Salesforce

Disruptive technology is pushing organisations to explore their business processes and design end-to-end solutions that will automate and accelerate the flow of data across teams.

Business silos, disconnected apps, incomplete data and a lack of priority from the leadership team to address these issues is no longer an option for fast-moving, high-growth businesses.

Consumers are looking to buy what they need at a click of a button and expectations are high for the business to keep up or lose market share. According to Salesforce research, “70 percent of customers say that they expect connected experiences in which their preferences are known across touchpoints.”

Working towards a user-centric approach

To meet consumer expectations and deliver an exceptional customer experience, all business units from marketing to sales through to fulfilment and billing must come together. Creating one platform, end-to-end, that delivers one source of truth across the organisation.

The Lead to Ledger process focuses on the customer journey, in the moments that matter, from Lead generation to the general Ledger. Mapping transaction costs such as travel expenses and resource planning into the sales journey to give a more accurate view for all business units. Thus enabling the CFO to have access to real-time data and contextual intelligence and feeding back into the sales teams to sell faster and smarter. Quote to Cash brings together Configuring, Pricing, Quoting and Billing to manage business costs as well as sales opportunities. Legacy revenue management systems simply won’t cut it!

Leads: AI and marketing working together

AI in mar-tech is streamlining efforts for the marketing department, automating repetitive tasks, and handling complex workflows to drive results. Freeing up marketers to focus on the part of the job that requires the most humanity – engaging and serving customers.

Ninety-one percent of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer relevant information and recommendations. 80% are more likely to purchase from a brand that personalises their customer experience, and 72% only engage with targeted marketing messages.

Connecting marketing to sales

Harnessing the power of AI to highlight high scoring leads that can be alerted to sales, enables more responsiveness to customers’ needs and interests, through the right messaging, on the most appropriate channel. Generating valuable insights for sales to close the deal faster and smarter.

Without a connected system, salespeople can spend days tracking down customer data, contacting them on a whim without fully understanding the buyer intent.

When you have multiple configurable products, a client base with varying complexities, and salespeople or accountancy departments who are working across numerous orders. As well as operating different systems at the same time, there’s a huge risk of revenue leakage, and relationships with clients can be challenging. With artificial intelligence and good quality contact information, the sales teams can spend more time engaging and targeting the right opportunities.

Understanding the customer through effective engagement enables the sales team to gather information to recommend the right solution, whether it’s a product or a service.

The true cost of sale

Product catalogues are getting more complex as customer demands increase. Sales reps are entrusted to know all the product specifications, limitations, special offers and ‘deals of the day’ to keep up with the different customisations. If they get it wrong, the business pays a hefty price, not only in potential loss of revenue but also in reputation.

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) allows all the products, options, discounts and prices to be loaded in one system ready for quotes to be configured, priced and sent to the customer in minutes.

In order to close a sale, a sales executive may want to offer a larger discount or bundle products together to increase the overall package. With a unified system, the sales person will know the limits, ensuring the deal is profitable and can be delivered as promised. It also identifies opportunities to up-sell, cross-sell and offer alternatives based on the customer needs.

Streamlined automation

Providing quotes at speed, with confidence on delivery and accuracy on pricing, gives the business a competitive advantage and boosts reputation. The lack of bureaucracy empowers employees and speeds up the process. If a deal size is larger than sign-off, notifications can be activated automatically to ensure all parties are kept informed.

By collecting the relevant data to this point enables a contract to be automatically created, with all line items present as agreed and sent to the client/customer online. The fulfilment team have also got the information they need to arrange delivery. One platform, one source of truth, throughout the journey. But what about the costs?

Managing the bottom-line

Expense management and resource planning can have big cost centres and quite often, aren’t integrated prior to the contract creation. Resulting in revenue leakage, inaccurate reporting and miscalculated commission payments.

This isn’t the fault of the CFO, especially when working across legacy, disparate applications. CFO’s have large realms of data available to them as well as managing all the financial moving parts of the business. Wouldn’t it be powerful if they could put this data to best use to provide more accurate reports and insights?

How do I get started?

A starting point to managing marketing, sales, billing and finance in a more unified way, would be to invest in a discovery session with our technical consultants. Together, we can map out the best way forward.