Sales Force Automation

SALES FORCE AUTOMATION

SHEETAL WAGHMAREM.TECH (Computer Science & Data Processing)IIT KHARAGPUR EMAIL-ID: [email protected] [email protected]

SHEETAL WAGHMARE IIT KHARAGPUR

SFA

Abbreviated SFA, sales force automation is a technique of using software to automate the business tasks of sales, including order processing, contact management, information sharing, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis and employee performance evaluation.


Keywords

Sales Potential Lead Prospecting

Account

Opportunity


PURPOSE OF SFA

Increase Revenue Reduction in Cost of Sales Customer Retention due to Company, Not Product or Service Sales Force Increasing Mobility Easy Available Customer information with Single View


BARRIER TO SUCCESSFUL SFA

The real challenge for SFA is that it must convince the salesperson that it will help them to be more effective personally, do their job better, and help them make more money

It is also critical to roll out quickly to show a return on investment as fast as possible. Sales persons are skeptics and individualists. Because they will always look for excuses not to use any corporate-mandated solution, they must feel part of the process and find that the process has something to offer them, not just the organization.


eBusiness Evolution

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CSS Marketing Automation

SFA

CRMeBusiness

Internet

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SFA FUNCTIONALITY

The difference between the different SFA packages available is nominal.

(a) Depth provided. (b) Look and Feel of the Interface. (c) Transparency to the user.


SFA Applications from leading vendors

(1)Contact Management(2)Account Management(3)Opportunity Management(4)Lead Management(5)Pipe-Line Management(6)Proposal Management(7)Quote Generation(8)Order Tracking(9)Sales Quota Management(10)Territory Management(11)Commission Management


Contact Management

Contact Management

Account Management

Account Management


Opportunity Management


Opportunity Management

Lead Management The general principles of lead management create an ordered structure for managing volumes of business inquiries, frequently termed leads.

The process creates an architecture for organization of data, distributed across the various stages of a sales process.

Increases lead conversion rates i.e. helps in getting more customers from the database of leads

Lead Tracking Standardizes lead qualification best practices. This module allows you to identify and adapt the best industrial standards for accepting or rejecting a lead

Pipe-Line Management Management of the long term sales cycle is called Pipeline Management and involves identifying sales stages and what needs to be accomplished in each stage.

It also include reviewing sales potential, managing lead flow, forecasting sales and revenue, managing customer relationships, evaluating issues affecting sales, and laying out a plan to fix those issues.It is nothing but a sequential process for executing the business task.

• Initial contact• Qualification• Meeting• Proposal• Closed : Won or Lost



Quote Generation It is a simple tool that generates quotes for customers

Order Tracking This feature tracks the status of the order and the product delivery

Sales Quota Management It take the overview of how the individual sales person is doing relative to their quotas within some defined time segment

Territory Management It means a new person takes over an existing territory or aterritory can be redistricted and re-divided among existing salespeople geographically

Commission Management This tool calculates the commission for salespeople


SFA: THE TECHNOLOGY

Combination of functionality and the flexibility of Technology makes SFA successful

Data Synchronization:Data synchronization technologies are designed to synchronize a single set of data between two or more devices, automatically copying changes back and forth..

Data synchronization can be local synchronization where the device and computer are side-by-side and data is transferred or remote synchronization when a user is mobile and the data is synchronized over a mobile network.


Flexibility and Performance of Data synchronization

High-performance synchronization requires powerful database capabilities and performance, currently available only in databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle.

The synchronization engine must be database independent to allow different database systems to reside on remote and host systems

Each user or office can also be given only the slice of information that is relevant to their work. Partitioning the data reduces the bandwidth required to synchronize databases across a network. You can also use partitioning to increase data security by limiting access without requiring all data to be stored in a single secure location.


Reporting Tools

Reporting is the creation of customized onscreen or printed views that provide the viewer/reader with information specifically in the form they want and with the content they want.

Lack of or poor reporting can lead to bad strategic or tacticaldecisions, redundant work efforts, and missed opportunities

(ETI-Ethical Trading Initiative)


SEAGATE’S CRYSTAL REPORTS

Crystal Reports has a strong report-processing engine that is newly Web optimized

It uses dynamic data sources to generate reports by passing the report as it is generating to the client’s browser page by page, not report by report

Even more interesting in Crystal Reports 8.0 is the use of Dynamic HTML (DHTML) so the reports can be seen on your screen in real time


What are the different barriers to successful SFA?

Discuss data synchronization process for SFA. Why a flexibletechnology is required?

Discuss the importance of Reporting tools with reference to sales force automation

Explain Pipeline Management.

Explain some of core functionality of sales force Automation