Sales Force Automation Buyer’s Guide

Learn what a Sales Force Automation system can do for you and understand what issues you should consider during your decision-making process.

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Contents

Executive Summary 3

Sales Force Automation Overview 4

Market Overview 6

The Benefits of Sales Force Automation 7

Basic Features 8

Advanced Features 9

Cost 10

Checklist 11

Conclusion 12

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Executive Summary

On the road and often out of reach, keeping tabs on today’s traveling sales representatives can be tricky. Equally challenging is ensuring that your road warriors have easy access to up-to-the-minute information, from price lists to product specifications. On the other hand, ever-anxious sales managers are always eager to know where sales teams stand with their pipelines. And don’t forget about senior-level executives desperate for sales performance data in order to forecast business opportunities and emerging trends. Combine these disparate people and priorities, and the challenge of managing a sales force can seem insurmountable.

Enter SFA (Sales Force Automation). Today’s SFA solutions automate sales activities, processes and administrative responsibilities so that sales forces can enjoy up-to-date information while eliminating errors and inaccuracies. Business activities best suited for automation include order processing, contact management, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis, and employee performance evaluation.

In this Buyer’s Guide, you will find details on what to look for, how to buy, what you can expect to pay and how to derive the most value from your SFA investment.

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Sales Force Automation Overview

Today’s SFA solutions hold plenty of promise for companies looking to empower their sales representatives with timely data, help managers better forecast future sales and provide senior-level managers with accurate performance assessments. But deriving real value from SFA not only means selecting a solution that’s right for your company, but a delivery model that suits your IT environment, internal resources and budget restrictions.

If the hype is to be believed, SaaS (software as a service) is the way to go. Research firm Gartner Inc. reports that by 2009, more than 50 percent of new SFA deployments will be based on SaaS delivery models. What’s more, while SaaS represented approximately 5 percent of business-software revenue in 200, by 2011, a whopping 25 percent of new business software will be delivered as SaaS.

It’s easy to understand the allure of SaaS. According to William Band, a principal analyst with Forrester Research, SaaS solutions are “very easy to configure and customize for both the company and the end user.” Not to mention the delivery model’s well-known benefits: low monthly costs, easy deployment, simplified upgrades, hassle-free maintenance and support, and user-friendliness.

But caveat emptor: SaaS’s simple approach to automating a sales force can create the misconception that deploying an on-demand SFA solution is an overnight affair. Rather, SaaS tools call for plenty of up-front planning to ensure seamless adoption among sales reps and the proper amount of product functionality. Furthermore, it’s imperative that companies roll out SaaS SFA solutions gradually, all the while soliciting honest feedback from sales teams.

If introduced effectively, businesses can roll out an on-demand SFA solution for a fraction of the cost of its on-premise counterpart. There are, however, factors to bear in mind when examining the bottom line. For example, large multinational firms requiring sizable subscriptions to a SaaS service are unlikely to reap the same cost savings as small- to medium-sized businesses. What’s more, pinching pennies isn’t the only factor companies should consider when evaluating a SaaS solution’s value.

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Said Timothy Hickernell, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, “Certainly, SaaS has had a very disruptive impact on the market with respect to costs and has driven costs down quite a lot, but I would caution companies not to focus on costs alone when adopting software as a service.”

Instead, Hickernell said that companies should pay close attention to the types of data they’re collecting, data access, reporting capabilities and process-integration points.

“Types of integration points between sales, marketing and service are variables you have to perform future-proofing work on regardless of what delivery model you choose for SFA software,” said Hickernell. Evaluating these points might, for example, involve examining how easy it is for a call-center representative to rapidly pull up information on a particular customer’s buying preferences and history.

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Market Overview

There’s never been a shortage of vendors peddling SFA solutions. In fact, “Sales Force Automation was the first area that most companies tried to apply technology to,” said Forrester Research’s Band. “And there continues to be a lot of ongoing interest in enabling the sales organization.”

Providers have, however, become more targeted in their offerings. According to a Gartner Inc. report, with less choice for on-premise software due to the Oracle acquisitions of Siebel and PeopleSoft, vendors such as Sage SalesLogix have gained more attention as plausible on-premise alternatives. In the meantime, Microsoft has gained market momentum for its Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 product, while Salesforce.com, RightNow Technologies, SugarCRM, NetSuite and GoldMine continue to court small- to medium-sized businesses with their cost-conscious solutions.

But don’t expect niche offerings from today’s SFA solution providers. Rather than force companies to choose between a single SFA solution and an entire enterprisewide CRM suite, vendors are now peddling modular CRM solutions that allow companies to adopt a piecemeal approach to deployment. The first step: Drive sales productivity with an SFA solution. Next, make the most of your marketing initiatives by integrating sales data with targeted marketing campaigns. And finally, bolster customer loyalty by automating your company’s service and support capabilities.

Said Hickernell, “The high perception of failure amongst first-generation CRM ... has led to this new resurgence of generic offerings and only implementing one module at a time and not the whole CRM suite.”

Vendors are now peddling modular CRM solutions that allow companies to adopt a piecemeal approach to deployment.

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The Benefits of Sales Force Automation

Whether your goal is to keep closer tabs on jet-setting sales representatives or better cater to high-maintenance customers, there’s no discounting the perks presented by an SFA solution. Here are just a handful of benefits companies can expect:

Improved Collaboration:• Say goodbye to communication gaps. With SFA, sales teams, managers and other departments can easily swap up-to-the-minute sales data, from price lists to product specifications.

Bolstered Field Sales:• By ensuring anywhere, anytime access to data, including client account information, inventory availability and delivery schedules, road warriors are better equipped to respond to customers’ questions, concerns and special requests.

