1. Electronic Commerce Semester 2 Term 2 Lecture 18

2. Intranets & Sales Automation The Intranet-enabled sales automation framework has multiple benefits Bridging “islands” of information Building a smart solution Electronic publishing Extending information sharing

3. Bridging Islands of Information It helps bridge the islands of information that can exist within a company, especially within sales and marketing Intranets are an important tool for augmenting sales productivity as they provide a single point of access to all essential information on customers, prospects, products, marketing programs and marketing channels Some existing systems supplement the essentials with industry data and data on competitors

4. Building a Smart Solution The availability of interactive web monitoring software and intelligent agents makes it possible to build a ‘smart’ solution that delivers vital, specific sales intelligence directly to the desktop of each sales representative instead of mounds of general information These intelligent agents make direct sales and direct marketing more efficient by automating highly repetitive support tasks, like answering requests for product literature and writing letters and by reducing the time the salespeople spend on non-selling tasks

5. Electronic Publishing Intranets can also be used for electronic publishing, to educate and inform sales representatives and make the selling process more proactive by providing all the information and tools necessary to close the sale on-site at a customer location Using Intranets as a publishing medium offers an inexpensive, easy-to-use, easily updated alternative to paper-based, LAN-based and CD- ROM-based documentation systems Also, Intranets remove the obstacles inherent with publishing information in multiplatform environments

6. Extending Information Sharing Once the Intranet-based solution is in place, companies find it possible to extend information sharing beyond the boundaries of the enterprise, to outside parties critical to the sales effort The collection and analysis of marketing information improves the timeliness and quality of marketing and sales executives’ decision making Organisations can extend marketing and sales intelligence to distributors, third-party partners or even customers

7. Benefits of the Intranet for Sales Shorten the sales cycle through prequalification of prospects Increase revenue through targeted marketing Automate the management and qualification of Web leads Capture all customer information directly into sales databases Enhance order management with access to data on pricing, promotions, availability, production schedules, export regulations, carriers, and transportation schedules

8. Intranets & a Mobile Sales Force The ability to act quickly often implies that the salesforce is mobile No longer do sales people have to be in the office or logged onto a LAN system in order to do their work The more recent trend in sales automation is towards solutions designed to serve the unique needs of remote or mobile user populations – whose job limits their ability to be connected while they work

9. Integrating the Web with Contact Management Many organisations have set up Web sites for customer contact The goal now is to seamlessly integrate the Web front-end with the existing sales process to achieve better productivity E.g. leads are collected from an organisation’s Internet Web site, and then sorted and automatically e-mailed to the appropriate sales person With the click of a mouse thesee leads are transferred directly into the sales database Automatic e-mail notifications are sent ot the prospects, acknowledging their website request

10. Contact Management Requirements Track and manage prospect targeting, direct marketing campaigns, response measurement, and prospect qualification Apply target profiles to lists to identify prospects Assign leads based on product type, regions, territories and markets Share access to information among headquarters staff, field locations, and channel partners to support team selling Pull all information about an opportunity into a single consolidated viewto facilitate complex sales Assist is quote preparation based on customer sales history and expected purchases