AUTOMATION CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN IMPLEMENTATION AND OPERATION

Presented byDevendra Singh-19014 Amit Singh-19064 Kumar Vikas-19078 Shashank Bhosle-19094 Tuhin Subra Choudhary-19102 Jay Shankar Bajpai-19108

Introduction

For over a decade Sales Force Automation (SFA) market has been growing exponentially. Most sales organizations have implemented some kind of SFA system or many different SFA systems. Studies on SFA implementation indicate that 5575% of the projects fail (Honeycutt et. al.,2005). It means that the SFA tool does not reach the goals, which have been set for the tool before the implementation. The overall goal of the system is to make the work of the sales do more efficient (Engle and Barnes, 2000), but there have been studies where results indicate that the system actually increased sales representatives workload (Gohmann et.al., 2005).

Researchers have identified common factors that affect on the outcome of the SFA implementation. If these factors are well defined and considered before the system implementation, there might be better change to succeed.

Research Objective

The research objective is to critically observe Critical Success Factors (CSF) in SFA implementations and then empirically test them with a Case Company. We will do a case study to test the CSFs and see which ones are the most important and which the least. We will do it in a company, which has implemented a SFA system lately. We want to see how the Case Company and the success and failure factors align. The case will also be an example of the possible differences between theory and reality. At the end, We will give recommendations based on the previous research and findings from the Case Company.

Definition

Sales Force Automation (SFA) is a technique where computer hardware, software, and telecommunications devices are used to automate the sales forces everyday selling and/or administrative activities in order to make sales representatives work more efficient.

common functions that a SFA provides

Contact management, order processing, information sharing, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis and employee performance evaluation

Other tasks where SFA can be applied to are scheduling, mapping out sales routes, prospecting, making presentations, documenting buyer objections, retrieving product information, and configuring product specifications.

Goal of the SFA

The main goal of SFA is to improve efficiency (Gohmann et al., 2005). The idea is that sales can spend less time on administrative tasks and use the time with customers and thus increase sales. The other benefits that SFA system claims to bring are increased productive-and quality selling time, improved contact management capabilities, and the ability to deliver better value to the customers through information sharing across sales, marketing, and customer service employees.

The benefits sound very tempting to sales, especially to those who try to avoid paper and administrative work and reporting. SFA system should automate sales tasks. Therefore even the preparation for sales activities such as proposals or order forms should take less time with a SFA system.

SFA Implementation Success and Failure Factors

User involvement Process Changes Management Support Training System Support

Sales Force Automation Tools

Sales Process/Activity Management

Include

a sequence of sales activities Guide sales reps through each discrete step in the sales process

Sales process

Opport Opportunity Generated

unity Genera t

Lead allocated

Prospect contacted

Prospect qualified

Solution identified

Order placed

Sales Force Automation Tools

Sales Process/Activity Management (cont)

Offer

calendars to assist in the planning of key customer events

Proposal

presentations Product demonstrations

Alarm

Reminders

Signal

important tasks Generate documents as they are needed Make decisions based on the users input

Generate a mailing suggestions

Sales Force Automation Tools

Sales and Territory Management

Tools

that enable sales managers and executives on-demand access to sales activities
Before,

during and after the order

Enables

managers to set up sales teams and link individual accounts, regions and industries. Allows tracing of territory assignments and monitor pipelines and leads for individual territories. Allows optimization of individual teams

Sales Force Automation Tools

Contact Management
Deals

with organizing and managing data across and within a companys client and prospect organizations.

Sales Force Automation Tools

Lead Management
Also

known as opportunity management and pipeline management Track customer account history Monitor leads Generate next steps and Refine selling efforts online Allows sales management to automatically distribute client leads to a field or telemarketing rep based on the res product knowledge or territory

Sales Force Automation Tools

Configuration Support
Automatically

factors in complex customer attributes and requirements to build a solution from scratch Among the companies who may use such tools
Computer

technology vendors Appliance manufacturers Telephone companies

Knowledge Management

Many CRM tools geared to SFA include functions specific to accessing and conversing on a range of corporate documentation to supplement sales efforts and provide fast data during the heat of a sale.

