To find a solution, we first must recognize a problem. According to a recent Cincom Survey of Australian manufacturers, three challenges that hinder growth the most are:

• Business Planning Process (46 percent)
• Sales Process (18 percent)
• Product Design and Development (18 percent)

According to the same survey, 52 percent of the respondents are looking to grow their businesses at rates of 10 percent or larger, yet the market expects to see growth of around 2 percent to 3 percent. Here are some tips on how to overcome these challenges for growth.

Focus on What the Customer Wants

It’s not just about delivering a product; it’s about delivering a whole product and service ecosystem to the customer. When an issue arises with a customer, the same end result is not always going to work for multiple customers. Manufacturers need to find what works for what customer, and keep practicing and refining their processes to support each customer.

Recognize Customer Perception

The time it takes to design, quote, prepare for and manufacture a product can vary significantly. But your perception of how long it takes, and your customer’s perception of how long it should take can be totally different. So who is right? If you want the business, it’s the customer. Being able to produce to the customer’s perception of time is important. How can we speed that up? The manufacturer who can manage not only the supply-chain lead time but also the demand-chain lead time (the time taken from initial inquiry, pricing, quoting, designing or customizing) is more likely to win the business than those who follow the traditional selling and production processes.

Focus on Service

How do I add value to the external customer? By providing out-of-this-world service. This attitude needs to be ingrained in the business from the shop floor to the top floor; not just a mantra. The service that is provided, along with the manufactured end product, should be a quality service, repeatable and better than the competitor’s.

Enable Customer Collaboration

As we know, the internet, web sales and email are both a blessing and a curse as consumer expectations of response times to queries and requests continue to shrink—not only in consumer transactions but also in business to business. Customers expect to be able to work online with you at all times and receive a response in an immediate time frame. There is a perception that you are going to be able to read an email within an hour of receiving it and reply within that same time frame.

These are just a few of the steps that manufacturers can focus on to decrease the strain of internal challenges that hinder their sales growth. If you would like to view the rest of Greg’s presentation, please click here, or view it in the player below.

CINCINNATI, Ohio — 

“Companies are looking for technology that makes them the easiest to buy from,” says Jerry Miller, Cincom Acquire managing director. “This is especially true for advanced manufacturers selling through large reseller networks. Cincom Acquire integrates a reseller’s products and options, making it quicker to generate complete proposals for their customers from one system.” Cincom Acquire helps companies:

• Close deals up to 80 percent faster
• Configure products and services
• Produce perfect quotes and proposals for customers and prospects
• Extend product, pricing and discounting knowledge to field reps, channel sales and dealers
• Access, view and analyze all sales activity and pipelines across all channels

Cincom Acquire enables true collaborative selling processes and provides guided selling, channel and distributor collaboration, sales and product configuration as well as quotation and proposal management and integrates with existing systems including Microsoft Dynamics® and other enterprise systems.

Cincom Acquire has helped companies selling complex products and services successfully streamline their sales, design and proposal processes by delivering critical product and sales knowledge to the point of sale, while significantly reducing “quote-to-cash” time. Cincom has helped manufacturers reduce proposal generation time from five days to 15 minutes, decrease time to close a sale by 80 percent and cut lead times from 14 weeks to six weeks. 

As a starting point, it is important to clearly establish the nature of the configurator tool being evaluated:

• Module of ERP suite (and can it be used with other ERP packages?)
• Module of CRM suite
• Stand-alone configurator
• Interactive Selling System
• Prebuilt vertical industry application

Important core features required for configuration are:

• Needs analysis – Are you able to specify the requirements of the customer in your own terminology?
• Product/service recommendation – Are you able to guide the customers to products or product lines based on the needs analysis?
• Constraints – Are you only able to select one feature or option excluding others?
• Dependencies – Are specific features automatically selected when they are dependent on another feature?
• Calculations – Does the configurator have mathematical functions?
• Pricing configuration – Does the configurator allow you define the pricing and discounting rules backed on customers, geographic locations and product lines?
• Module selection – Can the configurator automatically match the customer requirements to specific modular parts, products and services?
• Structured output – Is the configurator capable of generating structured outputs, such as configured bills of materials, based on the modules selected, while avoiding combinatorial explosion?
• Document output – Is the configurator capable of generating configured reports and documents in varying formats such as Word, PDF or HTML?
• System configuration – Does the configurator allow you to share common requirements, calculations, etc. across multiple configurations to supply a complete system?

