s

By:
1. Syed Irfan Ali (185207)
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
S. No Description Page No
1 INTRODUCTION 2

2 OBJECTIVE 3
TOOL FOR SALES FORCE
3 6
AUTOMATION
FUTURE OF SALES FORCE
4 7
AUTOMATION
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRM
5 AND SALES FORCE 9
AUTOMATION
6 ADVANTAGES 10
SALES TOOL USED IN
7 11
INDUSTRY

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I. INTRODUCTION

Sales Force Automation, as the name suggests, means

automating your sales process.
Sales Force Automation is a process that automates certain sales related tasks in a business
like sales processing, inventory control, and tracking customer interactions.

The business require Sales Force Automation for sales forecast, which the SFA Software
does the best by considering all the parameters including the raw materials, previous sales
records and every other aspect responsible for increasing sales force.

Also, by automating the sales force business tend to enrich and improve the relation with
the customers using these sales force automation tools.

For successful sales results and reaching the predicted sales in a span of time and hence
outgrow the business, they use the most recommended Sales Force Automation System.
These SFA solutions provide full functionality to handle all the integrated processes and
intensify the businesses sales.

Sales Force Automation, commonly known as SFA, if simply put is a set of tools or systems
through which one can improve the sales productivity by automating most of the sales
processes. This helps in reducing the manual intervention and thus, reducing the chances of
fiddling.

Earlier, SFA devices used by the field force team needed to be connected to a computer at
the end of the day to transfer and sync data. But with the advent of technologies, SFA has
become 10 times easier and convenient, not only for the managers but also for the team on
the ground.

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II. OBJECTIVE
An ideal Sales Force Automation should have the following features-

1. Monthly Sales Planner (Image)

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. ― Benjamin Franklin

Your SFA can help you set the sail for your ship. People in sales are the smartest ones
however as a team the impact is greater when they move in a unified manner.

Check if the SFA has the ability to

incorporate Monthly Permanent
Journey Plans(PJP), Unscheduled
visits and Adhoc Routes to have a
record of frequency of visits to a
particular store or segment
according to the company’s
priorities.

It should also have the ability to

make changes based on business
dynamics. The feature should also
be able to capture Key performance
indicators in an actionable manner
to ensure no deviation which in turn
will increase your sales by 2x.

A good plan is a goal half done. Your work doesn’t end with planning, it continues on to
execution which has been covered below.

2. Order Management

Gone are the days when orders would be shared on whatsapp or chat. While these chat
tools are fast, they pose a big problem in keeping records. It also increases the
dependence on people collating information from chats.

An SFA on the other hand puts the pieces of information where they belong. You reduce
unnecessary involvement and let your team focus on their core activities.

An ideal SFA should be able to record primary, secondary, and tertiary Sales and also have
all your orders, inventory, supplier and customer data synced and fully integrated on a
single platform.

The system should be able to process orders from the backend real-time and be able to
approve, edit, confirm delivery, etc.

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Once you have your orders under your control, you can now focus on schemes and offers
that you provide for your distributors/retailers.

3. Schemes Management

Managing schemes is not as easy as it may sound. Most of the sales veterans would relate to
the complexity involved in framing trade promotions and schemes as they differ from one
retailer to another.

Despite the complexity, it is one of the most important factors that contribute to the
success of the business.

The SFA should be able to configure different type of schemes like Value Purchase Schemes
(VPS) or Quantity Purchase Schemes(QPS).

Also, the system should be flexible and customizable to accommodate all the variability and
their combinations of schemes offered to distributors or retailers.

With everything in order, it only makes sense for the SFA to be able to provide the details of
performance analysis. Identifying the key areas is a significant process. Find out why in the
next point.

4. KRA + KPI Tracker

The essence of strategy is choosing what NOT to do.

A matured SFA helps you identify core and non-core activities. It helps reward the core and
discourage the non-value adding activities.

To be able to analyze Key Result Area and the Key Performance is pretty much a
fundamental requirement for SFA. An ideal SFA should be able to accommodate your
performance metrics and easily define the roles and responsibilities of the employees in the
organization.

