The food & beverage industry is one of the fast-moving and competitive industry today, owing to the disposable income that is garnered instantly. There is increasing profitability in this business and hence an exponential steep in new players coming in with competent sales and marketing methodologies. If you want to excel and move ahead in this industry, you need to be quick at decision making and have a prompt, excelling sales force to help you get maximum business.
One more reason why a prompt and efficient sales force is needed is the nature of the product. Customers are quite serious about the dates of manufacturing and expiry and you may lose customers if you fall back on those statistics. Hence, especially in the context of this industry, a sales force automation solution plays a significant role in managing and monitoring sales force activities right from the dispatch of beverages to a customer go-ahead.
It is important for the top management to have a complete track of all the supplies and deliveries as and when needed, in the prescribed format, at any location. This is possible only if there is a competent SFA solution running effectively, to keep business owners informed about all sales activities in place be it any geography, any time, any location.
There is so much said and written about sales force management system and its application to different industries. The food and beverage industry identify the strengths of the SFA solution and how best it can help the industry flourish in terms of competence, profitability, productivity, RoI and sales increase. By leveraging new advancements, this industry can enhance operational efficacy, offer seamless system integration and boost security and effectiveness.
But, is it as simple as it sounds? There are certain inherent challenges of the food and beverage industry that may pose as a hurdle while implementing any SFA solution. Here are certain such bottlenecks that need to be taken care of:
Sales Automation Challenges for the Beverages Industry
- There are certain food and beverage regulation acts that the organizations need to follow. These acts need to be merged somewhere with the SFA solutions to offer a complete solution
- There could be a large variance in the end products in this industry which could call for a challenge while automating their sales processes
- Often, the working staff isn’t trained enough to handle the variation in the products as against its implementation in the software solution. That may cause a hindrance in implementing the solution
- At certain times, the sales processes aren’t the same for each food and beverage. They may vary depending upon the nature of the product and its delivery schedule. At such times, a similar automation strategy may not work best
Today’s sales professionals spend just 34% of their time selling
Key Features of Sales Force Automation Solution That Can Help Beverages Industry Achieve Their Goals and Sales Targets
- Maintenance of a Product Database
Mobile sales force automation targets maintaining a useful centralized product database. With a focus on the creation of catalogs and integration of sales offers, schemes and communications to different stakeholders, the SFA system maintains a consistent database of all involved components. For each individual product, details such as sales cycle history documents, sales quotes, sales closures geography wises, sales performance details etc. are maintained and managed. Availability of any of this information is just a click away. This directly leads to a judicious analysis of these details offering augmented sales prediction, planning, and manufacturing
- Client Administration
Be it sales, service or marketing – an effective sales force automation system is competent enough to manage and monitor the needs of clients and offer complete visibility to the organization in terms of detailed insights to client information. Instinctual contact management assists in the analysis of such detailed information and correlates it to come up with different behavioral patterns and profile building. With the help of such patterns, organizations can build certain loyalty exercises to enhance business and customer retention
- Task Managing
Managing and monitoring a variety of tasks is an important feature of any SFA solution. It offers great capabilities in terms of focusing on scheduling, implementing and gauging sales approaches and matching them up with the customer requirements. It also helps in planning manufacturing agendas in the organization
- Managing and Monitoring Teams
In order to manage and maintain a consistent workflow, this competent team management features assists in the creation of flexible sales methodologies, thereby, enhancing the productivity and performance efficacy levels
- Competent Lead Management
Lead and opportunity management is one of the key features of a successful SFA solution for the beverages industry. With the help of this feature, the organization can carry on lead monitoring and assessment as and when the sales team identifies them. The solution undergoes full automation of the entire sales procedure that includes managing leads and opportunities, offering full focused visibility to the organization’s sales pipeline
- In-depth Analysis & Sales Projecting
In any effective SFA solution, there is a feature for detailed forecasting available that empowers users in the collection, maintenance, and forecast of sales opportunities and assists the sales team in effectively managing the sales scenario. It also provides an in-depth view of the client portfolio – the existing as well as prospects. The sales and marketing teams are benefited a lot in terms of accurate sales forecasting figures. It helps them in strategizing campaigns and working on action items as needed at an instance
- Visualization Capabilities Through Dashboards
The power of business intelligence is reflected through SFA systems, in terms of visually appealing dashboards and reports. Bringing in latest technological ways of handling data like mobile BI, cloud BI, self-service BI and more, this solution helps users manage and monitor heaps of information in their own way, in their own format at their own time
Benefits of SFA System for Beverages Industry
- An ideal SFA solution performs as an excellent planning tool for the beverages industry. Right from management and planning of the entire workflow to using predictive analysis for making organizational decisions to resource utilization to increasing productivity and profitability, it is a unified system for all
- It creates an ideal model for the sales workforce. With certain important policies in place, it becomes simpler to implement and create different workflow processes that form a daily part in the entire beverage industry process. Different work profiles such as assets, human resources, machines etc. can be generated and utilized to its optimum. Project schedules can be optimized and worked upon in a better manner
- It offers huge value for money as it brings in cost-effectiveness in a lot of parameters like handling resources, catering to customer requirements, streamlining sales processes, risk assessment, and mitigation, replicating marketing campaigns and strategies etc. Its standardized bunch of APIs help in reusing components to avoid unnecessary budget upheavals
- Implementing an automated solution helps in abiding by the best practices of any organization thereby streamlining and disciplining processes. These best practices make sure all is in sync with the organizational standards as far as sales processes are concerned
- Because of automation of activities, there are obvious advantages like appropriate completion, consistent monitoring, catching hold of ambiguities etc. that all lead to the alignment of organizational objectives with customer needs. Goal alignment directly leads to maximized RoI, increased productivity and augmented profitability
- With proper SFA in place, organizations can work out appropriate resource structure and manage them well. There can be skilled and well-defined team sizes and structure that can help achieve project goals well in time, with utmost efficiency
- Because all workflows and operations are well thought of, in advance, the SFA solution helps enterprises in faster decision making, close client engagement and leveraging the potential of the workforce to the best
- All field level operations are taken care of, by implementing a sales force automation solution, that automatically increases response time and decreases downtime. It works as a unified solution for all workflows
Interesting Reads About Sales Force Automation
- Sales Force Automation for FMCG, Right Up to the Shelf
- Zip Zap ZooM to Sell – Download the App & Digitize your Sales Force
- Sales Route Management – The Throbbing Pulse of Field Force Management Software
- As Fast as You Can with Field Force Automation for FMCG
- Unleash the Power of Mobile Sales Force Automation. Enhance Productivity and Profitability
- Lucrative Lead Management in Retail Industry with Field Force Software
Finally, An Overall Look
SFA system is the confirmed indispensable powerful tool for sales force personnel to carry out their day to day activities with the help of contemporary techniques. SFA for food and beverages industry ideally is fully mobile and well-integrated with existing systems and their databases. This software facilitates product profiling, demand analysis, stock management, and daily task management. Being an SFA it goes without saying that all sales related activities are well integrated into the workflows. Lead management, Quotations, Order Management, Follow-ups, Payments all form an important part of this SFA. RoI based reports give insight into the on-going and help the decision makers plan better actions.
SPEC INDIA’s flagship Mobile Sales Force Automation (SFA) Solution, ZooM, is focused on mobilizing and automating the routine activities of the sales force, customer executives and the field representatives who are on the move. It is developed exclusively to connect the mobile field sales force with the corporate back office and thereby, ensure a real-time, robust and comprehensive flow of information between both the entities. The result is a complete end-to-end field force management app focusing on integrating the planning and execution of field staff activities along with the availability of business-critical information right on time.
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