Global sales force automation software market was valued at $3,872 million in 2016 and is estimated to reach $7,773 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 10.6% from 2017 to 2023
Allied Market Research
Have your sales cycles been extending longer than before?
Is managing a huge task force getting difficult?
Is there heavy peer competition you are facing?
Are you facing lacking productivity and profitability?
These are burning questions that organizations of all sizes and segments face, during their course of business. Especially, when it comes to handling a fleet of salespeople. Managing and monitoring the task force is a big job and manually, almost impossible. That is where the role of an effective sales force automation solution comes into play. True to its name, an efficient SFA solution is aimed at digitizing all important field force activities for better monitoring and management of fleet.
Field force automation solution is now being proven as an indispensable ingredient of most industry segments – healthcare, retail and FMCG, sales and distribution, shipping and logistics, finance, education, and many more.
Key Challenges Faced by Organizations, Pertaining to Task Force
Industry segments today are facing heavy challenges when it comes to management of task force.
Here are the major hurdles that need to be overcome:
- As the field force moves around, there is a huge collection of information on all fronts. The main crux lies in understanding, analysing, and extracting that information for further use. Further lies the difficulty in getting the desired information at the right time, right place and in the right format.
- Managing leads effectively is another tough task for such a huge field force. The field force brings along multiple leads and converting them effectively into potential clientele needs thorough management and monitoring.
- Sales force performance, monitoring, key performance indicators are gray areas when it comes to manual management of the task force. These parameters are much needed to understand the patterns and trends that go along the way.
- Maintaining customer loyalty, retaining customers, and offering them the best of service is an especially important and hence critical area. Stakeholders find it challenging to understand customer requirements without automation and hence, tend to lose out on potential business.
- Garnering intelligent business information in the form of a variety of dashboards/reports for detailed monitoring and futuristic trend understanding is a heavy task.
Digitizing Field Force Activities With Effective Sales Force Automation Software
Lead Management
A very prime activity in sales force operations is managing and nurturing leads. That is where an ideal SFA solution pitches in. It assists organizations in deciding what actions must be taken to garner the best of leads, what is the best approach for sales optimization and coming up with a best fit approach. It captures the entire process of lead generation starting from creating a lead till it gets converted into a client base. Any type of information, in any format, will be available through the SFA solution. This makes it easy for the sales force and for the management to understand and enhance leads all the way.
Various activities like scheduling automatic tasks, tracking the field force’s activities, keeping track of different meetings, alerts, emails, notifications etc. It also analyses the exact volume of leads getting executed, conversion ratio from leads to actual sales and all necessary information, for further business progress.
With the help of field force automation, stakeholders can keep a stringent eye on their peer competitors to keep abreast of the latest happenings. The inbuilt intelligence quotient assists in comparing trends, deriving insights, and extracting valued information – all together to garner the best of business.
Insightful Dashboards and Reporting
What is of most importance in a field force functioning is availing information at the tip of the finger, for all stakeholders involved. There are various real-time areas involved that need focus in the form of reports – sales forecasting, performance of salespeople, territory wise sales, marketing plans and forecasts, client feedback, and many more.
Each of these reports can be availed in a drill-down manner, starting from the highest level going down to the basic level. They can be integrated and extracted in different formats that can be shared across customers, field force, and management.
These dashboards and reports serve to be a useful input to business owners to assess risks, churn up mitigation plans, and take care of weak zones, for better business performance.
Managing and Scheduling Contacts
Maintaining and handling contacts is one huge functionality for successful sales force management. Contact management deals with recording all types of workflows like orders, quotations, communications, and so on. An SFA solution assists big-time in handling appointment details, meeting schedules, automated emails, reminders, and alerts, etc. thereby, easing the work of scheduling contacts.
This vital feature in a field force software helps in appointment handling, orders follow up, repeat business, details of leads/contacts/renewals, etc.
Administering, Monitoring Field Force Activities
The sales force is the solid backbone of any organization. Keeping them happy, satisfied, productive, and efficient is the main crux of the business. To do that, it is vital to have all details and statistics about their requirements and performance. That is what an ideal SFA solution does.
It offers detailed access to the task force’s sales figures/leads through its wide array of dashboards and reports. This helps the management to plan effectively for sales territories, risk mitigation, role management based on requirements, and planning routes in the best possible manner.
Up Selling & Cross Selling
After all, the customer is the king. Winning them over, keeping them satisfied and increasing customer base is what works towards a prosperous business. For this, it is essential to have complete and instant access to client database that gives detailed information like their requirements, likings, history records, futuristic trends, etc.
This information helps big-time in increasing the up-selling and cross-selling items. The software extracts important information like client preferences, order trends and patterns, marketing campaigns and schemes etc. to help increase sales figures.
Invoice Automation & Generation
Invoicing procedure is an integral part of any sales-oriented business. Automating the entire invoicing process is a must and that is done effectively by a sales force automation software solution. It automates the entire workflow, fastens the entire process with immediate approval mechanisms and authorization, takes care of involved risks and hurdles.
The solution offers detailed insight into customer-oriented details at the tip of the finger, in the desired format and desired time. Amidst a multitude of industry segments, the SFA solution works as a power booster to fasten important processes like the invoice generation and approval process.
Direct Store Delivery
Direct store delivery is a specialized way of distribution strategy and inventory management wherein goods are directly transferred to the stores through the manufacturer. It lessens the middle level and increases the speed at which items reach the customers.
This entire process can be done in a highly effective manner through an SFA solution. The solution handles perfect management and monitoring of the direct store delivery processes. It also assists business owners lessen their operating expenditure and thereby, increase sales figures. It fastens the delivery cycle and helps in maintaining the customer quotient higher.
Wrapping It Up
An ideal mobile sales force automation solution turns to be a blessing in disguise for a multitude of industries globally. Based on the best practices of industry-based sales functionalities, it offers a complete solution comprising of a mobile client, back office, and communications services.
Route accounting, planning, and executing sales routines, managing field force activities effectively form the crux of any Mobile SFA solution. Scalability, portability, and multiple platform support are a must to leverage the functionality to its best. Mobile sales force automation is a boon to the industry world, make the most of it!
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