Technology: At Your Fingertips
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Written by Matt Bolch   
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
Tech: At Your Fingertips - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
The latest sales automation tools are helping companies streamline processes and become more efficient.
Three years ago, DirecTV asked itself this question: If sales information cannot be accessed by employees in the field, what good is it? Its area sales managers, a workforce of several dozen who manage 7,000 DirecTV retail dealers, are in the office only one day a week and had no way to receive or transmit remotely or react to service requests while in the field.

Erik Walters, program manager for business solutions at the El Segundo, Calif.-based satellite television provider, said part of the problem was solved when DirecTV adopted Oracle On Demand software to store and manage customer data. “That gave us a tool to bring information together in one place,” Walters said, “but since our ASMs are only in the office one day a week, the use of data remained limited.”

To access this data remotely and allow faster input of sales figures, DirecTV turned to Antenna Software’s AMPower Sales to provide mobile, real-time CRM data to its national sales force. Pushing this information out to mobile devices has allowed ASMs to see 30% more customers each week while spending less time on administrative duties and paperwork.

It has also improved the frequency of sales data reporting from seven days to one, shortened resolution of service requests from five days to three, and increased the visibility of application data from internal systems by 100%.

“We’ve become more effective, more proactive, and better educated about our dealers,” Walters said. “There have been times when an ASM has reported a problem, and the solution was already figured out before the ASM left the store. That obviously makes us look good to our dealers.”

Faster closes
Customer relationship management applications were a nearly $10 billion business in 2006, according to an IDC report released in December. Projections through 2011 put sales at $13.6 billion, a compounded annual growth rate of 6.7%. Sales automation tools comprised about one-third of the 2006 CRM revenue total, with sales of more than $3.2 billion. The category is expected to grow slightly more than the overall CRM sector to become a $4.7 billion industry by 2011.

Sales automation tools have helped Bowen Family Homes become more efficient in the closing process while saving on labor costs. The Duluth, Ga.-based homebuilder uses automation tools from Microsoft Office SharePoint and customization tools from CorasWorks in conjunction to speed the loan process from several days to a few hours, said Brad Marshall, corporate IT director.

“It’s an important part of the sales process,” said Marshall. “If it’s not done right and kept on track, it could delay closings and upset potential owners.”

The SharePoint system, adopted two years ago, allows management to keep up with sales figures closer to real time and lets those with ancillary roles in the process, such as closing attorneys and mortgage bankers, have access to loan applications in a shared environment.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to take the loan process and automate it,” Marshall said. “The communication is great. Once a step is complete, the document shows up in the inbox of the next person in the process. We always dream of working on the beach, and this is another step toward that day.”

No one will get to the beach office unless the appropriate people use the sales automation solution, a challenge that Harris Interactive encountered a half-dozen years ago. Harris deployed the Salesforce.com solution in 2003, and the Web-based tool has become an integral resource of the market research organization’s 275-member worldwide sales team, which works in multiple languages and in multiple currencies.

“We were looking for a solution that was flexible, intuitive, and offered a platform to share capabilities and communication,” said Daniel Chiazza, director of global sales operations at the Rochester, NY-based company. The software has proved to be highly versatile, integrating with other sales support products such as the Blue Sheet planning tool from Miller Heiman that Harris Interactive uses to map out large strategic opportunities, breaking those down to objectives and next steps.

Harris also has brought greater visibility to the sales compensation process. The company pays commissions based on a project’s net revenue as Harris gets paid. Hence, a salesperson could have money waiting on a project that’s ongoing or was agreed on months ago. Chiazza said the system tracks clients from prospect to paycheck, allowing salespeople to create “what-if” scenarios about how much and when they’ll be paid.

“I’m still excited about the Salesforce product after we’ve been using it for five years,” Chiazza said. “They continually come out with new products and listen when we have suggestions to make the software more useful to us.”

Do you speak data?
Lack of support to sync data remotely caused Simmetrix, Inc. to switch sales force automation vendors to Entellium’s RaveCRM late last year, said Joe Walsh, vice president of business development for the company based in Clifton Park, NY.

Simmetrix, which supplies tools and techniques for simulation-based design, had a sizable database of 8,000 contacts, with up to 200 custom fields that had to be moved to the new vendor. The company had initially chosen a vendor other than Entellium, but that supplier could not translate the data into a usable form during a pilot project, so Walsh turned to RaveCRM. Within a week, the pilot project was complete to Walsh’s satisfaction, and the remainder of Simmetrix’s database had been moved into the Rave system.

Walsh advises executives at other companies to make sure that existing data will translate easily into a new program before making any changeover. “We’ve been quite happy with the Rave implementation,” he said. “With a smart client, you’re viewing locally, so the response is instantaneous. The benefit of a local system and a Web-based platform is that you don’t have to give up performance.”

Matt Bolch, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , is a freelance writer based in Atlanta.
 
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