Competitive advantage

A company may attempt to differentiate itself from its competition through the provision of better customer service. The consistent delivery of superior service requires the careful design and execution of a whole system of activities that includes people, technology, and processes; although, the rewards will include improved revenue from customers that are impressed with the service provided. Companies in insurance industry need to have insurance crm, insurancefa software with agency management system to deliver better service to customers.

Some companies do better than expected. In the 1980's, a customer called LL Bean and was surprised that he was greeted by name. The representative explained that AT&T provided Caller-ID service to all companies with toll-free lines (ten years before any phone company offered Caller ID to retail customers), and that Bean's computer had brought up the customer's record on her computer screen. She knew where he lived and what he had recently bought. If he wanted something new, she even knew the size and color to suggest. They also remembered the credit card number that had been used, although they could not be certain it was still valid.

In some cases, a company will have two interfaces: during "normal business hours" in the vendor's time zone, the caller will reach the Customer-Service Department, which can take new orders, trace recent orders, and solve problems; a person calling outside those hours will instead reach a fulfillment house, often in another state or country, and able only to take new orders. In most cases, fulfillment centers don't even have catalogs for the many companies they represent. If a problem arises, the answer is "Call between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, Eastern Standard Time."



ref: agency management system, crm-sfa software, wikipedia

SFA Software - Marketing Manager's Advantage

CRM Software Functions we are talking here. As a part of CRM software we are talking Sales Force Automation. In our previous post we talked sfa advantage to Sales People and sfa advantages to Sales Manager.

Today we are going to talk SFA advantage to Marketing Manager.
It is also claimed to be useful for the marketing manager. It gives the marketing manager information that is useful in :

• Understanding the economic structure of your industry
• Identifying segments within your market
• Identifying your target market
• Identifying your best customers in place
• Doing marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, psychographic, and behavioral) of your core customers
• Understanding your competitors and their products
  Developing new products
• Establishing environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and threats
  Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses
• Auditing your customers' experience of your brand in full
  Developing marketing strategies for each of your products using the marketing mix variables of price, product, distribution, and promotion
• Coordinating the sales function with other parts of the promotional mix (such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity)
• Creating a sustainable competitive advantage
• Understanding where you want your brands to be in the future, and providing an empirical basis for writing marketing plans on a regular basis to help you get there
• Providing input into feedback systems to help you monitor and adjust the process.

ref: sfa and crm software, wikipedia

Sales Force Automation - Sales Manager Advantages

Sales Force Automation we are talking here and Advantages to different people/department attach with it. In our last post we talk about Advantages to Sales People. Today we are going to talk about Advantages to the Sales Manager.

Advantages to the sales manager
Sales force automation systems can also affect sales management. Here are some examples:

• The sales manager, rather than gathering all the call sheets from various sales people and tabulating the results, will have the results automatically presented in easy to understand tables, charts, or graphs. This saves time for the manager.
  
• Activity reports, information requests, orders booked, and other sales information will be sent to the sales manager more frequently, allowing him/her to respond more directly with advice, product in-stock verifications, and price discount authorizations. This gives management more hands-on control of the sales process if they wish to use it.
  
• The sales manager can configure the system so as to automatically analyze the information using sophisticated statistical techniques, and present the results in a user-friendly way.
  This gives the sales manager information that is more useful to him in different way.

We talk how these information useful to Sales Manager in our next post.

ref: Sales Force Automation & Sales Management Software, wikipedia

Sales Force Automation - Advantages to Sales People

An integral part of any SFA system is company wide integration among different departments. If SFA systems aren’t adopted and properly integrated to all departments, there might be a lack of communication which could result in different departments contacting the same customer for the same purpose. In order to mitigate this risk, SFA must be fully integrated in all departments that deal with customer service management.

We talk different advantages to different department/ person who are integrated with SFA procress.
1) Advantages to Sales People
2) Advantages to Sales Manager
3) Advantages to Marketing Manager
4) Strategic Advantages

We talk each of the above here. First we talk Advantage to Sales people.

sales force automation systems can improve the productivity of sales personnel. Here are some examples:

• Rather than write-out sales orders, reports, activity reports, and/or call sheets, sales people can fill-in prepared e-forms. This saves time.
  
• Rather than printing out reports and taking them to the sales manager, sales people can use the company intranet to transmit the information. This saves time.
  
• Rather than waiting for paper based product inventory data, sales prospect lists, and sales support information, they will have access to the information when they need it. This could be useful in the field when answering prospects’ questions and objections.
  
• The additional tools could help improve sales staff morale if they reduce the amount of record keeping and/or increase the rate of closing. This could contribute to a virtuous spiral of beneficial and cumulative effects.

ref: sales force automation - CRM Software, wikipedia

Sales Force Automation - SFA - CRM Software Functions

Sales Force Automation Systems (SFA), typically a part of a company’s customer relationship management system, is a system that automatically records all the stages in a sales process. SFA includes a contact management system which tracks all contact that has been made with a given customer, the purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that sales efforts won’t be duplicated eliminating the risk of irritating customers. SFA also includes a sales lead tracking system, which lists potential customers through paid phone lists, or customers of related products. Other elements of a SFA system can include sales forecasting, order management and product knowledge. More developed SFA systems have features where customers can actually model the product to meet their required needs through online product building systems. This is becoming more and more popular in the automobile industry, where patrons can customize various features such as color and interior features such as leather vs. upholstered seats.

We continue our talk on Sales Force Automation as part of CRM Software Function in next post.


ref: Sales Force Automation, CRM Software, wikipedia

CRM Software Functions-1

CRM can provide companies of all types and sizes with significant benefits, but only if sales team adopt it. We are talking about 3 modules. Marketing, Sales and Service. In Marketing, we are talking today Marketing Automation Module features:

Marketing Automation Module including following major features.

• Contact customers with targeted promotions and email communications

• Run sales campaigns

• Run campaigns in conjunction with the sales team

• Send e-mail and track responses

• Sales force automation

we talk each of the above one by one.

CRM Software Functions

Last time we talked about what is CRM and Why CRM? We left off with 3 different modules in any CRM Software. Today we will continue and talk about these 3 modules and functions of these modules.

1.Marketing

2.Sales

3.Service

Depending on your business process automation needs, you may want a higher focus on one or the other module. These modules can be integrated with one other. Marketing, Sales and Service Modules share the same database about customers, contacts and activities. This allows easy consolidated access to all customer information, and avoids the need to store common data in more than one system.


1) Marketing:-
Make your marketing team more effective by providing CRM. Best CRM should include tools to help identify, execute and replicate effective marketing initiatives across multiple sales channels.
The Marketing Module helps your marketing team to assign, schedule and track marketing campaign activities and measure campaign performance. The combined sales, marketing and customer service tools allow your business to work with one up-to-date set of customer data, therefore appearing professional, organized and informed when speaking to your customers.

Marketing Automation Module features:

• Contact customers with targeted promotions and email communications

• Run sales campaigns

• Run campaigns in conjunction with the sales team

• Send e-mail and track responses

• Sales force automation

CRM gives marketing team access to your customer data quickly, easily and in a way that makes it easier to market the right products to the right customers.

Talk on Sales and Service modules of CRM Software Functions will be available in next notes with title CRM Functions