Sales Force Automation for Lakshman Group of Companies

Abstract

The business systems in today’s world have become increasingly distributed and the mobile devices have become a very important tool at the enterprise stage. Compared to traditional server based systems, the mobile extensions bring the business environment to a new array with its capability of having a large amount of processing power. As a result of this sales forces represent both a direct link to sales and expenses of sales organizations and therefore have high impact on companies’ profitability. Therefore businesses have constantly endured the challenge of getting their field force to adopt enterprise Sales Force Automation [SFA] systems. Luxman Group of Companies having over fifty to hundred sales people spread over the island the order placing is done manually. The placement of orders is a main job in the company and due to the manual maintenance the process is not efficient. Most of the times the customers do not get a clear picture on how much of stocks are available exactly and even the sales person is also sometimes not so sure about it since there are many other sales personnel who are doing sales at the same time. Therefore as a result sometimes the customers are not happy with the service that is being provided since sometimes there could be orders placed but without having stocks at hand. At times like these to deliver the goods will get delayed. Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems create a new platform for a business to overcome past pain-points and to manage the customer pipeline information better. The project looks on how a sales force system can be implemented to Luxman Group of Companies and through this mobile application, how a prototype application can be developed and demonstrated. To achieve efficiency and effective sales process, new proposed solution will analyse better sales forecasting and improve the performance of the sales process by automating manual work and will also provide fulltime control over the sales persons. The systems will also directly help to increase the productivity and will help to provide a better customer service island wide and by localizing the system. This system will mostly be useful for the sales teams who are functioning in rural areas. The application will allow its salespersons to capture and manage potential clients (leads) and customers. A 'lead' or a potential customer can be mentioned as someone who shows an interest iii in the product, but how genuine he or she is about buying it has not yet been ascertained. The company’s basic requirements are primarily centred on a mobile dashboard application that allows real-time monitoring of sales figures and Key Performance Indices (KPIs), provide customizable dashboard views, real-time access to the latest data from the server, display information visually in the form of interactive charts and other details. By choosing an automated system for the sales force in Luxman Group of Companies, the organisation will be able to gain back the losses which occur currently on daily business activities as well as to retain and manage the existing clientele more efficiently and effectively. It will also gain the advantage of handling and monitoring the sales force more easily and hassle freely.