SMARTDRAW IN BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT:

SmartDraw an "Essential Tool" for Consulting Company Specializing in Venture Start-Ups

Chris Davis is CEO of Empiricor, a San Diego-based consulting company that provides a range of financial, marketing, sales and ancillary services to new venture start-ups and early-stage companies seeking funding or business reorganization. As CEO, Chris manages everything from sales to business planning and venture finance, with a liberal dose of day-to-day administration.

Chris needed an easy way to create polished, professional graphics for client presentations. "Much of our work involves presentations to clients, VCs, banks and investors on short notice, so the choice of software tools is important," said Chris.

He had experience using MS Visio^®, but his current version was outdated and would have been expensive to renew. He decided to review the current crop of business graphics software packages and buy one that was more intuitive, user-friendly, and compatible with MS Office^®. He found SmartDraw, and decided to give it a try.

"I downloaded SmartDraw's trial and was pleasantly surprised by its ease of use, flexibility, and functionality—not to mention price, especially when compared to Visio^®," said Chris.

Chris found that SmartDraw helps automate the creation of business graphics for presentations, including business model schematics, process flow charts, organization charts, Gantt/charts and project tables, and more. Unlike other graphics programs that provide users with a blank screen and expect them to draw, with SmartDraw, users start with a template that is specifically designed to create the type of illustration they need.

"SmartDraw is so easy to use that I can often interview the client and document the basic processes on the fly," said Chris.

For example, SmartDraw contains dozens of SmartTemplates for process flows, org charts, Gantt charts and more. After selecting the appropriate template, users simply enter the information and SmartDraw does the rest: building the graphic automatically using built-in rules and professional design themes to guarantee polished, presentation-quality results in just a few minutes. In addition, SmartDraw features one-click export to popular document types such as PDF, Word^®, and PowerPoint^®.

"The greatest benefits of using SmartDraw are the time and effort saved by ease of learning, ease of use, flexibility, and easy integration into Microsoft^® documents," said Chris. "Ease of chart modification is also important."

The bottom line?

"I would readily recommend SmartDraw as an essential business planning and communication tool," said Chris.

To learn more and to download a free trial, visit www.smartdraw.com.