slideLocker: A New, Yet Proven Solution

Merrill Corporation recently launched a new solution called slideLocker, a secure web-based tool designed for sales personnel. The tool allows you to create targeted, personalized sales presentations, within minutes, that adhere to any given organization’s branding and compliance standards.  

The success story below illustrates the power of slideLocker, and how it quickly benefited a large firm.  

Merrill’s slideLocker was recently deployed at a leading financial services firm with over 900 financial advisors. This business faced the problem of supporting their large field sales force with up-to-date materials. They had already developed a catalog of standard materials, but updating, distributing and ensuring the proper use of those materials had proven problematic from a time-to-market, cost and compliance standpoint. There was no means to ensure the materials were even used. The sales force typically did not make necessary updates, mixed in non-approved messaging and omitted materials (like disclosures) which were legally required.

Merrill deployed slideLocker and solved all of these problems within 90 days. Now, at the same company:

• Updated materials are uploaded to slideLocker by administrators as soon as they are available

• Data-driven materials are updated automatically with no human effort

• Sales teams can create custom presentations and proposals, tuned to their audience, complete with custom cover pages and business card pages in minutes

• Material usage and sales activities can be reported on for management purposes

In just three months, Merrill Corporation was able to deliver a platform that marketing, sales management, and the field sales force use, in harmony, to create a more successful sales pipeline!

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.

What is slidelocker, and How Does it Work?

Handling standard presentation updates can be a major effort for any organization and supporting on-demand, personalized, targeted presentation requests from the field can be an even larger issue that frustrates both sales and marketing teams. That’s where slideLocker comes in.

slideLocker is a secure Web-based tool that sales teams can use to create high-impact sales presentations and proposals using up-to-date, company approved materials and strategies. slideLocker transforms all of these efforts into a centralized, automated, user-friendly environment which both sales and marketing can support.

slideLocker allows administrators to upload slides, update data, and manage usage rules and content. On the other end, users follow a simple interactive process to generate compelling, custom, personalized and compliant presentations. It’s an online, collaborative process, bringing numerous benefits and advantages to your team.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.

Merrill Corporation Launches slideLocker

slideLocker is a new, secure web-based  software solution that enables sales teams to easily create high quality, targeted sales presentations using standardized, company-approved, branded materials and data.  By using only pre-approved company supplied content, sales forces are enabled through an interactive wizard-driven process to create presentations within minutes that are uniquely targeted and customized for their particular audience.  Marketing teams are secure in the knowledge that only company approved material and content is being used and that compliance rules are being followed.

“Supporting large sales forces with up-to-date, relevant, customized presentations has been a major challenge for organizations in many industries,” said Roy Gross, President of the MCS division at Merrill.  “We are launching this solution as part of a suite of technology driven applications to substantially enhance our clients’ communication efforts and efficiency.” 

Because it is web-based, slideLocker is integrated into a clients’ IT infrastructure with minimal need for in-house IT development or support resources.  Designed to be branded to fit into the clients’ IT systems,  slideLocker can also be integrated into CRM systems, such as Salesforce.com or Oracle, to create a seamless sales deployment system.   In addition, this solution has robust reporting and tracking functionality, enabling analysis and improvements where needed in content usage. 

“Our  slideLocker solution brings together Merrill’s core competencies in providing state-of-the-art technologies providing our clients with streamlined, targeted one-to-one marketing communications programs, materials management and business intelligence, supported by our depth of experience in serving highly regulated industries,” said Gross.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.

This Week in XBRL: BuisnessWire’s Year in Review

2012 has possibly been the largest year in XBRL’s history, and we’re only half-way through it! In celebration of some of the year’s biggest advancements in financial reporting, BusinessWire has put together a retrospective on XBRL. This week, we’ll be sharing some of our thoughts on BusinessWire’s picks, and sharing some links to our coverage on those topics.

XBRL Mandate Reaches Full Implementation for US Companies

“The upcoming filing season looks to be one of the busiest yet for XBRL preparers, with all US public companies submitting financial statements to the SEC required to include detail-tagged XBRL as of June 15, 2012.”

We’ve been following (and blogging about) this impending date since 2009. From those first posts, we’ve been helping financial services companies prepare for the date when each of them would eventually be required to present their financial reports in XBRL. Now, though, we’re all under the same umbrella.

DATA Act Passes Unanimously

“XBRL has increased its presence in the US Congress with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, which the House of Representatives unanimously passed on April 25, 2012…Following its strong bipartisan success in the House, the DATA Act has been referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.”

The DATA Act was a huge step in the fight for governmentfinancial transparency, and it was a wonderful moment to watch the Act passuncontested. Now, we’ll keep our eyes on the future to see what organizations will be adopting XBRL next.

XBRL US Releases 2012 Corporate Actions Taxonomy

“This is the second version of the Corporate Actions Taxonomy, designed to tag over 50 types of corporate actions announcements, including mergers and acquisitions, dividends, redemptions, tender offers, and stock splits. Approximately 200,000 corporate actions are released each year in the US, and these textual announcements require time-consuming manual steps to process as financial data.”

As XBRL grows, it continues to become more and more convenient for companies of all sizes. XBRL US has done an excellent job inupdating the taxonomy, and allowing corporations to contribute to the growth and improvement of the language.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.