Other useful features to explore are:

Process selection – Are you able to configure process components, such as production routings and project elements?

GUI screen builder – Does the configurator allow you to deploy and customize the end-user screens?

Visualization – Does the configurator link to drawings, schematics or interactive visuals representation?

• Default configurations – Do you have the ability to predefine configurations as starting points for specific customers, geographic locations, industries, etc?

• Multi-language – Are you able to easily deploy prompts and screens in multiple languages?

• Process flow definition – Does the configurator allow you to have different users with different process paths?

• Security – Does the configurator allow different end-users to be limited to certain functions within the same configuration process?

Before searching the software market for configurator tools, it is important to carefully consider some key questions and features that your business is looking for in a configurator.  At the strategic level, it is also important to identify the primary objectives and vision of the overall project, before being bombarded by supplier information.

To learn more about how product configurators can increase your advantage in your industry, download the white paper, “Interactive Selling Solutions for Complex Manufacturers,” which includes an in-depth analysis and review of what you need to know before purchasing a product configurator. Download the white paper here: http://ow.ly/kecqc

Evaluation of Configurators – The Extended Checklist 

Having established a core business foundation for mass customization and the configurator selection project, some basic internal questions should be asked to drive the software evaluation process:

1.     Is the enterprise ready to select and implement a configurator?

Configurators should be seen as technical enablers for mass customization.

There’s a two-way synergy between state-of-the-art product structures and state-of-the-art configurators. If the enterprise has not done the basic groundwork of product/service component definition and modular design, then it may be too early to look at configurator tools, and it may be better for the enterprise to invest its time, money and energy in a modularization exercise.

On the other hand, if the enterprise only has one or two product lines, or perhaps the “product” is a policy document of configured paragraphs, implementing a well-structured configurator may actually help in the definition of the modular components.

2.     What is the desired sales and service process for the enterprise?

This is a massively significant question that requires vision that goes beyond the limitations of existing processes.

The modern enterprise is faced with a multitude of sales and service channel possibilities driven by technology developments relating to global social, economic and political changes.

Is global customer self-service or development through the internet an enterprise objective? And if so, to what extent is this practical given the complexity of the product, its associated pricing and discounting calculations and the need to partition and transmit data securely?

Perhaps the major objective is to provide better internet-based sales support for agents, resellers or distributor channels.  Or maybe the enterprise is seeking to improve internal efficiency by cutting manpower costs and lead times within their existing sales, fulfillment and support processes, and if so, how can this be achieved practically?

Often the objective is to implement a multichannel/multi-phase strategy where customers or agents can use the internet for self-service product specification.  However, this then needs to be fed through to salespeople, technical support personnel or third-party channels for follow-up activities such as pricing and commercial negotiation.

3.     What knowledge needs to be captured in the configurator and deployed to support the desired sales, service and fulfillment process? 

• Are the products and services highly technical with many features, options and calculations?

• Is there complexity in the commercial areas of pricing and discounting?

• Are there regulatory compliance issues or industry standards driving the need for standardization and quality management of documents such as specifications and proposals?

• Is there a mixture of products and services, and if so, which should be included or excluded from the mass-customization project?

For most enterprises, the required configuration knowledge is likely to be combinations of technical product rules, calculations, marketing rules, pricing and discounting policies, customer history and industry compliance standards.

This is an edited excerpt of the white paper “Interactive Selling Solutions for Complex Manufacturers,” which includes an in-depth analysis and review of what you need to know before purchasing a product configurator. To learn more about what questions to ask and considerations to take into account when purchasing a product configurator, download the white paper here: http://ow.ly/kecqc

CINCINNATI, Ohio —

“What we see with our customers who implement knowledge-enabled configure, price, quote solutions is that they are not just selling  products and services,”  says Jim Wilson, Cincom Acquire Program Director, “they are also selling more value because they are putting knowledge around recommendations and guidance.”

Cincom Acquire helps companies:

• Close deals up to 80 percent faster
• Configure products and services
• Produce perfect quotes and proposals for customers and prospects
• Extend product, pricing and discounting knowledge to field reps, channel sales and dealers
• Access, view and analyze all sales activity and pipelines across all channels

Cincom Acquire enables true collaborative selling processes and provides guided selling, channel and distributor collaboration, sales and product configuration as well as quotation and proposal management and integrates with existing systems including Microsoft Dynamics® and other enterprise systems.

