Supply Chain Management – Problems and Roadblocks
Companies increasingly are becoming aware that their opportunity to having a competitive edge in business can come through supply chain. In the case of companies operating on global scale, supply chain strategies drive operational efficiencies and affect the bottom line. Unlike technology or other core areas affecting business, Supply chain is always in a dynamic […]
Work Study and Industrial Engineering
Introduction To survive in the current competitive and global environment, it is important for the organization to continuously look at ways to improve efficiency and productivity. It needs to discover a new, easy and cost-effective way of manufacturing or providing services. Work study and industrial engineering play important role in job simplification, job design, job […]
Operations: Policy and Strategy
Introduction It is very important for an organization to have well defined objective. A well-defined objective facilitates development of strategies and policy thereby creating value for customers. Operation Strategy Operational strategy is essential to achieve operational goals set by organization in alignment with overall objective of the company. Operational strategy is design to achieve business […]
Conducting the Knowledge Transfer
The Six Sigma project is not complete until the concerned personnel who have to operate the process have the know-how to do so. Many Six Sigma projects have failed because the project team was overjoyed at achieving success. However, one must not forget that improvements are only on paper until they are implemented. And there […]
Identification of Suitable Platform & Environment for ERP Implementation
Any ERP implementation attracts expenditure on account of Operating System (OS) and Relational Database Management (RDBMS) for hosting the system. Networking issues also assumes importance particularly when the system is rolled out at different locations. Additionally, licensing options associated with ERP packages need to be carefully evaluated during final contract negotiation. Operating System and Database […]
Sales support systems were developed to assist the sales force in improving productivity. This improvement in productivity was through continuous communication with the field offices about customer activities and requirements. The sales force focus was on cultivating long and fruitful customer relation.
Before the advent of information system, customer-related information was recorded in individual sales representative’s personal books rather than on a centralized data center. This meant that the customer information would be lost with movement of sales representative.
Therefore, to preserve and utilized customer relation and improve performance of sales force, sales support system was developed.
A sales support system can be divided into:
This module of the sales support system looks at offering calendar based activities to plan and coordinate meetings with customer relationship accounts. The module looks at consolidating team activities for a given period of time. The module provides in-depth analysis of the historical and current sales cycle.
Sales force racks up into team member and team member into the sales manager. Therefore, sales manager has to monitor activities of more than one sales team. This module helps sales manager generate reports, which provide data point around current sale activities performed by the different sales team. This module helps sales force connect with various product specialists based out of various sales office locations. Territory-wise pipeline management becomes easy for the sales manager.
One of the important needs of sales force and sales team is management of various contact points across different organization. Contact management module should be able to organize contact across current and potential client organization.
Sales force work relentlessly to generate a sales lead. Lead management module provides management of leads, which come through marketing campaigns and referral management. This module also tracks characteristics of each lead as to highlight other possible leads.
Every organization has distinctive and varied product requirement. It is important for the sales force to have ready access to different product configuration and associated price. This module facilitates configuration support.
The modern information system can hold large volume of data, which can be effectively converted into information.
Advent of the Internet has simplified sales force access to centralized databases. It helps sales force stay in touch with each other as well as sales manager. Availability of the Internet has reduced the cost of managing communication. Mobile devices have further contributed to proliferation sales support system.
Another aspect of sales is after sales product support. Organizations have on-site or field service staff. The Internet has made field service management possible on a real-time basis.
Sales support system enhances productivity and efficiency of the sales force. The sales force remains aware of development around the potential clients on a real-time basis. This increases probability of closing a sales deal. The productive sales force not only increases market share but also improves profitability of organization.
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Communication Systems and Groupware – Information System Concepts that Apply in All Functional Areas of Business
February 12, 2025
