Beyond Sales Force Automation - The requirement for integrated selling

Some companies try to manage their sales efforts by implementing a diverse range of automation products-one for field sales automation; another for service management; and yet others for Web stores, call centers, reporting, and inventory management.

And in global organizations, companies typically duplicate all these products in each country of involvement, adding dramatically to the overall complexity of an enterprise. IT departments are overwhelmed trying to get all these components to work together. It's an expensive, time-consuming 'solution' that still doesn't allow information to be easily shared among different parts of the organization.

The result of this patchwork approach is that sales reps aren't given the information they need to be effective. Instead, they face the customer with incomplete, inaccurate data and make errors like:


• Promising immediate delivery to a customer, not knowing that the item is on back order


• Contacting a customer with new product information, unaware that the customer is still waiting for a previous service problem to be addressed


• Spending time cultivating a customer relationship, unaware that the customer is in collections


• Not recognizing the strategic importance of a customer, who has a small individual account but belongs to a global, parent organization that represents high value to the enterprise

Members of the sales team-including strategic partners-need to be fully armed with the information that presents their case in light of the customer's needs. Although this is a fairly straightforward task in simple, one-on-one sales scenarios, this requirement takes on new dimensions where sales of complex solutions may occur through any of several channels. Tracking these sales and all the efforts that go into them requires an integrated sales solution that seamlessly links all customer data, product information, sales tools, pricing schedules, financial background information, inventory status, delivery schedules, and more.

The Oracle Approach
Oracle's approach has been to develop an integrated sales solution for all sales channels. The applications include field sales, Web sales, call center sales (telesales), sales intelligence, and sales compensation.

Each provides multilingual, multicurrency support for global enterprises; enables and supports team-selling situations; and simplifies system administration for IT departments. With this integrated approach, all data pertaining to customers, their sales histories, and the sales teams associated with each customer is stored centrally.

Any authorized staff member working in any sales channel can access and report on it. In addition, the sales solution is built to the same specifications using the same customer model and the same software architecture as the rest of its solutions.

This approach provides staff with seamless access to any required information, whether it is in the front office or in the back in such areas as manufacturing, inventory management, human resources, or project management. The importance of this is that it gives an enterprise one view of its customers; and returns immediate benefits at lower cost.