infoTECH Feature

June 07, 2016

Deploying Technology to Your Global Sales Team? Don't Make This Mistake

By Special Guest
Sam Barclay, Exec. VP and Managing Dir., North America and APAC, StayinFront

When IT departments want to deploy big ERP systems, customer websites or customer service centers, it goes something like this: they determine what is needed, the solution is delivered, the problem is solved, the IT team leaves. 

IT culture prizes ‘delivery’ and ‘solutions’ – things that have made IT organizations incredibly successful at delivering business solutions on a timeline. But whereas this culture has brought IT a long way, it now stands in the way of delivering to sales and marketing organizations – which have inherently different and ever-changing needs – especially when these teams are global.

Why does a delivery culture not work well for delivering systems to support sales and marketing organizations? Because in sales and marketing, nothing is ever finished except last quarter’s numbers. There are always new milestones to reach, new targets to meet and new products, competitors, and promotions – every quarter.  The culture of the sales and marketing organization is one of constant change, constant movement, and constantly shifting tactics.

When their goals are changing constantly, but their software is unable to keep up with the demands, sales reps and marketers will become dissatisfied very quickly. I have seen it first hand: when the software doesn’t meet their needs, sales reps will fill the vacuum – jerry-rigging the system with a proliferation of spread sheets, local (often manual) processes, and non-corporate systems – ultimately shutting out the IT folks (and their software applications) who aren’t there to help them.

As a result, when it comes to developing software for sales and marketing, the culture of “deliver and leave” must be replaced with a culture of constant service and constant change. Technology delivery must become a constantly evolving process, rather than a point-in-time delivery. So how can IT organizations accomplish this?

They must first begin to think of sales and marketing technology in terms of quarterly or monthly deliveries that never end, rather than a single fixed delivery point.  They can do this by laying out a roadmap for technology to support sales and marketing and sharing this roadmap so that the sales team can see that there is a process of constant improvement ahead. For example, by moving to the cloud, the technology team can reinforce the culture of delivering a ‘service’, rather than a point-in-time solution. A governance team made up of business and IT can determine the capabilities that will be delivered in the system over the following 12 months, ensuring that there is a clear line from business need to delivery of the functionality that will support that business need.

With a view into the future, the sales team can be confident that the time that they invest in the system will not be lost. In the past, one of the barriers to adoption of technology in sales has been the perception that time invested in entering information into the system may be lost when the current system is swapped out for a new one.

A good way for IT organizations to overcome this problem is to deploy a product that allows quick enhancements on a regular basis rather than a product that requires expensive resources to change and upgrade. This means moving to the cloud and choosing tools that can be configured to meet business requirements. By ensuring that applications can be configured without custom coding, , IT teams can easily add new capabilities and functionalities, and integrate additional systems.

IT organizations need to change their approach when delivering to sales and marketing teams. They need to look not just at last quarter’s numbers, but at this quarter’s numbers, next quarter’s numbers, and so on. They need to always be asking themselves, ‘What are we going to deliver next?’ Global deployment is a process, not a one-time event. 

About the Author 

Barclay is the Executive Vice President and Managing Director, North America and APAC, for StayinFront, a leading global provider of mobile, cloud-based field force effectiveness and customer relationship management solutions for consumer goods and life sciences organizations.




Edited by Peter Bernstein
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