Cincom Acquire has helped companies selling complex products and services successfully streamline their sales, design and proposal processes by delivering critical product and sales knowledge to the point of sale, while significantly reducing “quote-to-cash” time. Cincom has helped manufacturers reduce proposal generation time from five days to 15 minutes, decrease time to close a sale by 80 percent and cut lead times from 14 weeks to six weeks.

The Manufacturing Pricing Excellence event is organized to help manufacturing companies gain understanding on up-to-date industry developments and best practices in pricing through hearing the latest industry case studies and participating in keynote sessions and interactive master classes that can support your strategy in developing growth for your business.

According to market analysts, a one percent improvement in price can generate up to an 11 percent increase in profitability. Pricing is a very complex and cross-functional process. In order to be successful, all departments (Marketing, Sales, Finance, R&D, Manufacturing and Supply) need to be involved to achieve that one percent improvement in price and associated profitability.

Cincom, as an expert in solving complex business problems, will be present to discuss its Cincom Acquire® solution. This multi-channel, multi-currency selling solution automates the pricing and quoting of complex products and services. It helps companies streamline sales processes by delivering critical pricing and product and sales knowledge to the point of sale, while significantly reducing quote generation time from days to minutes and closing deals up to 80 percent faster.
The Advanced Pricing Engine of Cincom Acquire rapidly deploys any pricing and discounting rules and can be integrated with other applications such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics® and others.

For more info about the event, visit: http://www.pricingeurope.com/.

The presentation discusses five key business concepts that are often overlooked in challenging economic environments. It will also demonstrate how culture and the commitment to a constant-improvement mindset can bolster teams in difficult times.

The Importance of Planning

Cincom recently commissioned a survey of Australian industrial manufacturers to find out how these businesses plan to grow under the certain climate. According to the survey, most companies noted that Planning (46 percent) was the process that required the most improvement in their businesses with Sales (18 percent) and Product Design and Development following (18 percent each).

“The more complex your business, the more difficult it is to plan for it”, says Greg Mills, Cincom ANZ Country Manager. “Whether you produce a complex good, operate a complex process with intricate regulations or supply chains, have complicated selling and quoting systems or even function on a project-based business model, manufacturing isn’t a straightforward service. At Cincom, we want to help these types of manufacturers better plan and execute for success”.

To celebrate the launch of new Cincom software solutions and the partnership with Microsoft Dynamics®, Cincom will be holding a competition at stand 2800. Attendees that solve the puzzle in the shortest time can win a two-night family accommodation voucher and more.

In addition, Cincom will display its Cincom Acquire® configure, price, quote software and its Cincom Total™ ERP software, natively developed within the Microsoft Dynamics AX platform. Cincom Total is the only knowledge-driven ERP solution that enables manufacturers to manage and optimise their total business from complex selling through manufacturing to aftermarket services.

About National Manufacturing Week

National Manufacturing Week, held 7 May to 10 May in Melbourne, is in its 43^rd year and consists of more than 300 local and international manufacturing industry suppliers and presenters. The theme for this year’s event focuses on presenting solutions that help manufacturers target new, higher-value sectors as well as boosting productivity in their day-to-day operations.

About Cincom Systems

For 44 years, Cincom has helped thousands of clients worldwide by solving complex business problems with its software and services. For more information about Cincom’s products and services, contact Cincom at 1-800-022-871, send an e-mail to info@cincom.com.au or visit the company’s website at www.cincom.com.au.  Cincom is a Microsoft Global Strategic Partner in Manufacturing.

Last February 2013, Cincom Australia organised a survey asking Australian manufacturers to share the most important challenges they face today and what critical value they need in order to meet them. Participants got a chance to enter a drawing for a $100 gift voucher to spend at the JB Hi-Fi store.  We’re happy to announce that our lucky winner is Tony Zadravec of Bradnams Windows and Doors Pty Ltd.

Congratulations Tony!  We’d also like to thank everyone who participated in the survey.

Cincom’s relationship with Microsoft has grown significantly over the past year.

In March 2012, Cincom announced that it had signed a strategic, global independent software vendor (ISV) agreement with Microsoft to deliver enhanced enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution capabilities. Cincom agreed to create a new ERP solution combining the breadth of Microsoft Dynamics AX with Cincom’s deep domain expertise in complex manufacturing.

