The road to unified sales starts in EMEA

It would speed up the sales cycle and enable salespeople to spend more time with customers and less time on admin. Ultimately, it would increase customer satisfaction and eliminate customer churn. Fast forward to today, though, and many companies are finding that SFA is not the universal panacea they hoped it would be. For various reasons, their implementations have not wholly delivered on the vision outlined above.

This does not mean that SFA software is not working. What it does illustrate is that customer relationship management as a business concept is easier said than done, and it can not be achieved by technology alone. However, there are certain guidelines that can be followed to ensure that the software implementation supports and facilitates the wider business goals. In this article I will look at some of the best practice that we have used at Oracle, which is applicable to most multinational companies currently looking at rolling out our global SFA system.

Map out the road
Most multi-national companies have a multi-channel sales strategy i.e. direct sales force, partners, Web, branch offices, etc. so, in the interest of showing value and a quick ROI, a good place to start the transformation is with a pilot in the country and channel from which most of the revenue generation originates. The reasons for this are fourfold. Firstly the pilot country needs to be of significant enough revenue value to be credible in the eyes of executives. Secondly, the pilot needs to generate a quick return on investment to be validated at a more regional level. Thirdly, using this single-country, single-channel approach minimises the risk of undergoing the transformation across all channels in multiple countries simultaneously. Finally, using this approach, the region can learn as it moves along the path to complete regional transformation.

Once the pilot country is selected, then the primary consideration must be to define a single business process for that channel that can be applied regardless of geography. This process should include every part of the sales cycle from lead generation to forecasting and current customer status, and should be the blueprint for one single global instance of customer data.

Keeping the customer data centralised cannot be over-emphasized if the project is to be successful. Incomplete customer data or fragments of data in multiple customer databases are often the greatest hindrances to a 360-degree view of the customer. Once the single customer database is in place, the necessary applications can be easily tied together, ensuring that only one master record ever occurs for every customer interaction.

The Cultural Driver
Getting the balance right between managing the sales force and giving them information to better do their jobs is a major consideration. Tasks such as reporting leads, daily status and forecasting may seem like a great idea to a manager but can easily be viewed by a salesperson as measures of control. Incentives and training are a key part of getting the sales force to buy into adoption of the technology. Managers also would have to be trained to ensure the technology does not become aversive to the user. This balance can obviously be different for Germany compared to France, Hungary or Oman. An organisation is likely to learn as it moves from one country to another where the balances meet.

To avoid this aversion and deliver value to the salespeople, knowledge-sharing tools must be a part of the process. Web-casts with news and training, archives of successful proposals and generally building a knowledge-based repository of best practice tools are what will help sales adopt the reporting elements of the solution.

Working with Partners
As the direct sales transformation moves from one country to another, organisations can look at their other channels and begin defining the processes that would help them to better service their customers. For partners, this will mean receiving access to much of the same information the direct sales teams have access to. This may be a difficult concept at first but organisations need to realise that they need to give their partners all the tools necessary to do the best job. This, in turn, is a motivator to feed information on the customer side to the single customer database. This reciprocation must be monitored closely so that all parties receive the benefits.

As the partner organisation evolves, it may be time to look at other channels like the Web site, branch offices or call-centres. Using this step-by-step approach, allows the organisation to gain ROI very quickly and improve as it goes along. As long as the business process for each sales function is considered on a macro-level, it can be applied locally without changing the data or adding separate databases. Several global organisations, including Oracle, have already taken the leaps forward and are realising massive returns.