Electronic Commerce Semester 2 Term 2 Lecture 19

Intranets & Target Marketing In the area of direct marketing, Intranets help hone the efficiency of customer contacts The Intranet interface adds value to the customer interchange by automating the process of qualifying leads from an external Web home page Used in conjunction with other applciations, the Intranet enables the integration of the Web as an interactive marketing forum to become an input to the sales and marketing processes within the company

How Does This Work? The external web page enables a prospective customer to simply register their interest level and information direcly into the home page The lead is then automatically assigned to the appropriate inside telesales representative and a follow-up task and assignment are immediately sent off As the representative starts to work with the lead, all the relevant information has been captured and can be immediately put to use increasing productivity of the salesforce and ultimately shortening the sales cycle

Components of the Typical Database All customer contacts, whether by mail, phone, direct salesperson or national account manager The status of all sales efforts The origins of all leads All leads that are being qualified internally and by whom, and all leads that have been forwarded to distributors All customers who decided to buy What and when they purchased Any incentive or promotions that helped close the deal Co-ordination of information through this system prevents independent marketing groups from pursuing the same customers with conflicting promotions

Co-Ordination Requirements Being Met by Intranets Provide individualised lead and contact management through automatically updated to do lists and followup lists Drive leads to closure while tracking all the decision makers, even if they are distributed over multiple sites Automatically escalate action requests and notify appropriate people when deal status changes Generate forecasts, including product, territory, regional, nationals and worldwide reports Generate lost business reports to support analysis of product/market needs

Publishing Dynamic Sales Information The sales environment changes constantly, as promotions and price lists are updated and leads and competitive information become available Hence, it is important to keep everyone up to date Intranets have proven that they are the ideal medium for facilitating effective busienss communications They provide universal access to dynamic, up-to- the-minute sales intelligence to all over the enterprise

Implementation Challenges Business problem: timely and low cost distribution of information; need to reduce cycle time for filling orders Solution: Use world wide web to publish and solicit content; automate processes using Intranets and enable electronic sales via the web Requirements: Interface internal order management systems with the web Benefits: Low-cost medium with fast turnaround’ enables world wide electronic sales; automates internal business processes

What are the Management Issues? Creation of an integrated sales database is an astute management investment The database chronicles every one of a company’s marketing and sales activities from advertising that generates leads to direct mail and telephone qualification of the leads, to closing the first sale – all the way through the life of each account It enables marketing and sales management to relate marketing actions with marketplace results