Alinean Launches ValueExpert™ Consulting Partner Program to Empower People and Businesses in a Down Economy

Alinean offers training and unique business opportunity to sales, marketing and consulting professionals

ORLANDO, FL (April 3, 2009) – Alinean, the leading provider of value-based sales tools for B2B vendors, today announced the launch of the ValueExpert™ Consulting Partner Program, targeted at sales, marketing and consulting professionals who have been hit especially hard by recent cutbacks. The new consulting partner certification program offers training, workshops and access to Alinean's proprietary software platform. The program’s goal is to harness the expertise of the business value selling, marketing and consulting community, empower new partners to establish a business providing best-of-class decision support tools, and open doors of business opportunity to drive new innovation in interactive offerings.

Now more than ever, organizations are looking for ways to more effectively market, sell and deliver their products and solutions to frugal buyers. For this reason interactive marketing and sales tools are becoming the centerpiece of many corporate websites to engage prospects in the process of uncovering the benefits of technology solutions, guide prospects to the appropriate solution, make a quantifiable business case as to the value of proposed solutions, and provide quantifiable proof of competitive cost advantages. These value-based proof points are an absolute requirement in tight economic times as frugal buyers demand cost justification prior to making any investment. The Alinean Authorized ValueExpert™ Consulting Partner program empowers those with entrepreneurial vision to establish a business providing these types of sales, consulting and/or other decision support tools enabling IT vendors and/or other markets.

“Demand has never been higher for interactive marketing and value-based sales tools, as vendors look for ways to prove return on investment to conservative economic buyers,” said Jefre Futch, President and COO of Alinean. “For our consulting partners this provides a unique opportunity to capitalize on unprecedented market demand.”

Central to the consulting program is Alinean’s EnterpriseROI™ SaaS platform. The Software-as-a-Service platform enables Consulting Partners to quickly create web-based interactive tools with no programming necessary. For a limited time, Alinean is providing special incentives with access and training to the EnterpriseROI™ platform. Training classes are offered to teach consultants how to use Excel® to define and model a tool concept and then format this model to automatically create effective interactive web-based tools. Alinean also provides business development workshops to enhance skills on how to best position, market and sell these offerings.

“IDC and Alinean have long been strategic partners successfully leveraging IDC’s business value selling research, whitepapers and other content with the power of Alinean’s SaaS platform and sales tool expertise. The need has never been greater. This program is the next step in the evolution of our relationship, further enabling IDC to be even more responsive and comprehensive in providing innovative solutions to our customers,” said Eric Hatcher, Senior Analyst for IDC.

For many qualified professionals who have been affected by reductions in force, there is no better time to take matters into their own hands and start their own business.  Many consultants use spreadsheets to try to prove the ROI of their solutions.  “Although ubiquitous and very effective for personal use, spreadsheets without extensive macros and programming are very cumbersome to maintain across an enterprise. The Alinean platform allows us to create interactive user interfaces, track leads as well as customer and salesforce usage, collect and apply IT asset, TCO and other research metrics, produce compelling white paper and presentation reports, and maintain content consistency across the user base,“ said Chris Singer of i-BizStrat, Inc. “With the availability of the Alinean platform and partner program, we can now use our IT solution optimization best practice and spreadsheet modeling expertise, and with no programming, create powerful and compelling interactive decision support tools. It is an incredible business opportunity.”

Charter Members in the ValueExpert™ Consulting Partner program include IDC (http://www.idc.com), DTI (http://www.DTInfrastructures.com), i-BizStrat (http://www.ibizstrat.com), and Cohesive Knowledge (http://www.cohesiveknowledge.com).  The ValueExpert™ Consulting Partner program was created to further extend the reach of Alinean’s highly successful interactive business value sales tools.  For more information visit http://www.alinean.com/ValueExpert_Consulting.asp.