Top 5 Economic Myths
When analyzed in financial terms, it turns out that the world is in a precarious position. However, there seems to be no sense of urgency amongst the people. This may be because of the fact that newspapers, as well as other forms of media, are not warning the people that a recession might be around […]
The Gender Pay Gap Debate
April 10th is considered to be “Equal Pay” day all over the world. This day has been commemorated since the year 1996 to remind the world that women are allegedly being paid less than men to do the same amount of work. As per the data from Facebook COO’s non-profit organization, women only receive 80% […]
The Quantitative Approach for e-Strategy – Seven Dimensions of e-Commerce
Introduction The way business or commerce gets conducted has undergone a great deal of change due to the advent of information and communication revolution. In the last two decades or so there has been a phenomenal growth in e-commerce. Electronic commerce or e-commerce consists of buying selling and auction of various products and services through […]
Effect of Domestic Politics on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
In previous articles, we talked about how the ongoing global economic crisis coupled with domestic pressures affect the outsourcing of back office operations. In this article, we look at a hot topic and a burning issue in the West i.e. the hue and cry over outsourcing and shipping jobs overseas especially at a time when […]
The Canadian Housing Bubble
Canada is a developed western nation. It does not get nearly as much attention in the world media as it should. This is the reason why Canadian housing market is not being displayed in the news by the mainstream media. Right now the market is going through an incredible bull run. The prices are rising […]
Sales support systems were developed to assist the sales force in improving productivity. This improvement in productivity was through continuous communication with the field offices about customer activities and requirements. The sales force focus was on cultivating long and fruitful customer relation.
Before the advent of information system, customer-related information was recorded in individual sales representative’s personal books rather than on a centralized data center. This meant that the customer information would be lost with movement of sales representative.
Therefore, to preserve and utilized customer relation and improve performance of sales force, sales support system was developed.
A sales support system can be divided into:
This module of the sales support system looks at offering calendar based activities to plan and coordinate meetings with customer relationship accounts. The module looks at consolidating team activities for a given period of time. The module provides in-depth analysis of the historical and current sales cycle.
Sales force racks up into team member and team member into the sales manager. Therefore, sales manager has to monitor activities of more than one sales team. This module helps sales manager generate reports, which provide data point around current sale activities performed by the different sales team. This module helps sales force connect with various product specialists based out of various sales office locations. Territory-wise pipeline management becomes easy for the sales manager.
One of the important needs of sales force and sales team is management of various contact points across different organization. Contact management module should be able to organize contact across current and potential client organization.
Sales force work relentlessly to generate a sales lead. Lead management module provides management of leads, which come through marketing campaigns and referral management. This module also tracks characteristics of each lead as to highlight other possible leads.
Every organization has distinctive and varied product requirement. It is important for the sales force to have ready access to different product configuration and associated price. This module facilitates configuration support.
The modern information system can hold large volume of data, which can be effectively converted into information.
Advent of the Internet has simplified sales force access to centralized databases. It helps sales force stay in touch with each other as well as sales manager. Availability of the Internet has reduced the cost of managing communication. Mobile devices have further contributed to proliferation sales support system.
Another aspect of sales is after sales product support. Organizations have on-site or field service staff. The Internet has made field service management possible on a real-time basis.
Sales support system enhances productivity and efficiency of the sales force. The sales force remains aware of development around the potential clients on a real-time basis. This increases probability of closing a sales deal. The productive sales force not only increases market share but also improves profitability of organization.
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Communication Systems and Groupware – Information System Concepts that Apply in All Functional Areas of Business
February 12, 2025
