04 CRM Software

Question 1

For what stands SFA?

Answer 1

Sales Force Automation

Question 2

What are SFA applications?

Answer 2

SFA applications enable B2B organizations to automate sales activities, processes and administrative responsibilities for the sales professional.

Question 3

What are the core functionality of SFA applications?

Answer 3

Core functionality includes account, contact and opportunity management; sales solution functionality (such as sales configuration and content management); and sales operations support (including incentive compensation and territory management).

Question 4

Explain the Magic Quadrant.

Answer 4

The Magic Quadrant aims to provide a qualitative analysis into the market of SFA applications. It rates applications upon two criteria: completeness of vision and ability to execute. These component scores lead to an application position in one of four quadrants:

• Leaders are said to score higher on both criteria.
• Challengers are said to score higher on the ability to execute and lower on the completeness of vision.
• Visionaries are said to score lower on the ability to execute and higher on the completeness of vision.
• Niche players are said to score lower on both criteria.

Question 5

How is the customer service contact center built?

Answer 5

The customer service contact center is built in layers:

1. CRM business applications for customer interaction.
   
   • Applications like customer service, CRM databases, surveys,…
2. Offline analytical tools
3. Contact infrastructure
   
   • Such as interactive voice response, automatic call distribution, e-mail,…
4. Workforce optimization tools
   
   • Tools like call recording, quality management solutions, e-learning and more.
5. Enterprise feedback management

Question 6

What is a sales pipeline?

Answer 6

A sales pipeline works by placing cohorts of leads or prospects at the different stages of the sales process/sales cycle, and then measuring their progress through the pipeline, from unqualified lead to satisfied repeat customer.

Sales pipeline management is nothing more than estimating incoming cash flow. We look at our leads and prospects, make some estimates of the likelihood that they’ll eventually buy our products and services, and feed that information along with their expected spend into our projections to find out how much revenue we’re expecting to make.

Question 7

What are some important SFA trends?

Answer 7

Mobility via smartphones and tablets is on the rise. Also the social aspect is becoming much more important.