The reports generated should be easy to understand and analyze in such a way that it helps
the team members improve their current performance as compared to the previous
months.

Analyzing Key Result Area and the Key Performance can be complemented by Geo-tagging
and Geo-Fencing.

5. Geo-tagging and Geo-fencing (Image)

It is not just about knowing where your team is, it is more important to know where they
should be.

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There are plenty of tracking systems available, however the loop is not complete till it tells
you the deviations from the destination.

The SFA should have a Geo-

fencing option to track their
movements and receive
notifications if they happen
to cross the defined fence.

The system should also have

a Geo-tagging feature so
that whenever a client is
attended by the employee,
the work status is sent to
the manager tagged with
images, messages, audio,
QR codes, videos or
Geolocation.

6. In-built Distributor Management Systems

Your distributor is your strongest partner in business. Stock availability, Stock-outs,

Product reach customer relations or financial hygiene are some aspects of your business
which are invariably decided by your distributor.

The ideal SFA should have a Distributor Management system which can help an enterprise
plan for the entire month, manage orders, deliveries, and payments on a single system.

It should give the option of planning routes based on outstanding payments. The system
should also help in classifying distributors based on their turnover, credibility, location, etc.

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III. TOOL FOR SALES FORCE AUTOMATION
There are many Sales Force Automation software in the market. SFA Software is used to
automate the business tasks of sales, including order processing, contact management,
information sharing, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer
management, sales forecast analysis and employee performance evaluation.

Here are the Best SFA Software Listed Below :-

1. Zoho CRM :- It s an On-demand Customer Relationship

Management (CRM) software for managing your
customer relations in an efficient manner. It is efficient
because, Zoho CRM helps streamline your organization-
wide sales, marketing, customer support, and inventory
management functions in a single system.

2. Salesmate CRM :- It is an intelligent business CRM that assists companies in

converting leads into customers. The
platform is simple and easy-to-use and
can be personalized by every sales person
in the team. This enables them to work
with a software they can navigate
flawlessly and boost their productivity in
the process.

3. Capsule CRM :- It is a simple, flexible, and effective web-based CRM tool you can
use for your small business. It is a good tool to keep track of your contacts and
companies you do business with,
communications with them,
sales opportunities, and what
activities and tasks that need be
done.

4. Pipedrive : It is a web-based Sales CRM and pipeline management solution that

enables businesses to plan their
sales activities and monitor
deals. Users can send and
receive emails from multiple
accounts using their Pipedrive
account.

5. Sage CRM :- It s a line of software products for customer relationship

management in the small and
medium-size business (SMB)
market. It offers their CRM
software in two editions, Sage
CRM Cloud Professional and Sage
CRM On-Premise.

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IV. FUTURE OF SALES FORCE AUTOMATION
a) Lead & Opportunity Management
One of the most useful features of a competent SFA is Lead Management. With
this feature the enterprise monitors the leads as they are identified and pursued
by the sales team.
The software fully automates the entire sales process, including the lead
management, opportunity management and offers a highly focused visibility to
the company’s sales pipeline.

b) Customers Management
The Manufacturing SFA software manages the customers of the enterprise
providing a full visibility of the customer data to the company all across sales,
marketing and service.
An intuitive contact management also helps in analysing these details and co-
relating them to generate behavioural patterns and profile building. A loyalty
building exercise can be initiated as well, using these ideologies.

c) Task Management
The Task Management feature of SFA software provides capabilities that are
generally focused on planning, executing and measuring the sales strategies and
co-relating them to the demands and hence plan manufacturing schedules in the
enterprise.

d) Team Management
The team management feature helps in creating customizable sales methods for a
steady sales workflow, increasing the chances of enhanced productivity and
improved performance efficiencies.

