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Monday, October 17, 2011

Continuous Improvement in Business SFA Workflow with BPM

SFA stands for Sales Force Automation. That is a system to share "Sales information". Some information is by "walking his/her feet off", some is from "Information Request".

Examples of starting SFA process: Getting name cards at exhibition, applications for sales campaign, Product introduction during supporting claims, etc.

If you want to build your own sales flow, it is one of the way to study "business process to be" in BPM system, not using existing SFA services. The Flow you made would be "the competitiveness" of your own.

Incidentally, your policy that "what kind of Sales Information should be shared" must be seriously considered in advance in pursuing the originality. If the Policy was vague, it would end up mass-production of "salesmen struggling to futile entering work".

<Types of Sales Information>

  • A1. Grasp customer needs 'Visualization of Quote Data'
  • A2. Grasp competitors 'Competition with X's products'
  • A3. Feature customer interested in 'The modeling feature is very popular'
  • A4. Customer's budget 'The budget for 5 years is 100k'
  • B1. To share proposing activity 'I made a visit'
  • B2. To share personal connections 'That Director is my classmate'
  • B3. To share preparation 'Took 2 hours on PowerPoint'
  • B4. Advices 'Should send a letter not Email'
  • C1. Negotiation Schedule 'The settlement seems before the end of Oct.'
  • C2. Success - Failure management 'We Failed'


<Tasks>
1a. Request Support, 1b. Lead Info, 2. Assignment, 3. Primary Contact, 4. Contacts, 6. Result


In the Sales workflow above, Salesman updates the communication records with assigned expecting customer in [3. Primary Contact] and in [4. Contacts].

Information sharing through e-mail in the sales department right after 'Primary contact' and the time needed at 'later contact'. Of course, filtered List is always available. Filtered by Negotiation Status or Size of the case.

Company atmosphere would change dramatically when seniors and manager begin to give advice to the handling salesman on 'In-house Micro-blogging' cooperating with the Workflow.

[Sales SFA flow [2. Assignment] screen]

[Sales section Email setting screen]

[Receiving Email]


<similar models>