If you receive errors when attempting to view this white paper, please install the latest version of
Adobe Reader.
"Tippit is the fastest-growing online business media company with more than 80 brand leading clients in B2B industries who rely on Tippit to capture
new revenue and optimize their sales and marketing effectiveness."
Source : Tippit
Sales Force Automation Buyer´s Guide
Sales Force Automation is also known as :
Sales Force,
Sales Force Management System,
Sales Forecasting,
Customer Relationship Management ,
Sales Process,
Sales Force Management,
SFA Systems,
Information Technology Management,
Customer Relationship Management,
CRM Software Solutions,
Automates Business Tasks,
Automate Customer Management,
Automate Sales Forecast Analysis,
Sales Management Solution,
Sales Force Solution,
Sales Analysis,
Customer Relationship Management Systems
Contents
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
What to ask before you buy.
Before talking to an SFA vendor, you will need to know the following information about your current situation:
- How many employees are in your organization?
- Will your company be in growth mode over the next five years?
- How quickly are you looking to deploy an SFA solution?
- What are your total SFA project cost limits?
- Do you have the in-house IT resources to support an on-premise solution?
- What degree of customization are you expecting from an SFA application?
- Do you have the safeguards in place to securely manage in-house datacenters?
- How could you benefit from an in-depth view of your sales pipeline?
- How could your salespeople be better managing customer relations?
- How easily can you generate forecasting reports?
- How effectively are you targeting top customers?
- How effectively are you generating and qualifying leads?
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.