

Project Challenges:

  • Funding
  • Politics

Project Team:

Tom Keenze (Lead)

Dianne Shelton

Phil Crowdus

Clint Parr

Proposed Participants:

Premiere Consulting

WISC

Williams Communications Solutions

Williams Vyvx Services

Williams Vyvx Ads

Williams Network

Strategy:

Tactics: