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on the details associated with a typical sales call. The sales call serves as the single source of information for all that an account executive accomplishes during routine interactions with his/her agencies.
one agency will prevent the sales executive from achieving his overall objective.
Integration with a contact center solution automatically generates activity records when a call is placed.
Mobile
apps allow executives to key in sales call details through a smartphone or tablet, offering increased flexibility and reducing dependency on terrestrial Internet connectivity. For example, an account executive can key in an activity after finishing an agency visit. matically create a sales activity record, which will require integration with an e-mail client (such as Outlook) beforehand. activities as well as meetings with agencies.
Agencies
Ac t
Progress Review
Ac t i v i t i es
Products
i v i ty Q u a l i e rs
Quotes
Agent Training
Sales
Sales
Employee
Sales Planning
Figure 1
In the ways described above, only certain variables need to be entered manually while others are prefilled. This will significantly cut down the time needed for entering the data. A typical sales call might have the following informational parameters (see Figure 1), some of which can be recorded in out-of-the-box fields provided in many CRM systems:
Planned start date and time. Planned end date and time. Actual start date and time. Actual end date and time. Planned duration. Actual duration. Created by. Created date. Owner. Agency contacted. Objective. Sub-objective. Channel. Category.
Filling in the above fields can answer many questions if organizations create a basic data warehousing model for analysis and reporting.
information from various IT systems or obtaining sales data from the finance system, past activity info from the CRM system, rewards info from the rewards master, campaign responses from the legacy campaign system, etc. If many executives are suffering from time management issues, then it is more likely a department- or companywide problem that could be addressed by automating The number of certain business processes activities per day KPI through system enhanceor through another played a significant ments solution.
In certain organizations, there may not be much differentiation between field and phone or inside sales executives. This can give rise to many other performance indicators that compare the contact channel over a period of time, and determine whether an executive is able to balance his phone calls and office visits. There are also situations when an executive is tasked with conducting group trainings or Webinars involving multiple agencies that could be tracked and measured in a different way (see Figure 2).
role for the insurance provider we worked with to increase adoption of its CRM system by account executives.
The number of activities per day KPI played a significant role for the insurance provider we worked with to increase adoption of its CRM system by account executives. Since there was no measurement methodology, sales executives were lackadaisical when it came to entering data in the system. Once they realized management expected a certain number of activities from them, and they saw how they could help inform higher-ups on their productivity, they readily embraced the system, resulting in a win-win for all. The aforementioned example provides an insight into how data can help unearth root causes of problems either at the individual or organizational level. Additional examples of questions that can be answered by meaningful sales analytics include:
Which
established agencies were contacted more than once in a span of 20 days taking into account the actual end date as the date for the activity? This provides insight into which established and self-reliant agencies are being contacted more than necessary, particularly when that time could have been better spent elsewhere. five times in their first three months with the company? This reinforces the fact that new agencies require more attention in their early days. day of the week yields the most activities? This offers insights into agencies preferences on when they would like to be contacted. on high-net-worth agencies? Depending on the product or state or the corporate strategy, focus is expected to be high on agencies in a prized segment. the visit compared to after the visit? Sales call effectiveness can be measured based on how much business the agency brings, before and after. Furthermore, patterns can be delineated to understand why certain sales activities bring more revenue. Is it the person making the sales calls, the time of call, the location of the agency or a combination of multiple factors?
How
many performed activities were based on a campaign response? If the activity type or category is marked as campaign response through system-generated activities, the executive could be tasked with making a certain number of calls falling under this category. than 10 office visits in a day? While quantity is good, quality of the interaction should be consistently high and yield strong results, which makes it important to identify such anomalies. This could help determine the optimum number of visits. agency twice on the same day? Here, the KPI being measured is the thoroughness of the interaction. Sales organizations cant afford to have an incomplete interaction that must be rectified by a follow-up visit.
Which
Quotes
Sales
Employee Transactional data is moved from CRM system to the reporting tool to Date and Time
Geography
Figure 2
Apart from type and segment, there are many agency parameters that can be reported on, such as the agencys geography, specialization, maturity, lifecycle stage, etc. Other examples of measurements involve the various attributes associated with a product. Yet other useful activity attributes, or associated dimensions, include geography, employee hierarchy, time and trending of the activity performance, activities performed on opportunities or leads and, very importantly, the financial data associated with agencies. The list of attributes discussed above both for the activity and the agency merely scratches the surface. If so many relevant KPIs can be generated and so many significant business questions can be answered with this limited set of attributes, a more exhaustive list could dramatically expand the number of scenarios possible and the information available for decision-making ultimately covering all aspects of a sales organization. Other Data Uses Apart from the analytical intelligence provided by these reports and dashboards, the aforementioned data capture and measurement techniques can also provide valuable information for operational excellence. For example, the insurance provider we worked with set up an
account executive dashboard to disclose how many additional activities and of what type were needed for an agent to meet his targets, scheduled to be updated every day. The company later realized significant increases in agent productivity since the dashboard revealed activities that individual agents did not have to focus on, while providing insights on where they stood and what they needed to cover. Last but not least, the gathered data offers a historical record that can be used for data mining activities to calculate the ideal measures. For example, based on the last three years of data, the number of activities per day KPI embraced by our client revealed the ideal number of six activities for a field executive working in the state of California. This number can be refined due to regulatory changes or the cost of field visits or any other parameter, and hence a year from now this number could be reduced to four. So from time to time, such thresholds and ideal numbers could be altered based on the vast history of data available for mining.
Looking Forward
This white paper offers examples of activity performance measures used at one of the worlds leading insurance providers. The company realized huge benefits from implementing an analytics
solution. Progress was slow, but as momentum grew the company built on its strengths. From measuring sales activities, graduated to measuring While there are various it marketing activities that ways to add activity involved recruiting new details in a CRM agencies and converting More about system, what matters opportunities. these measurement areas is what kind of details will be detailed in subseare captured with each quent white papers.
provide the best customer as well as employee experience. While there are various ways to add activity details in a CRM system, what matters is what kind of details are captured with each activity and this will depend on what senior management deems important to measure. With only a limited set of agency attributes, it is clear how many pertinent questions can be answered. Not only can our approach answer crucial questions, but dashboards can be built to provide managers and directors with a full decision-support system. The resulting data can be used in many ways, from helping management-generated analytical intelligence, through providing assistance to individual executives day to day. Another option is to mine the data continuously to explore patterns that evolve and then refine the KPIs that are published in the reports and used to measure sales executive performance. This allows the reports to stay meaningful over the long term.
activity and this will depend on what senior management deems important to measure.
The bottom line of all this is how much power is inherent in measuring account executive work that was previously thought to be immeasurable. Given the various types of sales calls or sales activities, or typical activities that the account executives perform, it becomes very important to measure and improve the productivity and thereby
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