Sales Force Automation Software
The design, construction, and implementation of sales force
automation software has been a key Marathon service offering for
years. Our consulting staff has developed in-depth knowledge of
various sales force automation applications through their support
of numerous sales organizations. These range from mid-tier,
privately owned regional and national firms, to global
manufacturers and distributors with world-wide sales
operations.
The expansion of the Internet has made web based sales force
automation software the solution of choice. Marathon consultants
have been intimately involved in the development and evolution of
web based sales force automation software since the earliest days
of it use. The advantages of sales force automation solutions are
many:
- Instant distribution of information, regardless of the size or
location of the sales force
- The ability to "push" information to the sales force, as
opposed to passively waiting for them to sign in and retrieve the
information
- Utilization of a single data repository, in which all the data
is consistent and the reported information does not vary from
report to report.
- Lower technical support costs that result from using a
browser-based interface in place of a localized PC application;
this eliminates the need to update dozens, hundreds, or thousands
of PCs each time the sales force automation application undergoes a
change.
Among the many advantages of web based sales force automation
software, perhaps the biggest is its ability to provide a tool
whose effectiveness can be measured over time. A well constructed
sales force automation application can be designed to provide
measures of use, enabling the client sales management team to
compare use of the sales force automation software with resulting
sales activities.
The second advantage of sales force automation software is its
ability to provide summary sales performance results in the form of
"Dashboards". Dashboards summarize data in a graphic format,
allowing both the sales force and the sales management team to
focus on those results that are either below or above expectations.
This "management by exception" approach enables everyone to drill
down to the details of the outliers and investigate the
contributing factors.
Sales force automation software has provided the business
community with a breakthrough in the ability to distribute
information, identify issues, and remediate the underlying causes
of missed goals.