Sales force automation

Marketing Project

Sales Force Automation

• Sales force automation(SFA) is a technique of using software to automate the business tasks of sales.

• SFA perform diverse task like……• Order processing• Contact management• Information sharing• Order tracking• Customer management• Sales forecast and analysis• Inventory monitoring and control.

Purpose of SFA

• Increase Revenue: Improve day to day operation and give competitive advantages.

• Reduce cost: Reduce the amount of time sales force spends on administrative and other non-sales related task , hence reduce the cost of sales.

• Increases availability of customer information: SFA allows different departments and individual in a organization to access specific information about their customer.

Cont….

• Sales forecasting: AS SFA are equip with more sophisticated tools, it help to do sales forecasting. SFA help managers to successfully predict sales and make intelligent business decisions.

• Improve tracking by management: SFA allows managers to better monitor the activities of the sales force by reporting on the activities of the sales force. SFA also allows managers to compare the sales force progress with all other territories or teams.

Case study: Hewlet Packard(Dyche , 2002)

• Hewlett Packard (HP) is one of the world largest and most successful information technology organizations that operates in nearly every country. HP markets its products to households, small to medium size businesses and enterprises, both directly, via online distribution, and indirectly through consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP was always thought of as an innovative organization focused on delivering an industry-leading customer experience. For this reason, in the nineties HPs. CRM program director Mike Overly was in charge of rolling out a worldwide CRM program that included a complex SFA system. The following sections will discuss what HP did, their main challenges in implementation, and the results and learning from the experience

What HP did

• Mike Overly and his CRM team knew that in order to deploy a global CRM solution they would need to influence the entire organization. HP chose an FSA system from their business partner, Oracle. With the introduction of the new system HP had to phase out numerous data, business processes and technology systems. HP goal was to provide the company’s global sales force with an automated and standard way to perform contact management and account planning. Everyone had their own rules and guidelines about managing their customer activities, Overly said. But what makes a customer happy is pretty universal (Dyche, 2002, p. 99). With customer activity data in an Oracle “customer database”.

• HP could provide a remote salesperson with the ability to track a customers activities across organizations. For instance, the SFA system allowed a salesperson to find out which of his/her customers contacted a company help desk, or could check up on how particular customers were doing in terms of a recent marketing campaign.

The Challenges

• Implementing a worldwide SFA system obviously results in many challenges and HP was no exception. Overly explained that the most challenging aspect of the SFA implementation was creating a uniform system for the diverse sales force. Overly and his team found that no matter where in the world they went, the sales representatives shared a common goal of being as successful and productive as possible; however, every sales person had a preferred way of getting the job done. During the SFA system implementation Overly and his team had to overcome habits and assumptions that were often not only organizationally ingrained but also culturally embedded. However, Overly was committed to creating an HP solution, and he worked with Oracle to design a

Cont..

• system that allowed the sales force to customize their interfaces to include client information and contact activities as well as data from external news sources and the global financial markets. HP also developed a training program in order to help the sales force apply the technology to their specific job.

• Results and Learning • Overly measured the overall success of the system based on three

primary measures” increased revenue, decreased costs and industry-leading total customer experience. The overall results from the SFA implementation were positive and Overly was confident that the system would continue to pay off in the future. Overly was reluctant about estimating the revenue generated by the SFA system, however his optimism made it clear HP expects additional revenue to be generated by the improvements resulting from the system.

Cont…

• Based on his experience with HP, Overly advised other organizations that might be deploying CRM to be mindful of three success metrics. First, organizations should obtain sustained executive presence, meaning that executive leadership must be engaged throughout the CRM lifecycle. Second, organizations should always keep one eye on the problems of today, and the other on tomorrow’s problem. Third, organizations need to ensure change leadership, with emphasis on the world leader. Finally, Overly stressed that Every day there a new challenge you need someone who has a good understanding of the problem and the authority to fix it.

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