xecutive Summary Sales Force Automation (SFA) is the process of increasing the effectiveness of one's sales force through technology. This is a topic to which more and more ISO organizations are going to be giving serious consideration as they face automated competitors better able to explain the more complex payment and non-payment services, deliver personalized quotes and instantaneously close sales.

This white paper describes how mobile and wireless solutions developed by firms like Aether serve to create sustainable competitive advantages - advantages created for sales associates who are better prepared to educate merchants and answer questions, verify inventory, commit to delivery and close business on the spot.

This document details how direct-sales companies are justifying Sales Force Automation from a combination of sources:

• Quicker sales cycles by:
  • Referring phone-in prospect leads directly to local field-sales associates.
  • Demonstrating real-time services such as Electronic Receipt Capture.
  • Delivering customer credit information to the fingertips of a salesperson.
  • Showing consistency in promotion and merchandising campaigns.

• Reducing the cost of the sale by:
  • Eliminating unnecessary paperwork via electronic forms.
  • Lowering inventory costs.
  • Making fewer calls to close a sale based upon access to information needed to overcome objections.
  • Using electronic order entry and fulfillment tracking to reduce back-end costs.
• Higher customer loyalty driven by:
  • Enhanced product knowledge.
  • Improved response time.
  • Faster delivery and installation times.
  • Improved cash flow and reduced credit risks by supplying current billing data.
• Productivity gains: more sales from a smaller sales force.

We all are reminded daily of examples of how companies are using wireless technology to deliver their products and services. FedEx and UPS rely on wireless for shipment tracking and delivery confirmation. A growing number of small businesses rely on eBay to find buyers and provide access to bidding, searching and auction updates using cell phones and wireless devices.

In our digital economy, it has become table stakes for successful sales organizations to use information intelligently and manage sales-force communications effectively. Aether starts this document by citing a Gartner Study that lists the technologies typically making up an SFA solution: laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), ease-of-use access to contact databases, interactive-selling software applications and secure wireless hosting services.

While there is a clear upside to the use of wireless, there also are widespread barriers to its adoption. Cell phones and handheld PDAs are very different devices than laptop computers, both in terms of functionality and cost. Handheld devices have small monochrome displays, tiny keyboards and very limited capacity for software or multimedia.

A sales force requires constant communications with the home office for sales leads, contact information, invoicing, inventory tracking and order fulfillment. Typically, this is accomplished by cell phone or through a connected laptop, and both methods have their disadvantages. Cell phones have been practical for only voice communications, and laptops must physically be connected to the Internet through corporate dialup.

During the past few years, experimentation has been going on to create devices tailored to different applications, and SFA has gotten a large portion of those R&D dollars. Revenue-driven events take precedence over any other processes, and the ability to make the right sales decisions quickly can determine the success or failure of a business. Integrated solutions are now coming to serve this market in the form of user-friendly Internet-capable offerings on smart phones and Palm computers.

The Aether white paper provides a high-level overview of the various software packages being deployed as SFA becomes a mainstream application: contact management for targeted prospects, account management for protecting client relationships, forecasting and pipeline management, sales-campaign management, product-information databases, service-request history and integration tools to legacy accounting/inventory systems.

The remainder of this report contains sections on how wireless solutions can be exploited for sales force process improvement.

Customer Communications: Wireless Web access to central client contact information can offer salespeople advantages such as:

• Arriving at a sales call on time by accessing address and direction information.
• Personalizing interaction through detailed historical contact history.
• Up-selling and cross-selling through business needs real-time analysis.
• Understanding current developments through installation and service status alerts.

Product Information: The complexity and expanded range of ISO products continues to increase. The training and access to product handouts is reaching overload conditions that realistically can be addressed only by real-time access to electronic product information. Beyond this fact of life, the white paper also describes how product information can serve to facilitate:

• Referencing customer-specific price and order lists.
• Accessing configuration systems to assemble components, pricing and finance options.
• Retrieving up-to-date promotional and discount information.

Product Availability/Order Fulfillment: Understanding which services are appropriate or available to individual retailers based upon their transaction volume, credit rating or operational characteristics can be more than a competitive advantage. Having point-of-need access to information for screening retailer criteria during a sales meeting will translate directly into improved credibility and customer loyalty.

In addition to ensuring that the service/lease contract is right for the customer, wireless tools enable the sales associate to place the order immediately and start the build, ship and billing processes.

The white paper closes with a brief overview of the technologies and services companies needed to define a wireless SFA solution appropriate to them. Aether puts forth the following questions for company officials to ask themselves as they seek a solution:

• Which device do I use and what should the interface look like?
• What is the best way for mapping the device database to my enterprise applications?
• What are the database-synchronization options, and how do I make the optimal choice?
• How do I implement the wireless component of the solution?
• What are the criteria for selecting a wireless carrier?
• How do I ensure security of my data?
• How do I use data compression as a means for reducing operating costs?
• How do I manage mobile and wireless devices and application upgrades?

Web Sites for More Information

www.blackberry.net/select/roi/ROI_report_BlackBerry.pdf

Blackberry is a powerful PDA solution provider, and this document focuses upon ROI justification for wireless deployments.

www.palm.com/enterprise/deploymobileforce.html

Palm has a site dedicated to sales-force automation, including a few excellent white papers.

www.sprint.com/whitepapers/index.html?refurl=cio_txtlink

Sprint is another national wireless processor that has recognized the importance of SFA.

www.participate.com/research/whitepapers.asp

This is an SFA research and solution provider with an excellent set of white papers on the power of integrating the correct information to the sales process. Definitely a high-end offering.

www.eurosmartz.com

An example of how quickly and low cost the deployment of SFA can be for those of you who want to get started and then refine later.

www.infoworld.com/articles/se/xml/02/02/04/020204sesalesnet.xml

An interesting article on a successful SFA case study.

Eric Thomson is Executive Vice President of Profit Source Advisors. He can be reached at etprosc@attbi.com.

Author: Aether Systems, Inc.

Date: January 2002

Size: 8 pages

Relevance Rating: Medium-high

Web Address: www.aethersystems.com/webfiles/aboutaether/whitepapers