Content management system (CMS) vendor Interwoven recently announced a new sales intranet product aimed at helping bolster organization sales.

“The new Interwoven Salesforce Productivity Intranet solution enables marketing organizations to quickly and easily provide sales personnel with the latest, most compelling information and sales tools even in the context of rapidly changing markets and campaigns. The Interwoven Salesforce Productivity Intranet solution enables sales and marketing organizations to solve these critical challenges. By making it simple for business users to create intranet sites as needed.”

Nothing in this announcement looks like Interwoven has done much more than re-package their existing LiveSite CMS solution but at least their thinking about the intranet’s impact on a sales organization.

Plumtree, makers of the leading corporate portal platform, was the first to openly recognize and promote the value of the intranet as a tool for increasing corporate sales. Using a key client and testimonial as a case study Plumtree partnered with META Group to measure (estimate) the intranet’s potential value and impact on corporate sales.

Ketchum (one of the world’s 10 largest public relations firms) deployed Plumtree portal software to help employees, customers and partners work faster and smarter – and to increase sales for the company.

META Group estimated that the collaboration and productivity gains reaped from using the portal software would help increase sales and close more accounts. The META Group estimates that the Ketchum portal – myKGN – could lead to revenue growth between 0.5% (conservative estimate) and 5% (liberal estimate), with the most likely revenue growth 3% (moderate estimate). Using 2000 revenues of $168,000,000 as a baseline and a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10%, Ketchum can increase its sales by $18,350,640 (using moderate estimates) over three years.

While there’s a certain amount of guesswork involved it is easy to see that the intranet can have a positive effect on the bottom line and impact an organization’s sales.