In July 2012, Cincom furthered the relationship by adding its Cincom Acquire^® configure, price, quote (CPQ) software to the global ISV agreement. The agreement integrated Cincom Acquire with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It also integrated the Cincom Guru™ business rule engine to knowledge-enable the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform by automating decision-making using business rules.

In August 2012, Cincom announced a new Microsoft Dynamics practice that would resell Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Office 365 in the United States.

In March 2013, Cincom announced its new Cincom Total™ ERP software, natively developed within the Microsoft Dynamics AX platform. Cincom Total is the only knowledge-driven ERP solution that enables manufacturers to manage and optimize their total business from complex selling through manufacturing to aftermarket services.

“Cincom is an example of an organization that is driving innovation in complex manufacturing.  They are delivering solutions that help our customers save money and discover new ways to sell and achieve more,” said Doug Kennedy, Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics Enterprise Sales and Customer Lifecycle Management.

“This whole idea of being closer to the buyer, of understanding their requirements, becomes a huge challenge,” says Jim Wilson, program director for Cincom Acquire®. “Because now you’ve got non-employees, distributors and reps who are out interacting with the customer and you [are sitting at the office] trying to understand how to meet their needs.”

Mike Shields, president of the eLogic Group, a consulting company and Cincom partner that simplifies business practices for mixed-mode manufacturers, agrees that multi-channel selling adds another layer of complexity to the process—one that often needs to be simplified by technology.

“It’s no longer suitable or workable to have a single interface point or a single set of tools that are going to be used by those people who are capturing [sales] demand. As you reach out into the different segments—and we see this all the time—the experience that you want for a highly trained application engineer inside your company and the experience that you need to have for a new agent selling into an emerging market in Africa or the former East Bloc are completely different.

“[It’s different] in terms of what their knowledge base is, how they will use the tools and the capabilities and limitations that you need to place on them in order to get [the product] right for the customer.”

To hear more from Mike Shields, view his interview with Cincom’s Jim Wilson in the Unfair Sales Advantage video series below or visit http://acquire.cincom.com/unfairsalesadvantage.

Learn how Cincom Acquire can help you simplify your multi-channel selling. 

Big data is a problem because if you can’t extract the data you need, you can’t extract the information. And if you can’t extract the information, you can’t develop the knowledge necessary to make good business decisions—including those in the sales process.

Cincom recently spoke with Cincom partner and advanced manufacturing expert, Mike Shields of the eLogic Group, about big data, its effect on the sales process and what technology is doing to help.

How can big data improve sales effectiveness at the point of sale?

“In the past, the historical barriers to big data have been simply the cost of gathering the data from the disparate sources across the organization. And then extracting, transforming and loading those into some data warehouse,” says Shields, president of the eLogic Group, a consulting company and Cincom partner that simplifies business practices for mixed-mode manufacturers.

“Today the tools that we’re using encapsulate knowledge in a context-sensitive, user-relevant manner. If you’re the salesperson, you need the knowledge necessary to make tradeoffs in what you are selecting for your customer, or to make pricing adjustments based upon the market segment, the channel, the geography, the customer and even your competition. That’s a certain kind of knowledge that you need right at that point in the process. And those are enabled right at that point of demand.”

How does big data affect my organization as a whole?

“What we’re seeing now is the need for predictive analytics, where companies are actually building upon the granularity of the sales transactions in the market data and the analytics of the market and sales management functions themselves. Companies are coming to recognize what’s going on earlier and earlier in these processes and are being able to respond proactively instead of reactively months or even years behind.”

To hear more from Mike Shields, view his interview with Cincom’s Jim Wilson in the Unfair Sales Advantage video series below or visit http://acquire.cincom.com/unfairsalesadvantage.

Learn how Cincom Acquire, combined with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, can add knowledge-based decision-making at the point of sale. 

1.  Formation of Cloud Services and Technologies

The evolution of cloud technologies is taking shape, and having  functionality of business applications between both the cloud and on-premise is essential to business today.  Understanding of the cloud is very minimal; the average person does not understand what the cloud is and what it can accomplish when used in a business setting.  Today, the lines between life and work are blurring. The cloud allows for accessibility for business to continue, even when you are not in the office.  There are over 400 cloud-based services available to the average user.  Microsoft offers multiple cloud-based services connecting you to your PC at work, your mobile device on the go and even your laptop, TV and gaming system at home.  Microsoft has created an easy-to-access and easy-to-use cloud network that can streamline business, and this was showcased at Convergence.

