Careerbright presents an interview with Suaad Sait, the co-founder of Workstreamer, Inc. He also serves as Chairman of the Board at ReachForce, where he was previously President and CEO. Follow him on Twitter at @suaadsait.
About Workstreamer: Workstreamer is for business professionals who realize that access to timely and relevant business information can create a competitive advantage. Today workstreamer is actively creating a competitive advantage for Sales Teams, Account Managers, Executives and Marketing Professionals
What is the main idea behind workstreamer that would make it an irresistible application to have for a company’s sales force, or anyone in general keeping in mind that on a daily basis we are not able to cope with the many email accounts and social networking applications that we have to keep track of?
Workstreamer is the MOST efficient way to get information about a company. Instead of having to search for information from a myriad of targets about your customers, competitors, prospects and partners you can have the most up-to-date, relevant business information delivered directly to you. Whether it be your mobile phone, on the web or in your email, workstreamer users are listening to stay informed and ready to act. Workstreamer users tell us that they used to waste 4 to 6 hours a week digging for informaiton vs. doing real work.
Workstreamer listens to the marketplace in real-time – what do you exactly mean by that? And also what all applications can be integrated in your personal workstreamer?
Workstreamer is actively listening to tens of thousands of news outlets (like WSJ, NY Times, etc.) , press release distribution targets (like PR NEWSWIRE, …) , social media conversations (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, …), contact network updates (LinkedIn, Jigsaw), job postings and hiring trends (indeed, etc.) as they are happening on the web. We are collecting this information, filtering it for business relevance, scoring it and delivering to you. Today you can connect your Linkedin account to workstreamer to get 1st and 2nd degree connection updates and your salesforce.com account for lead, contact and account updates. Workstreamer users are also able to connect any company updates directly to their preferred RSS reader.
With many new applications catering to the business consumer, for example the Business collaboration tool Yammer and Chatter, how do you see workstreamer stand apart from the existing competition?
Most importantly, workstreamer is not a collaboration tool. Yammer and Chatter are destinations for our content, and in fact we are already integrated with Chatter. Think of workstreamer as giving folks who are users of Yammer and Chatter something to talk about — their customers, partners, prospects, competitors, etc.
Workstreamer is a great compliment to these tools. By combining workstreamer company and people updates with a collaboration tool, users are able to share and chat about updates as they come in.
Please explain more about workstreamer’s value as business information-as-a-service for sales and business people?
Information is being created online faster than we can consume it. We need more filters. Workstreamer has created a business information-as-a-service application/tool that delivers professionals timely and relevant business information and content. By combining the many different information targets driving a business, workstreamer users are able to get a 360 degree view of a company and the people inside that company in one stream.
How are salespeople using workstreamer to close more deals?
A good percentage of our beta users are sales professionals. They are using workstreamer company and people updates to close more deals. Some examples may be a Jigsaw update that shows a key contact at a prospect company has just gotten a new title and moved into a decision making role, so a sales rep can send a congratulations note along with meeting request; a Linkedin status update posted by a key influencer in a prospect company mentions he’ll be at a conference the sales rep was also attending, so a face-to-face meeting can be set up to accelerate the sales cycle; new funding is announced at a target company and the CEO mentions the funding is being used for marketing and sales expansion, the services that the sales person happens to sell, and Linkedin shows you have a mutual connection; or a prospect has gone to Twitter to ask for feedback about the selling company, and the sales person is able to craft the next meeting agenda based on what was being said.
Tell us more about your application — plans for mobile integration?
Our IPhone and iPad apps are currently in beta. More to come on this front very soon.
Have you used workstreamer? Please share your views (comment below) on how it has helped you in your current job.