crm

Urvashi Makkar and Harinder Kumar Makkar: Customer Relationship ManagementCopyright © 2012, by Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited

Chapter 8

CRM and Sales Force Automation


Introduction

Learning Objectives

Sales Force Automation

Objectives of SFA

Features of SFA

Strategic Advantages of SFA

Recap

Chapter 8: CRM and Sales Force Automation


After going through this chapter, the students will be able to:

Understand SFA and its relation to CRM

Explain different facilities available in SFA

Appreciate Strategic benefits of SFA

Understand implementations issues of SFA

Learning Objectives


IT System - Contact Managers - Integration of personal diaries and Contact Information.

The organizations wanted to have a solution which can help them keep track of performance of individual sales persons

Solution required to tackle fully dependence on sales. persons to drive their sales and contact information.

IT companies started offering a new system known as Sales Force Automation (SFA).

Later on Marketing and Service Management got integrated to SFA to give birth to CRM.

Introduction


With the growing size and complexity of the companies, the management of sales and sales force becomes more difficult, when most of the sales persons operate far away from the direct supervision and contact of their managers.

Providing the sales force with the right tools for being in constant connect with the customers has become necessary.

There is a need of some tool that can help in the day to day operations and at the same time give insight for planning of future activities

Sales Force Automation (SFA)


SFA is a tool that can integrate technology with information and internal processes of sales organization to coordinate all sale activities.

Sales Force Automation is typically an IT tool that automates the sales tasks such of both sales persons and sales managers by integrating these processes with backend database system.

The system provides the platform for effective and efficient sales operation and at the same time provides basis for analysis of data which is used for planning, sales forecasts and strategy formulation.

Sales Force Automation (SFA)


Coordination of sales processes to make them more efficient and improve customer interaction.

It records the information and knowledge of all the stages in the sales activities and generates the knowledge bank which is used by both sales persons and sales managers.

SFA has a contact management system which can track all contacts that are collected from customer during interactions, the purpose of the contacts and the schedule of follow up. This knowledge bank is used by the organization for future sales-calls and sales management.

Objectives of SFA


At the same time, now information is not with employee only, but it becomes the part of organization. This will also avoid the duplication of efforts by the organization.

This application also includes a sales lead management system, which has facility of lead qualification, lead assignment and tracking.

SFA also includes facilities for Territory Management, Order Management and billing etc which are required for successful completion of sales process.

The performance of sales operation, employee-wise, territory wise or product wise can be monitored and analysed.

Objectives of SFA (Contd.)


Building Blocks of SFA


Features of SFA


SFA maintains the depository of all contacts and accounts.

An account contains a single contact in case of an individual customer, but in case of an organization or enterprise customer, one account may contain multiple contacts of different hierarchical levels of the client organization.

The complete picture of accounts in terms of their purchase history, buying patterns and contact details is made available to sales representatives, account mangers and management.

The accounts can be segmented into different categories as configured in the system based on different criteria like product/service types, life-time value, geographical distribution and so on.

The system captures, monitors, stores and tracks all crucial information of customers, prospects and partners.

Account and Contact Management


The system also gives the facility of maintaining the hierarchy of contacts within customer organization, so as to have better coordination while dealing with corporate customers.

The same data is used for generating sales orders, invoice or whatever can be future dealing with the customer.

This helps in tracking all the dealings and purchasing with the customer, so as to explore the possibility of up-selling.

The referrals from customers also form the part of data base. The customer category and any SLA with customer are also linked to have complete picture of the customer profile.

The contact assignment rules can also be set up for distribution of contacts to sales persons and their managers.

Account and Contact Management


Different Territory and Sales organizational units can be defined depending on the criteria selected by the organization.

The criteria for defining a territory can be geography, size, revenue, product/service or importance of accounts.

Mapping of sales staff to different territories and organizational units can also be done effectively using SFA.

The organization is benefitted as it can optimally plan, maintain and analyse its territories resulting into monitoring of its sales force and covering all of its territories effectively.

The customer gets the advantage of remaining in constant touch with the organization.

