10 Reality Checks Prior To Implementing Mobile Sales Force Automation
10 Reality Checks Prior To Implementing Mobile Sales Force Automation Mobile Sales Force Automation – it is the modern day mantra for enterprises looking for smart business, increased productivity, improved revenue and augmented sales win rates. Organizations today are thriving to imbibe Mobile SFA solutions and are successfully able to achieve most organizational goals. A scalable, comprehensive and adaptable Field force automation software, focussing on the trending “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) concept is considered an apt solution to increase sales and perk up profitability. Implementation of SFA systems have proven to be quite fruitful in terms of achieving and maximizing Return on Investment (RoI). Whatever your organization size may be – a small service unit to a large enterprise offering, a SFA software is meant to reduce many of the mandatory and time takings tasks related to sales. An automated software solution, specially meant for sales management is bound to ease the organizational staff off its recurring and monotonous work, allowing sales people to perform at what they are proficient in – Sell your organization’s offerings. Today, there are multiple such field service software providers, who have come up with state-of-the-art solutions, each having its own set of features and benefits to boast of. The larger the number of solutions, tougher it is for end clients to finalize the apt one for them. And, to add to the confusion, comes certain factors which need to be ascertained before one implements Mobile SFA into their organization. Have a quick peep into the top 10 reality checks that organizations must perform before adapting sales force automation system, so as to ensure a smooth and profitable implementation.
Top 10 Reality Checks you must perform before implementing Mobile Sales Force Automation: 1.Have you defined your business case? Before you implement sales management tools, it is imperative to define what the major objective is and what critical business factors that define the objective are. Also, who the major business owners are is another question that needs an answer well before the solution starts getting implemented. 2.Are you going in for whole hog implementation or partial implementation? Looking at the ever present time crunch, organizations tend to take up the project of implementing the solution fully rather than distributing it in logical parts. The smarter decision is not to take up the total implementation at a stretch but do it by splitting the functionality into parts. 3.Do you have top management support?
A very vital ingredient in Mobile SFA implementation is the extent to which the senior executives and management support this decision. Assuming there will be support once the system is in place, one should not make a blunder of implementing such a massive solution. It may lead of a lot of time, effort and money wastage and a project closure as well. 4.Are you expecting IT to execute the project? A usual myth by organizations is that since IT is responsible for the infrastructure and solution building, they would be the final implementers as well, which totally backfires if done this way. It is any day, an effortless task and a logical one too, to orient sales / field staff onto the new system and make it their everyday affair, since they are the ones to actually face the day to day scenario. 5.Have you understood the sales person’s requirements in depth? Whenever such a comprehensive sales force application is being implemented, the focus, apart from top management and senior officials, should also lie on the needs and requirements of the sales / field staff. In order to gain successful and rightful implementation, it is essential to incorporate functionalities into the system, which are indeed beneficial to the sales staff, since they are the ones to actually run the show on a routine basis. 6.Does your technology overrule your business execution? In any organization, there are chances of varied execution methodologies in business. We cannot enforce a stringent technological solution on the enterprise to be implemented and assume it will work under any kind of scenario. The proposed Mobile sales force automation solution has to be flexible enough to adapt itself to the changing business needs and not let technology dictate. 7.Have you worked out your data conversion / validation technique? One of the general thoughts, implementers have is to bother about past data validation / conversion / cleaning once implementation starts or after it is done. This certainly leads to a blunder if not done well in advance. It is a necessary step
to plan in advance, about how the past data is to be collated, cleaned, validated and converted, so as to stick to pre-defined implementation schedule. 8.Have you worked out your training / orientation schedules? Unlike many other systems, implementation of a sales force automation application is primarily the task of the field force and hence training them well ahead of implementation is a must. There are many solutions, in which the IT department takes a lead role in implementation. In those cases, it is still all right to give training a second lead. But for this particular solution, planning of orientating the sales staff is highly significant. 9.Is customization required and if so, to what extent? Customization is a trivial topic. In case you don’t define the boundaries till which you can or you should compromise, it may lead to a drift in schedules, costing and efforts. Hence, prior to implementation, very well defined boundaries of customization should be worked out. 10.Are you well versed with particulars of third party integration? For any Mobile SFA software to be full proof, its integration with other third party legacy system is a must and should be surely done. But what needs to be ensured it that associating with too many solutions at a time, should not lead to performance issues for our own system. There are a lot many integration issues that could crop up and could lead to a stability issue with the solution. A Mobile SFA solution is a must for any growing enterprise today and following the above mentioned pre requisites is sure to guarantee you a smooth and timely implementation.