Big Data Handling in Sales - No Way Around Digitalization

Those need to be on hand at all times—and setting them up smartly, fed, and maintained properly is a necessity. Collecting, maintaining, monitoring, reporting data for consumed volumes to also provide proactive alerts is unbeatable—ideally getting them linked to price levels and get alerts on the measures to be taken, when ‘item’s sold volume’ is running against the fixed cost elements of a defined business case, or even if the agreed business cycle is coming to an end OR amortization effects have been accomplished early. Digitalization and transparency can be the friend of the seller and buyer likewise—whoever is using the data on hand in his best interest.

To emphasize the importance of price management and to combine the volume aspect with the prices locked in- needs certain action. This subject is as old as auto manufacturers buy parts. There is no such thing as a volume guarantee from the automotive buyer side, but there is also no guarantee that the price stays unchanged if the volume-related base conditions change significantly either. When it is too late, money is often down the drain - simply the ‘fire alarm bell’ for fast response subjects before it happens saves money. Such big data management connected with today's business targets is simply impossible to bear without some sort of cloud support.

Good Dashboard Monitoring would Contain:

price adjustments, payment terms, change management, phase-out management, tool and equipment amortization, late payments or no payments, credit control, order book development, retention management, discount monitoring, claim management, contract management, cost of sales monitoring, customer intelligence, competitor watch, control of ownership, customer organization tracking, cost of sales monitoring, performance ranking, account penetration, material price management, project pipeline management, and customer portfolio monitoring.

Control of Ownership

Another aspect to mention is the control of ownership of physical manufacturing assets like tools, gauges, fixtures, project-specific investment, which comes heavily into play, whenever a customer underpaid assets amortized into items sold, but the volume falls behind to make it impossible to amortize fully. Such monitoring makes it almost impossible to track and trace for hundreds of part numbers managed typically in automotive.

Performance Management

In modern times most sales organizations work 'remote' - and the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies this trend tremendously, that people management is purely digitized. Besides the salesforce support, also management tools for reporting, follow-up, and monitoring are required to be accessible easily. This adds to the leading trend of digitization and having a single point of truth mechanisms - a necessity for modern leadership. Giving the remote teams a chance to address alerts earliest and record pending subjects in case teams are changing heads. This is even more important for regions with high fluctuation in the sales force. A positive 'bycatch' of using digital systems for pending duties in the salesforce is to reduce overload in mail traffic when so-called 'logbooks' and 'alert messaging' are combined. It not only helps for handover procedures but also to streamline subjects across the levels - ideally standardized.Podcasters would say: "...put it in the show notes", here it gets centrally stored in the digitized logbook.

.Customer Intelligence

At times companies reduce traveling, all kind of virtual management becomes increasingly important too—so does customer intelligence. The banking industry knows what is meant by ‘KYC’—it stands for ‘Know Your Customer’ and very simply said, it supports avoiding wrong bookings and enable a proper service level. The same value it gives to any salesforce—and again a good CRM system helps to build up organizational charts with relevant side information too—describing relationship tactics and define future targets for top-to-top dialogues backing up the daily duties of the salesforce in the field. It becomes obvious that modern sales forces can hardly catch up with their peers without following the trends of proper CRM solutions.

Closing with salesman's greeting: Sky's the limit!