Aviso Launches Aviso Sales Vision

Aviso today unveiled Sales Vision, an update of its AI-powered sales forecasting and visibility platform, designed to help organizations proactively manage their quarterly performances by leveraging insights to make better sales decisions.

In addition, the company has announced the Aviso Partner Network and the Aviso application programming interface (API), enabling the platform to consume data from outside sources and incorporate it into its predictive algorithms, as well as export data to outside reporting tools. The six founding partners are Xactly, Looker, Estuate, Slalom, Talend, and ClearSlide.

"Over the past four years, we have built what is essentially now a forecasting application, so that we can look at the CRM system and have the computer predict which deals are going to close," says Michael Lock, Aviso's CEO. "In a world where data is informing decisions and everything we do, [salespeople and executives] want to know what's happening in real time. We have that in our personal lives, we should be able to get that in our business lives."

According to Lock, Sales Vision extends the Aviso platform's foundational capabilities and adds functionality in six key areas: (1) a dashboard that aims to give salespeople insight into every level and stage of their pipeline and forecast; (2) a predictive pipeline capability that assists users in estimating the potential quarterly values of their opportunities; (3) data-driven, "deal-level insights" with which reps can assess the state of a deal by comparing it to similar ones they have closed in the past (e.g. involving similar products or services, industries, company sizes); (4) an AI-powered pacing model that lets leaders see if they are on track to meet quarterly expectations; (5) a mobile app designed to help sales reps prioritize and stay focused on productive tasks; and (6) an open API that allows partnering software vendors to integrate with the platform and enhance its potential.

Aviso customers are primarily technology companies that are mid-market or bigger, with anywhere from 25 to 2,000 sales reps, says Lock. The company currently has roughly three dozen customers. And while none of these companies have tested Sales Vision yet, Lock says that most of the enhancements to the platform came from their suggestions. Chiefly, these customers requested the ability to forecast more than a quarter ahead at a time and wanted the benefits of the system to be extended to sales reps.

"With our previous platform, a lot of the benefits accrued for sales leadership and sales operations," Lock says. "But like many things in the CRM world, not many benefits accrued down to the actual sales rep." Especially useful will be the "deal-level insights" feature, Lock holds. If a rep has an opportunity that has been in stage three for 25 days, for example, the platform can alert him that the average deal in that category typically stays there for only 15 days, and that he should consider taking additional actions to accelerate it.

Sales Vision is available today as a stand-alone offering at $75 per user per month, and it integrates with popular CRM systems such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Oracle. According to Lock, Aviso is "aiming to be highly complementary" to Salesforce as it moves ahead with advancements to its Einstein AI product line. A similar strategy is in line for Microsoft. Aviso doesn't offer preconfigured integrations with SAP or SugarCRM, but it can accommodate a custom implementation if required thanks to the system's flexibility, Lock says.

The "next frontier" for Aviso lies in more data. Today, 90 percent of the data processed by Aviso comes from CRM systems, but the company is working on incorporating additional, broader sets, including from customer service, marketing, e-commerce, and other sales platforms. By making it possible to import additional data, "we can make our predictions better and answer more questions," Lock says.

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