e) Product Database
Sales force management for manufacturing industry maintains an informative
Product database to create catalogues and integrate offers, schemes and their
communications to appropriate stake holders. The sales cycle history like
quotations, negotiations, closures according to territories, sales person and other
variants is maintained for each product.
A prudent analysis of these details would lead to better predictions of sales and
hence planning manufacturing becomes more realistic.

f) Analytics & Forecasting

The forecasting feature of Manufacturing SFA software helps with collecting,
maintaining and forecasting the sales opportunities and helps the sales team to
handle the current sales scenario, with a total detail of current clients and also

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 future clients.
Accurate Sales forecast provides guidelines to the sales and marketing team to
strategize campaigns and actions as per the need of the hour.

g) Reports & Dashboards

Reports and Dashboards bring in Analytics and intelligence to SFA. The world
moves to self-service options to enable the users of the system to fetch and
comprehend the data in the most suitable manner.

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V. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRM AND SALES FORCE AUTOMATION
Customer Relationship Management tools and Sales Force Automation (SFA) tools help
companies streamline their processes and improve the implementation and execution of
processes. According to research, SFA software increases average sales by 27%, decrease
the sales cycle by 16% and reduce sales administration time by 14%. CRM software, on the
other hand, improves customer retention by 27% and 6 out of 10 small businesses are using
their CRM for relationship management.

SFA is a technique of using software that automates business tasks of sales that includes
order booking information, sales tracking, target orientation, cold calls, employee
performance evaluation, and customer management.

CRM, on the other hand, is a technology for managing the company’s relationships and
interactions with current and potential customers. It improves profitability by providing
customer communication, sales responses, marketing campaigns in the pipeline, accounts
data, and service support. Here is the detailed comparison between CRM and SFA.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE:-

CRM software is used to retain customers and maintain a healthy client relationship. Sales
play an important role in initiating this relationship. Once a prospect becomes a customer,
the relationship is transferred from the sales representative to an ‘Account Manager’ who
oversees the partnership with the client. The software collects all the information of the
client which helps the company in providing better customer relationship.

SFA is used to attain new customers. Sales Force Automation is a tool that is used by the
sales team to organize contacts and opportunities on a single platform. It is also used for
generating and forecasting reports for the sales pipeline management. SFA automates
various business tasks such as sales processing, stocks, retailer’s data and tracking of the on-
ground sales team.

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VI. ADVANTAGES
1. Saves Time: Time-consuming activities such as scheduling appointments, tracking
sales and sending follow-ups are taken care of by these systems. This allows the
sales team to concentrate on tracking leads, sending proposals and quotes and
closing orders.

2. Improved Customer Service: Sales force management with automatic execution

makes it easy to extract customer details from the centralized database if they call
for a query or to get some information. The information is at fingertips, this
improves the overall customer service.

3. Greater Revenues: Based on the analysis, the sales software shows the products
with maximum sales. The sales team can create campaigns to focus on selling
these products.

4. Opportunity Management: The competitive analysis feature of the SFA software

allow companies to track their competitor activities. This way it’s easier to spot
trends and opportunities.

5. More Efficient Management of the Sales Team: The managers have quick access
to real-time data such as sales being made, opportunities, figures, complaints and
other parameters to measure the success of the sales team?

1. Efficient Employee monitoring 8. Claims and reimbursement

2. Increase in communication automation
between sales team 9. Real time task scheduling and
3. Improved productivity modification
4. Improved customer experience 10. Real-time supervision
5. Elimination of Time-heft cases 11. Integration of ERP to salesforce
6. Elimination of attendance issues data.
7. Elimination of payroll processing
issues

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VII. SALES TOOL USED IN INDUSTRY
There are various tool available in the market but one of the tool which I loved the most is-
Getspot. Details are as below:-

Getspot seems perfect for your field employees management including for tracking location
tracking of the employee.

Features of Getspot

 Real Time Location Tracking

 Automatic travel distance calculation

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 Geo Location Mapping & Customize Visited Locations

 Time and Task management

 Clock-in clock out

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 Enterprise System Integration

 Custom/Exception Reports Sharing

 Email/SMS Notifications  Device Alerts

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