Enhanced Sales Productivity:• Improve efficiency and drive revenue by better managing and targeting leads. What’s more, identify leads that may have otherwise fallen through the cracks.

Detailed Reports:• Collecting and integrating data is only the first step to improving the sales pipeline. Analyze revenue, forecast opportunities, rate sales-campaign effectiveness and track each sales rep’s success using an SFA solution’s reporting capabilities.

Empowered Sales Managers:• Allow sales managers to carefully track their sales force’s activities. By identifying areas of weakness, lost opportunities and underserved territories, managers can better coach and bolster individual sales performance.

More Opportunities:• Get a leg up on your archrival. With SFA, you can track the competition on pending deals and strategically highlight competitive trends, as well as looming threats.

Educated Partners:• Don’t leave your channel partners to fend for themselves. Instead, automate your partner recruitment, training and planning processes to build more mutually beneficial relationships.

Better Managed Territories:• Having your West Coast-based reps manage New York City-based clients is an exercise in geographic mismanagement. An effective SFA solution, however, can automatically route leads to the right sales reps based on territory.

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Basic Features

Functionality is relatively standard among today’s top SFA solutions. Basic features include:

Sales Management•Lead Management•Opportunity Management and Forecasting•Account and Contact Management•Activity Management•Approvals and Workflow•Territory and Quota Management•Partner Management•Feedback Management•Outlook Integration•

That’s not to suggest, however, that each and every solution is interchangeable. Warned Hickernell of Info-Tech Research Group, “SFA has been around a long time and the base feature set is fairly standard, which is a good thing for companies; it makes RFPs and evaluations a little easier. What does tend to vary is the ease with which you can make changes and customization.” For example, an on-premise solution is typically easier to configure and integrate than is a SaaS product. So be sure to consider the complexity of your IT infrastructure when selecting a solution and reviewing feature sets.

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Advanced Features

SFA features may be fairly standardized, but there’s always room for improvement. Just ask Band of Forrester Research, who said that “one of the key considerations among buyers right now” concerns satisfying road warriors. “The big question mark in people’s minds is about mobility,” he said. “Can we or can’t we push information out to sales organizations using laptops, PDAs and BlackBerrys?”

The answer so far is a resounding yes. An increasing number of vendors, including Sybase, Sage Software and Saratoga Systems, are extending SFA functionality to wireless devices, enabling mobile workers to access key information without having to connect to a back-office system. In fact, 50 percent of surveyed companies believe that mobile SFA will have a major impact on the way they do business in the next five years, according to an Aberdeen Group report.

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Cost

There’s nothing cheap about automating a sales force. On-demand solutions can average out to $75 per user per month, while on-premise software licenses can run upward of $1,500 per seat, plus three times that amount for integration and configuration expenses.

But ensuring that you get the most bang for your buck means looking beyond dollars and cents. “Unlike many other areas of CRM, SFA is highly dependent upon end-user adoption and end-user participation, and that takes a tremendous amount of cultural and organizational effort, not just technology, to be successful,” cautioned Hickernell.

Unfortunately, SFA is one of the most challenging components of CRM when it comes to driving adoption, thanks to a combination of strong personalities and the inherent complexity of a sales network that typically includes field workers, channel partners and internal sales reps.

For this reason, Hickernell recommended assuring sales reps that SFA won’t interfere with their hard-earned clientele base and demonstrating the system’s immediate benefits. “If you build the perception with an SFA project that it could threaten the relationships that field salespeople have developed with their customers, then it’s seen as a direct threat to their ability to earn money, which they take very seriously.”

Another challenge companies face when evaluating the return on an SFA investment is deciding what metrics to use. This is particularly challenging when a company attempts to tackle every element of CRM at once. Said Hickernell, “If the project gets too large, then you’re stuck with trying to measure really generic high-level things like improved productivity and improved satisfaction — these are really nebulous types of metrics.”

Instead, companies would be wise to look for improvements in time-to-lead qualification, order-to-cash processes, churn rates and error reduction. Band of Forrester Research agrees, because “with SFA, the benefits tend to revolve more around efficiencies in the sales process.” Band recommended relying on additional metrics such as the acceleration of deals through the sales pipeline, increased orders and cross-sell ratios.

Companies would be wise to look for improvements in time-to-lead qualification, order-to-cash processes, churn rates and error reduction.

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Hosted CRM Checklist What to ask before you buy.

Before talking to an SFA vendor, you will need to know the following information about your current situation:

rHow many employees are in your organization?

rWill your company be in growth mode over the next five years?

rHow quickly are you looking to deploy an SFA solution?

rWhat are your total SFA project cost limits?

rDo you have the in-house IT resources to support an on-premise solution?

rWhat degree of customization are you expecting from an SFA application?

rDo you have the safeguards in place to securely manage in-house datacenters?

rHow could you benefit from an in-depth view of your sales pipeline?

rHow could your salespeople be better managing customer relations?

rHow easily can you generate forecasting reports?

rHow effectively are you targeting top customers?

rHow effectively are you generating and qualifying leads?

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Conclusion

The right SFA solution can empower sales representatives with up-to-the-minute information, help managers better forecast future sales and business opportunities, and grant senior-level managers accurate performance assessments. Selecting a solution that can deliver results, however, entails asking the right questions before signing on the dotted line.

For example, is an on-demand solution likely to save you money and ease implementation headaches, or is an on-premise tool better in the long term? Have you taken the necessary steps to drive adoption of SFA among your veteran sales teams? And how do you plan on measuring the return on your SFA investment? By arriving at honest answers to these important questions beforehand, an SFA solution can help you better manage your sales organization for years to come.

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