SFA and Mobile CRM

From Client/Server to the Web

SFA

functionality now rests on a headquarters Web server running CRM software Eliminates the traditional support costs of managing communications Resource expenses are less than those needed to support the old client/server mode.

SFA and Mobile CRM

From Client/Server to the Web

Simplifies

access by allowing a company to outsource remote access to the ISP Laptop config and support costs are reduced It staff now manage and protect critical customer data in a central location at headquarters Risk of deleted files, smashed laptops, or lost sales reps are dramatically reduced.

SFA and Mobile CRM

SFA Goes Mobile

Support

for handheld devices is the next step in the evolution. According to the Aberdeen Group, 74 million people will have access to the Web via wireless technology by the year 2004.
PDAs Cell

phones Web Phones Two-way pagers Tablet PC, Etc.

SFA and Mobile CRM

Benefits of Mobile CRM

Requires

much less time than traditional fax or

email Field staff have access to info and can update making companies smarter about their customers Real time alert about vital customer events Just-in-time personalized messages Provides field staff with access to vase amounts of information

An SFA Checklist for Success

Understand how SFA will help, and enlist salesperson stakeholdership at the beginning
Initial

requirements gathering Rollout tool

Communicate the value to the sales force up front Invest in-and enforce-training.

An SFA Checklist for Success

Beware of inherent sales processes packaged into SFA tools

Customize

YOUR sales process

Understand the infrastructure necessary to support wireless technologies Let SFA use affect sales compensation. Change hiring practices and job role descriptions to include use of CRM

Case Study of iWeb Sales Force Automation (SFA) Module

The Company is into distribution of financial products all across India. Sales is carried out of multiple products like credit cards, life insurance products, general insurance products, fixed deposits and mutual fund.

Problems before implementing iWeb Enterprise

There was no tracking of leads generated by the financial consultants Analysis of the business generated in terms of total premium, revenue was carried out manually in excel sheets related to each branch Duplication of work is done for generating consolidated reports Attendance of territory manager, team leaders and financial consultants was not tracked in a systematic manner

 There was no qualification of leads done but only business generated was recorded Calculating the commission due to all employees was done manually which could beerroneous. Revenue generated by company was calculated manually. To retrieve the data for comparing sales was very cumbersome and time taking Performance analysis of financial consultants, managers and team leader was not accurate due to lack of proper information MIS reports generation was very tedious task

Challenges Faced by the iWeb Enterprise Implementation Team

The biggest challenge was streamlining the standardizing the formats as there were lot of redundancy found in the documents used. Since the team members were not technology savvy it was very difficult to make them understand on the process automation resulting from the application. Training and enforcing the usage of system was again a challenging task.

Scenario After iWeb Enterprise Implementation

Leads from all over India were entered into the system hence on real time basis prospective business analysis can be easily carried out Qualification of leads in terms of hot, warm, cold was made possible for proper business and performance analysis Attendance tracking was streamlined based on the login information Total new accounts generated can be known at any point of time

Product wise commission can be configured in the system and based on the sale done total commission due to the staff is available on single click Total revenue generated information is 24/7 available on the fly at the click of a button Based on the available historical available product and sales strategy can be planned by the sales department Statistical and graphical reports are now available in real time

Performance analysis is now accurate for each working professional

Information in terms of revenue related to all branches is available in few clicks thus saving a lot of time in manual analysis which quickens the decision making process too Since iWeb Enterprise is a totally web-based application. With a single deployment at the server the system was up and running on all clients via browsers. The customer uses Linux, Macintosh and even Windows 98, XP, 2000 on the client side and our application is working on all OS, cross browsers like IE, Opera, Mozilla, Mac IE.

Winning points

Our Winning point in this case was the strong iWeb Implementation and Customization Methodology which is made after 8 years research and experience on various projects and by strictly following the ISO, CMMi and Six Sigma Standards all blended together along with iWeb s proprietary RAD Tool AgileWiz which is a codeless tool which makes programming redundant.

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