2.  Mobility

Productivity is mobile because people are mobile.  Shouldn’t your CRM system be mobile as well?  We as individuals are becoming more reliant on our mobile devices to connect us to one another and our businesses.  Microsoft ensures that you have the ability to access your customer data on the go, that the user experience is simple and intuitive and that the service is uninterrupted with access to CRM information in real time.  Having that real-time information connects you to your prospects 24/7, creating a chance to close sales faster.

3.  Social Media Emergence on the Horizon

More than ever, people and organizations are communicating and sharing information via social media.  So wouldn’t it make sense to incorporate that into your CRM strategy?  Microsoft has shown their social hand and shared that they are ready for the social emergence.  Integrating CRM with a social strategy can break down the communication barriers that exist, not only internally but with your customers as well.  But how can you track the social activity of your prospects within CRM?  Microsoft announced that in the future a social analytics feature will be added to Dynamics CRM.

4.  Customer-Centric Strategy

Today’s customers are highly empowered, connected and in the know.   Your CRM strategy should be engineered to easily allow your sales organization to effectively respond to your prospects and drive successful sales outcomes.  Unifying sales personnel, their prospects and technology allows you to freely influence the business process and move forward in the buy cycle, ultimately closing business and leading to success.  Microsoft is looking to deeply engage prospects, building a creditable reputation and collaborating with prospects to close sales faster.

Interested in learning about how Cincom Acquire® CPQ and Microsoft Dynamics® CRM can drive innovation and sales? Visit acquire.cincom.com.

To learn more about Microsoft Convergence 2014, visit www.microsoft.com.

What are the benefits of integrating CRM and sales automation?

“We actually had a customer that is in the medical supply business, and they had a lengthy contract,” said Marsden. “Through implementing the CRM system and … automating the sales process, they were able to cut their contracting time from two weeks down to a couple of days. The customers really enjoyed doing business with this company over their competition.”

But if an attorney does not like the wording in a contract, can’t those two weeks turn into a month?

“Without having a CRM system in place, a lot of times some of that delay in doing the contract negotiations is just visibility into where you are in the process. And when you automate it, the salespeople have immediate access into where the contract negotiations are. Everything is electronic. You can push information back and forth to the customer in an efficient way. You can really just take that inefficiency out of the process, and modern CRM systems are critical in doing that.”

How does today’s plethora of education buyers affect the sales cycle?

“Since we’re entering into the sales cycle much later in the game, how do we make sure we prioritize the salesperson’s time? How do we ensure that we promote the right leads for them to focus on? And then, how do we change our sales behavior so that we recognize that well, this buyer is probably pretty educated, so how can I add intrinsic value? How can I provide insight? By knowing our products, how are we going to be able to better suit their organization? That’s what we are seeing overall in the sales market.”

To hear more from Connor Marsden, view his interview with Cincom’s Jay McKeever in the Unfair Sales Advantage video series below or visit http://acquire.cincom.com/unfairsalesadvantage.

Learn how Cincom Acquire® extends Microsoft Dynamics CRM to improve sales automation. 

But fast-forward two years to when you’re trying to integrate this point solution with something else new. You can’t get the analytics you want, and the systems don’t talk to each other in the best possible way—causing daily headaches and making your business growth fall behind.

“If you can buy a platform [solution] from the get go, if you are a fast-growing manufacturer or distributor, if you can buy a platform that can solve all of your business needs together, that’s the preferred route to go,” said Connor Marsden, U.S. Director for Microsoft Dynamics® CRM, in an interview with Cincom’s Expert Access Radio (see video of interview below).

A platform technology, according to Mike Shields of the eLogic Group, is a foundation upon which you can build and deploy the necessary solutions to get it right for your customer base. In other words, it’s where enterprise software such as CRM or ERP has development partners that create products that work seamlessly with the enterprise software, so it not only integrates but grows as the enterprise software and its end-user business grow.

“Unfortunately, not all companies go in the direction [of platform solutions]. The point systems add up, and that is where we find frustrated users [asking] why does this point solution not integrate with that point solution? Why can’t my configuration tool not see where my current inventory is? And why can I not see the active POs that are sitting in our payables solution? Why does it not work together?

