Intranet Solutions for Sales and Marketing

Overview

An organization’s sales and marketing efforts are closely aligned with its other business processes. Basically, all of the goals associated with business operations are directly or indirectly achieved through effective sales and marketing processes. As such, effective communication, collaboration and orchestration are at the heart of successful sales and marketing processes. Yet there are many challenges that must be overcome. An effective intranet solution can result in higher productivity, improved responsiveness, reduced costs, and improved sales results.

Challenges

Gathering and maintaining accurate and up-to-date sales and marketing information requires consolidating data from diverse sources. Much essential product, service and market information is paper-based, making it time consuming and expensive to produce, distribute and update. Further complicating the problem is the fact that competitive and market information changes rapidly and delays in obtaining it can make it obsolete even before it is distributed.

Collecting and consolidating sales forecasts, proposal and performance information in a secure and timely manner is also difficult. Many companies have both direct and indirect sales channels scattered locally or even throughout the world. Although these channels have various interdependencies, at the same time, each channel has different requirements for reporting and analyzing forecasts, performance data and other critical business data.

Typical Sales Staff Challenges:• Managing a large volume of continually changing information and keeping customers up to date on changes in products, pricing, services and the market.• Gathering and acting on sales leads in an effective and timely manner.• Collecting and consolidating sales forecasts while providing management information needed to monitor and manage sales performance.• Coordinating and managing multiple types of proposals.

Typical Marketing Staff Challenges:• Managing multiple, interdependent, time-critical projects, such as trade shows, press tours and product launches that may involve multiple groups scattered across wide geographic areas.• Keeping the sales department informed of marketing programs, such as new pricing strategies, trade show participation and special promotions.• Keeping sales and other departments up-to-date on the competitive environment.• Collecting and responding to feedback on program effectiveness.

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In addition to the need for a high level of collaboration and communication between the sales and marketing groups, there is also a need for communication with other functional groups throughout the organization. For example, managers in other functional groups may need real-time access to sales forecasts and sales perfor-mance data consolidated at different levels. Marketing and sales managers need access to corporate data, such as manufacturing forecasts and product cost information.

The Intranet Solution

Sales and marketing groups can take advantage of Intranets to enhance communication and collaboration with each other as well as with other functional groups and external resources. The corporate Intranet enables centralized publishing of product, service and marketing information. It also provides quick but security controlled access to relevant company assets that contain product or inventory availability data, sales forecasts, performance figures and customer information. Corporate Intranets are often used to supplement or enhance information stored in CRM or ERP systems. An Intranet is a powerful tool for proposal development as well. Past projects and budgets can be referenced by size, scope of project and resources required to provide critical background information to insure future projects are successful and profitable. With an Intranet, marketing and sales personnel can collaborate more ef-fectively and ensure that the field sales, outside contractors, channel partners, distributors and dealers all have immediate access to the information they need, and can provide feedback to ensure a rapid, quality response. The result is higher productivity, improved responsiveness, reduced costs, and improved sales results.

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Sales and Marketing Uses

Product Demos and ScriptsSales force access to download standard product demonstration scripts and sales presentations.

Product InformationCentral repository for employees, customers and business partners to access information such as product availability, price lists, catalogs, brochures, data sheets and specifications.

Sales Forecast and Performance ReportsSales management posts consolidated sales goals and performance data.

Sales Lead ManagementCapture, distribute and track leads through the sales process.

Market ResearchResearchers access the Internet to locate marketinformation such as industry trends and competi-tive products and publish information on an internal web site.

Input from Field PersonnelDistribute questionnaires and surveys gathering feed-back on products, services and marketing campaigns.

Benefits from Intranet Deployment

• Much faster and less expensive than producing and

distributing paper based materials.

• Ensures inclusion of latest features in presentations.

• Ensures immediate access to the most current informa-

tion to better facilitate consistent branding and

appropriate use of collateral.

• Speeds the locating and distributing of time-sensitive data.

• Facilitates access to current, detailed and informed

product information from the office, as well as outside

the office or even from a customer site.

• Enhances communications among field sales, regional

sales management and headquarters. All have access

to the most current sales attainment and quota information.

• Gives management better tools for tracking sales

performance, such as comparing forecasts to actual sales.

• Helps manufacturing perform more effective production

scheduling.

• Ensures timely collection and distribution of leads to

maintain their maximum effectiveness and delivers

visibility for sales process stakeholders.

• Enables fast follow-up for sales management to

maximize close rate.

• Instant access to a wealth of Internet data improves

product planning, marketing strategy development and

product pricing.

• Provides a central source of critical information, allowing

the capturing and sharing of competitive information,

changing customer requirements, and emerging

market trends.

• Ensures that products and services meet the needs of

the market.

• Helps tune marketing programs for maximum effectiveness.

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Sales and Marketing Uses

ProspectingSales reps collect and share information about pro-spective customers.

Press ReleasesPublish press releases and other company announce-ments.

Sales Team CollaborationEstablish newsgroups, online discussion groups, and chat sessions for sales teams that are geographically dispersed.

CalendarsPublish schedules and calendars for trade shows, seminars, advertising and PR campaigns and project plans in a central location.

Sales TrainingPost online training and reference material for prod-ucts, services, competition, sales skills and other subjects useful to field personnel.

Sales ProposalsSales teams post and collaborate on complex sales proposals.

Benefits from Intranet Deployment

• Increases productivity of the sales force by providing

easy access to in-depth information regarding the

prospects in their assigned territories.

• Faster distribution of corporate communications.

• Can be archived for historical purposes.

• Increases sales by enabling sales and support reps to

coordinate activities for national and multinational

accounts.

• Sales representatives and marketing teams can take

full advantage of marketing events in their areas to

tighten relationships with customers and help boost sales.

• Improves skills and knowledge of sales force in a cost-

effective and timely manner.

• Provides centralized repository for easy access.

• Improves access to proposal documents by sales

process stakeholders.

• Reduces the likelihood that an out of date or incomplete

proposal is forwarded to the customer.

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Weidenhammer Intranet SolutionsIn today’s world of instant access to information, Weidenhammer provides services and solutions that improve organizational communication, collaboration, and workforce productivity through the establishment of web-based gateways. Through a combination of industry and technical expertise, and leveraging “best of breed technology” from partners such as Microsoft and IBM, Weidenham-mer has assisted hundreds of clients in delivering improved business performance and functionality in the areas of Portals and Intranets. Weidenhammer provides solutions that help connect people, processes, and information, ensuring that information reaches recipients quickly, through the most appropriate medium.

Microsoft Office SharePoint TechnologiesMicrosoft Office SharePoint Technologies provides a single, integrated location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.

SharePoint Technologies provide services that enhance:

> For more information, visit our website at www.hammer.net.

• Collaboration - Allow teams to work together effectively, collaborate on and publishdocuments, maintain task lists, implement workflows, and share information.

• Search - Quickly and easily find people, expertise, and content.• Document management – Including integrated records management, version control,

and Web content management.• Workflows and electronic forms - to automate and streamline your business processes.• Information worker access - to critical business information, data analysis and review,

reports to make more informed decisions.

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