When the globe is fighting to reverse the effect of humans on the environment, it becomes imperative that technology to steps in to give this thought a push. Paper, could only be one of the major culprits and it is time that we go paperless! And when field force tracking & automation solutions take charge, there is no looking back!
Facts About Paper and Paper Waste
- As we speak, more than 199 tons of paper has already been produced.
- 324 liters of water is used to make 1 kilogram of paper.
- 10 liters of water is needed to make one piece of A4 paper.
- 93% of paper comes from trees.
- 50% of the waste of businesses is composed of paper.
- To print a Sunday edition of the New York Times requires 75,000 trees!
- Recycling 1 ton of paper saves around 682.5 gallons of oil, 26,500 liters of water and 17 trees.
- Packaging makes up 1/3 or more of our trash.
- U.S offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year.
- Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste and 33% of municipal waste.
- With all the paper we waste each year, we can build a 12-foot high wall of paper from New York to California!
- Lessening of paper usage was predicted due to the electronic revolution. It didn’t happen. Demand for paper is expected to double before 2030.
- Every tree produces enough oxygen for 3 people to breathe.
Technology has a widespread impact on the way enterprises chip in to combat the adverse effects on the environment. Technology rules how sales are conducted in the last decade or so. Sales reps rely heavily now on filed force automation & management applications for performing repetitive & mundane pre-sales as well post-sales tasks, such as filtering out customers, scheduling sales appointments, follow up communication, updating pipeline related paperwork, to name a few; all paperless.
Technologies like big data & analytics, enterprise mobility, IoT & sensor based tactics like the beacons have completely revolutionized the way enterprises respond to current & prospective customers and partner channels in entirely digitized ways!
Going Paperless With SFA
The millennial sales workforce is just not satisfied with increasing sales in traditional ways. Customer satisfaction, repeat business, digitization of the pipeline, connected clients & easy collaboration across the sales pipeline are high on their wish list.
Technology is a second skin for the millennial sales teams not averse to using technology resulting in boosting their productivity or making them work in a better way than they would otherwise. Sales teams need to integrate a set of business processes encompassing marketing, finance, and other departments and it is technology that is drafting the roadmap in these competitive times.
Sensitivity towards the surroundings is a second skin too!
Effectively, SFA tools allow a business to run paperless when it comes to the sales management lifecycle, by leveraging innovative technology to carry out core tasks.
- Lead Management
- Filtering customer profiles
- Tracking customer records
- Appointments scheduling with customer representatives
- Goal tracking & performance analysis of sales representative
- Dynamic customer related information on the go
- Portfolio & pipeline management specific to a customer or unit/set of businesses
- Analytics to make the sales pipeline more robust
- Workflow management
- Contract tracking per customer
SFA ensures that the enterprise is always in connection with the sales team, effectively through a system, even when they are in the field. Information is appropriately captured through simple apps or sensors & shared in the form of visually appealing dashboards & charts. There remains absolutely no need to file in pages & pages of reports.
Focus Points to Implement SFA With Paperless in Mind
A clear intent of going paperless is alone not enough to implement a fruitful filed force automation & management application. A focused approach while conceptualizing brings in better outcomes.
An enterprise must go ahead with a mature understanding of its own goals while investing in a sales force automation software. The right questions need to be asked, like who is responsible to assign the leads to the sales rep, how much intelligence, control, and workflow management is to be fed to the system, or how to program the system workflows so as to adapt gamification & create competition within the sales team. The level of visibility of customer scorecards also needs to be planned in advance.
Benefits of a Paperless Approach
Sales teams, enterprises & in particular the stakeholders gain with a paperless, SFA driven approach.
Easy Access to Information
Correct information at the correct time is a pre-requisite to survive in the competitive environment of today. Sales force automation combined with big data & trend analytics software goes a long way in analyzing, slicing & dicing the data and giving the bigger picture as well as the minutest information at fingertips all the time.
Clutter-Free Workplace
Doing away with jumbled piles of papers and probably a file for each customer or lead is an impossible task. Sales force automation gives a clutter free workspace, neatly organized and bringing in completely different user experience for the sales workforce where whatever data the sales representative needs is available with intuitive dashboards & reports.
Environment-Friendly
CSR has to be on the minds of enterprises going paperless. A sure shot way to reverse the carbon footprint. Only an appropriately designed sales force automation tool will allow an enterprise to add this tag to itself.
Cost Optimization
With streamlined sales operations and reduced paperwork traveling back & forth, enterprises curtail costs on the overall sales process. The intent here is not to replace the humans, but rather enhance the working capabilities of the sales representatives.
Paperless Collaboration
Sales force automation not only allows a paperless work environment, but it also goes a step ahead and enables the sales representative to work remotely and serve &track multiple clients with the help of the system. The data fed into the system is also visible to the enterprise and the rest of the key sales stakeholders.
SFA tools software go paperless with mobile phones & tablets, thanks to remote connectivity or cloud-based hosting.
Improve Sales Productivity
A paperless & automated sales system does boost up associate productivity. Free from mundane jobs and heaps of papers, the sales rep also feels happier performing his or job and prides in being part of the sales lifecycle. This indeed gives a boost to associate performance & productivity.
In a Nutshell
Practical technology tactics like Mobile Technologies, Location Based Sensing, Augmented Reality& the beacons bring in disruptions to SFA. With enhanced effectiveness of the paperless Social Media and insightful information constantly coming in through BI & Analytics and the flexibilities of the Cloud; field force tracking & automation solutions today are comprehensive & complete.
Becoming paperless is only one of the advantages. Less is more when it comes to paper and avoiding SFA might not be a good idea anymore!
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