Benefits and Challenges of the Trend toward Sales Force Automation (SFA)

In his July 2011 article from CFO, "Now you see (some of) IT", David Rosenbaum evaluates the trend toward companies using online Sales Force Automation (SFA) tools.  The largest problem at the senior management and executive level is a lack of visibility in the company sales pipeline.  This was illustrated by a drop in stock price for ShoreTel when the CFO missed his earnings projection because the company couldn't identify poor sales from its portfolio of channel partners.  Rosenbaum reports the reality of missed earning to an 18% increase in the likelyhood of a CFO being dismissed.  This should capture a CFO's attention.  Another illustration demonstrated the old method of using Excel spreadsheets can quickly mire down an organization in the sales process.

He goes on to report some good news.  The cost gap is closing for SFA and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools.  They are now affordable.  Yet, the challenge for the CFO and organization still remains in matching the tool to the process in order to maximize the company's bottom line. 

Rosenbaum shows us that when selecting a vendor and product, one needs to consider deal size and geographic  distribution.  Further, integration with the company's financial system will eventually come into play.  And while the trend is encouraging for these IT Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, SageCRM, NetSuite, and SugarCRM, the article shows us that a couple lingering blind spots remain for executives.  Tying a company's marketing-spend to the return on the company sales effort for one.  Another is the identification of lost opportunities such as markets you don't know exist or your company simply hasn't considered. 

Even while these challenges remain, Kenesco encourage our client companies to begin a move toward online SFA tools.  Coupled with our managed services, this can help you reduce your company's overall technology service desk cost.  Also, the knowledge in your sales team's hand while in the field is greatly improved thereby increasing your probability of closing sales.  For assistance with SFA tool selection, we can help.  Call Kenesco today to inquire.

David Knea

CEO, Kenesco

+1 (773) 935-2897

sales at kenesco.com