SFA (Sales Force Automation) market has seen tremendous growth, and still has lot of promise in terms of growth and the value to enterprise. Software giants from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SalesForce.com to NetSuite, SugarCRM, and RightNow; they all have a piece of the SFA pie. Their SFA products range from seat license to SaaS model. And also a number of companies for various reasons embark on implementing their own custom-built SFA systems tailor-made to their line of business and processes.

Yet, the keys to success of a SFA implementation lie within the organization; not on the technology and the solution. Technology does play a role in implementing the SFA solution. Technology can pretty much do anything in this age; business needs to figure out what they want done!

I will not dwell on the benefits, bells and whistles of SFA products. There are hundreds of glossy papers (aka white papers) available from every SFA vendor highlighting the benefits of SFA, and what SFA can do for your business. We will focus on the key success factors of SFA that are internal to the organizations. And, it’s not coincident that all the keys to success identified below point to one single core strength of an organization - Leadership!

1. Executive Vision
Strong executive vision, direction and communication are the first steps towards the success of SFA. This should come from the highest level of the organization, and should be consistent. Executive direction and communication should not be limited to the project kick off, and for key successful milestones. It should be continuous and reinforcing. The “what, why, when and how” of SFA should be clearly communicated from top to the bottom.

2. Enterprise Mission
SFA implementation is an enterprise project, not a sales project, nor an IT project. Though, SFA focuses on sales force, and new customer acquisition, it touches almost all the functional areas in an organization. The cross-functional and collaborative nature of SFA should be identified early on, and emphasized heavily. SFA solution is as much for every employee in the organization, from shipping to customer service, from HR to marketing, as for a sales employee. SFA cannot be implemented successfully and meaningfully unless there is coordination, participation and co-operation from all the significant functional areas in an organization. Very much like CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SFA is an enterprise initiative, and so it should be communicated and developed.

3. Objectives of SFA
This should be the starting point in defining the functionality of SFA solution. SFA can do several things for an organization. Management needs to identify what it wants to achieve with the automation of sales force. It can be any of the following or all of the following:

1. Standardize Sales Process
   - standardizes sales process across territories and markets, creates a unified image for the company, creates single sales contact for the potential customer, standardizes sales communication to the customers, etc…
2. Efficient Sales process
   - makes sales process and sales force efficient by eliminating manual record keeping, streamlines contact management, provides automation so they can focus on selling.
3. Mobility and agility
   - provides mobility and agility for the sales force to access the SFA solution from anywhere, tapping into similar proposals, leveraging previous successes, and recorded organizational knowledge.
4. Better compensation
   - As the activity and the sales are recorded, bonus and compensation calculations become easier and efficient.
5. Ramp up of new hires, training
   - Provides uniform and consistent training for new hires about products, services, sales and other business processes.
6. Measure Sales Funnels, resources
   - Sales funnels can be measured by teams and management can make necessary adjustments in terms of resources (new leads, additional help, etc) based on the true funnels vs. forecasts.
7. Facilitate cleaner Order Processing for Fulfillment systems
   - Facilitates cleaner sales order information which eliminates customer disputes and offers better customer satisfaction.
8. Opportunities for networking, up-sells, cross-sells
   - provides opportunities for add on sales with existing customers, and referrals for new prospects.
9. Spurs new sales channels, partnerships
   - Spur new business partnerships for sales such as agents and alternative new-age channels.

Some organizations believe that these objectives of SFA are implicit and do not need to be explicitly identified. Not really! Some of these objectives can be conflicting to the nature of the enterprise. Or the implementation of one of the objectives can depend on the desire to achieve another objective. Also, we will be leaving scope for confusion and chaos if the objectives are not clearly mentioned. For example, an Organization wants to achieve objective 2 and 9 identified above. Objective 9, by its nature can create conflict and anxiety for sales force that belong to the traditional channels in the organization. Its imperative that management communicates what it intends to achieve and how it will handle conflicts.

Objectives need to be identified, time based road map of the objectives need to be developed and communicated to the enterprise. This sets up expectations, and eliminates confusion. It also sets the stage for metrics, and how to measure the success of the fulfillment of objectives.

4. Metrics
Once the objectives are identified, management needs to identify how the objectives will be measured. While metrics are needed to measure success, success is dependent on how employees embrace the metrics. Metrics needs to be communicated, discussed and refined to build trust and buy-in from the participating departments and functional areas. Metrics for the sake of metrics with no merit and no support will do no good. The analytical models that will be built on these metrics need to be identified and communicated.

5. Change Management
Like any significant enterprise initiative, SFA brings in Change in the organization. In order to embrace and benefit from SFA solution, a great deal of change management is needed.
SFA development requires champions of change at every level in an organization. Change Management is extremely critical and essential for SFA because of the functional domain it covers, and the strong sub-cultures associated with that domain. Sales is often treated as an independent and disjoint function in an organization. The typical thought process is - I bring the customer, you deal with the rest. As sales is the toughest, and one of the most tedious job in any organization, they are tuned to an adhoc culture. Every sales person might have his/her unique way of going about the job function. Influencing them to adapt a new way that’s beneficial for them as well as down-stream functions requires intense commitment from top management and internal PR campaign.

Sales often serve as the first interaction with the customer. Thus, sales process needs to set the precedence on customer experience within an enterprise. Organizations cannot afford to have two different faces; sales, and the rest-of-the-organization. Also, the benefits of the initiative and the incentives to achieve the objectives need to be clearly identified, and constantly communicated. And, again, this communication and drive should not just be limited to the sales force, but should span the entire organization.

Organizations that face buy vs. build decision (is there such a thing called pure ‘buy’ nowadays, it’s more like “buy, and then build on it, and ha, don’t forget we charge you an arm and length for consulting services” vs. build), and go ahead with building their own SFA solution, need to especially have clear focus on these areas.

Successful implementation of SFA solution certainly serves as a testament to the leadership of its organization.

Tags: change management, enterprise, enterprise mission, keys to success, leadership, metrics, Sales Force Automation, SFA, vision

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 3:39 am and is filed under SFA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.