Territory Management


Facilities of Lead Capturing, Lead Qualification, Lead Assignment and Tracking the leads from end-to-end.

The leads can be imported from other sources of data or captured using mobile SMS and Web Interface.

The rules for lead qualification are to be defined and entered into the system, and then SFA applications can automatically qualify the leads.

The leads can be automatically assigned to sales persons for follow up.

The sales managers can track the individual leads and can also monitor the progress of individual sales-person.

The lead management process can be modified by the administrator as per the need of the organization.

Lead Management


With SFA, the sales management gets facility to:

track all sales opportunities at every stage of the sales cycle,

import data of prospect from other business applications running inside the organization,

set up linkage of such opportunities with accounts, contacts, activities, and other modules to convert the opportunity into sales,

track the competition and eliminate any bottlenecks and hurdles.

Opportunity Management


The sequence of activities used to complete the sales cycle forms the sales process

This sales process can be customized as per requirements of the sales organization

This brings out uniformity into the organization; the whole organization will follow the similar sales process

The calendar management is part of the system. The sales persons will get reminders and guidance from the system for their activities

Sales Process/Activity Management


The facility to enter the completion of different activities of a sale process, ensures the monitoring and compliance to a uniform methodology.

The team collaboration tools are also available as part of SFA.

Facility of Sales Team Formation and Managing the schedule of different individuals forming a team.

Sales Process/Activity Management


The compensation and incentive plan can be planned, developed and managed.

The commission and incentives payable to individual sales persons can be calculated from the system directly.

If configured, this information can be made available to the employees.

Incentive and Commission Management


Most of SFAs provide capability to automate the internal work flows and approval processes, which improves the efficiency of sales processes.

This results in elimination of unnecessary delays

and holding of tasks and documents at different hierarchical levels, leading to adherence to timelines.

Workflow and Approvals


Now companies are dealing with diversified products lines, managing highly complex product mix with differential pricing policies catering to different customer segments.

It becomes almost impossible to manage and update the information through physical product catalogues, which are prone to obsolescence.

Moreover, the dynamics of the market necessitate the frequent additions of new features, new products and price variations.

Here, SFA comes as a saviour, with the availability of e-product catalogues.

e-Product Catalogues ensures updated, right and uniform product information across the organization and to the customers. This ensures increased consistency and easy access of product and pricing information to sales teams.

Maintenance of Product Catalogue

Makkar, Urvashi; Makkar, Harinder; Customer Relationship Management, Tata McGraw Hill, 2011


Precise knowledge of the existing products of the organization with our customers can provide precious inputs for generating leads for future up selling and cross selling.

SFA maintains the data related to past purchases of the customers and tools available can be used by the sales teams to extract the relevant information for the same.

Customer Asset Management


The sales force consists of not only direct channel partners but also numerous indirect channels and therefore, no SFA is complete without the inclusion of channel partner relationship management into its folds.

Ensuring the intensification and achievement of direct and indirect sales channels is an all the time more serious prerequisite for constant growth of organization’s revenues.

By including partner management, SFA becomes capable

of providing visibility of complete sales funnel resulting in streamlining sales function in a focussed manner.

Partner Management


SFA provides comprehensive tools for analysis of the past performance, which can be effectively used for planning and forecasting.

The key performance indicators like lead conversion, performance of individual sales persons and teams, time & geographical trends, variations and related statistics and information become available at the click of the mouse.

This information can be used for steering the operations in the desired direction and formulation of the strategies for the future.

Forecasting and Analysis.


The knowledge of the customers which otherwise remains confined to sales persons become asset of the organization.

Improvement in Operational Efficiency

Tool for Future Planning

Increase in Productivity of organization

Better Customer Relations

Strategic Advantages of SFA


SFA is a tool that can integrate technology with information and internal processes of sales organization to coordinate all sale processes.

SFA facilitates Account and Contact Management, Territory Management, Lead Management, Opportunity Management, Sales Process/Activity Management, Incentive and Commission Management, Forecasting and Analysis, Workflow and Approvals, Maintenance of Product Catalogue, Customer Asset Management, Partner Management, Sales Forecasting and Analysis.

Recap

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