To Market, to Market …

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1999 by Carol S. Holzberg

Marketing Plan Pro 3.0

8.5

8   9   8   9
V   P   E   S

Requirements        Win 95/98,16MB of RAM, 15MB of hard disk space,
                    sound card

Est. Street Price   $100

Publisher           Palo Alto Software, 800-229-7526, www.paloalto
                    software.com

A BUSINESS HAS TO GROW to survive, and that's where a marketing plan comes in. Even if your idea of high-tech promotion is a half-page ad in the local Yellow Pages, Palo Alto Software's Marketing Plan Pro 3.0 provides invaluable, Excel-ready tables for forecasting sales, planning your marketing budget, implementing strategies, and more. Easy-to-follow directions, helpful "Did you know?" operating tips, context-sensitive help, and step-by-step plan wizards get you started.

To start drafting your marketing plan, you decide whether to work in Text, Table, or Chart mode (though you can switch easily as you work). When in text mode, formatting tips, operating instructions, and links to associated charts are a mouse click away. You can also crunch numbers in Excel-like worksheets, or represent financial data in colorful charts.

You can re-enter the Plan Wizard at any time to change your answers to the Wizard's questions. The Task Manager keeps you organized as you develop your plan, listing steps in the recommended order of completion and marking them as "not started," "in progress," or "finished," as you progress.

If your business already has a marketing scheme, Marketing Plan Pro will help you improve it. Check out the detailed outline showing components you should include in any plan, then use the Plan Outline dialog to expand a topic, add a new one, or delete an existing topic from your table of contents.

You can merge data from Palo Alto's popular Business Plan Pro, enter Excel formulas into worksheets, and export a marketing plan in rich text format. The program's only flaw is that instead of working with your own word processor, it includes its own simple version with formatting options and a spell-checker.

RATINGS

HOME OFFICE COMPUTING'S product scores are weighted averages of 1- to 10-point ratings for: Value (30 percent of total), Performance (30 percent of total), Ease of Use (20 percent of total), and Suitability for Home Office Use (20 percent of total).

KEY:

V = Value

P = Performance

E = Ease of Use

S = Suitability for Home Office Use