“In that case, it really behooves business owners to say, ‘Okay, how can we really simplify the ball game for our end-users and buy a solution that gives us the capability that we need within one solution?’  This is certainly what we’re doing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM plus the Acquire solution from Cincom.”

Swivel-Chair Integration

“There’s nothing more comical than getting a quote from a customer and then asking if you can turn it into an order, and you respond with ‘Hold on a second, I need to enter this order into another system,’” said Marsden.

Insiders call that swivel-chair integration, where you get the quote, you swivel your chair around to another keyboard, and then you re-key the whole thing.

“Then two weeks later your customer calls up and says, ‘Hey, I placed an order, then we made some changes to it from the quote. Can you pull the quote back up?’ and the person who’s looking at the order has no idea what that quote is because it’s not in the same system. You can’t see the history of that interaction with that customer, and the customer leaves thinking, ‘Wow, is this a company that I want to be doing business with?’

“That customer may not call again.”

To hear more from Connor Marsden, view his interview with Cincom’s Jay McKeever and Jon Thomas in the Unfair Sales Advantage video series below or visit http://acquire.cincom.com/unfairsalesadvantage.

Learn how Cincom Acquire® extends Microsoft Dynamics CRM to improve sales automation. 

• Dealers can have niche expertise into some markets
• Dealers can have a large base of existing customers
• Dealers can simply increase the number of “feet on the street”

Niche expertise

Suppose you create the next “wiz-bang” software program for insurance companies, but you have no connections in the insurance industry. Partnering with consulting companies that specialize in working with insurance companies means they can introduce your product to their customers because those insurance companies are already familiar with the consulting company.

Large customer base

Because consulting companies already have a relationship and have worked with many insurance companies, and have them as existing customers, they can easily contact those customers to talk about purchasing this new “wiz-bang” software package that will help them win more business.

“Feet on the street”

Because the dealers are not employees, companies don’t have to worry about salaries, benefits, offices, parking spots, etc. Dealers are paid only when they sell the product, so a company can afford to have many more dealers working for them than they could have employees.

The Challenges

All of  that sounds positive and it is. But with a dealer network, there are some new issues that a company must deal with.

A company with internal salespeople can dictate how those salespeople report sales activity. For companies that use CRM, probably all accounts, opportunities, quotes, orders, etc. are stored in the CRM system so sales analysis reporting is a simple matter of running a report to see what sales deals will close this month and for how much. But capturing that timely sales information and activity for the dealers is a different and more challenging task.

To record an opportunity, companies have their dealers call in and talk to a sales administrator or dealer manager. The company has the sales administrator enter the opportunity information into the company’s system. The problem is that the sales administrators can only process so many opportunities, quotes and orders, and transcription errors can occur. To get updated sales-forecasting data, some companies call into their dealers at regular intervals and ask what is being sold, to whom, for how much and when will it close. The problem is, the company has up-to-date sales information only as of the call. If a dealer gets a new opportunity right after the status calls ends, the company’s sales information is out of date. The best solution is for the company to give the dealers a system that helps them sell more easily and effectively plus keeps the company up-to-date on the sales activity information. That solution is a dealer sales portal built on top of the CRM system.

Dealer Portal

A good dealer sales portal would help dealers sell more effectively by giving them all of the tools they need to sell the company’s product. Features of this portal would include:

• Maintaining the dealer’s accounts, contacts and products
• A product catalog to guide the dealer to the right product for a customer
• Quickly and easily creating quotes with tools that help to configure products accurately
• Easily generating customized, professional sales proposals when needed
• Providing standard reports for customers, opportunities, sales analysis, etc.
• Storing all data in the CRM system all the time

For the dealers, this portal is their selling system—making it easy to sell the company’s product.

For the company, since all of the data is stored in the CRM system, the company has clear visibility into the dealer’s sales channel without needing those sales update calls. When the company wants to forecast sales, they run their normal sales analysis reports, and all dealer opportunities will display just like all of the internal salespeople’s opportunities. Companies can do much better in forecasting sales and, ultimately, improving their cash flow when both the internal salespeople and dealers use the CRM system to store and maintain all of the information.

A good dealer sales portal is a very key ingredient for companies that want to increase sales revenues via their dealer network. Having that dealer sales portal running on top of CRM is a must for companies that want clear visibility into the dealer opportunities so they can improve sales forecasting and cash flow management.