AVO Chief

Its always a challenge when you are trying to create a solution from scratch.  Like my Linksys by Cisco, CIO mentor Tim Good once said “You try to buy before you build”.  The reason is that if a business builds new solutions for all its issues, that company may not be able to focus on their core business because they have to spend time maintaining  and updating more code.  Unfortunately even though that approach is clear there is not always a clear Off-The-Shelf solution at that time.  This was the case when we were challenged with developing a .Net custom Sales Quoting  application to integrate with Salesforce.com. We were able to successfully design and develop a pilot application. But just a year later Big Machines Inc., an on-demand sales configuration and proposal software, announced that it was developing a new native application on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com.  The new application would enable sales teams and channels to easily generate professional sales documents from within a Salesforce CRM opportunity.

Using the new BigMachines application, sales reps would be able to add products and quotes to opportunities and manage pricing and discounts. System administrators would be able to build templates for sales documents, such as proposals, quotes and contracts, using BigMachines Document Engine, and publish the templates to sales reps, who select their selling documents from within their familiar Salesforce CRM interface.

Regardless of what solution you choose here are some key process steps  to consider for implementation.  The key focus is process improvement and reduction of waste and causes of errors with a drive toward continuous improvement.

• You should begin by doing a gap analysis of your sales process.  Try to map the process starting from the customer backwards all the way to product manufacturing.
• This is a good time to get feedback from customers and sales people as to what the pain points are in the current process and where improvements could be made.
• Take a snapshot of your current systems and sales tools and how they support your quoting, ordering, and customer service processes.
• Design the “To-be” state of your sales process and then see where technologies (web) would have the greatest value impact in the process. A key focus is to reduce areas of waste such like paper processing, data re-entry, and faxing.  These are definite areas where web technologies can help to eliminate waste.
• Establish key metrics that will be used to measure success of the project.
• When setting up the project plan set up clear roles, responsibilities and include Rapid Prototype tasks and milestones so that pilot users can get in their feedback in an efficient manner.  Try to involve as many different user types as possible (customers, distributors, sales, engineering) so as to get as much feedback and possible concerns early so the final solution can be tailored appropriately before a broad rollout.
• After launch, continue to track metrics to measure success and drive continuous improvement.

Written by AVO Chief

Efren Duarte is Director of Products & Services and AVO Chief (Strategist/Evangelist) at Avocera Products & Services Consulting and principal of the AVMI Group, a market research based venture management firm. The AVO Chief provides 2-Week Money Back Guarantee Product Marketing/Management Services Trial for qualified Startups and SMBs with growth potential. Inquire at avochief@ymail.com for more details.

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