Mobile field force reporting software-customized ERP- SFA and Mobile Apps

 Mobile usage is rapidly growing around the world. Users have started spending more time on non voice usage of phone. This trend has caught up throughout the world. When mobile phones came more than twenty years ago they revolutionized communication and now they are being used for another revolution.

 Companies in the last few years have used mobile applications(apps) to make inroads in the consumer market. These mobile apps are available in varying categories - games, lifestyle, social networking, productivity, news etc. With growth of social media and ability of mobile devices to add location to the products have fundamentally changed how users engage socially and the manner in which they purchase goods and services.

 Companies have started using mobile platform in enterprise segment as well. Companies are encouraging employees to bring your own device (BYOD). With BYOD, companies have to manage the security risks mobile phones poses to the enterprise data, but are outweighed by the convenience it brings to the employees. Most companies have started defining mobile strategies both for internal employees and for its consumers. Sales force automation (SFA) in one area is catching in the enterprise mobile space.

 Advanz101 mobile SFA app has been developed for sales team and field force. This app can be used to submit a daily call report (DCR), edit a DCR, and review real time data including other things. Most of these tasks were previously possible either on paper or using a laptop. Some key benefits of the app are listed below.

 Ease:  Mobile app improves operational efficiency of the complete sales team. With the app, sales team can enter a DCR using mobile from the field without having to wait for end of day or end of week to get in front of computer. This has made operational work easy for the sales rep. It also decreases errors on DCR and delays in submission of DCR. With this app sales person can even enter DCR while waiting in Doctors office.

 Reach: Mobile app increases companies reach within the sales team. Team can get proactive alerts which help them in multiple ways. With sales team all over the field it gets difficult to communicate across to multiple sales representatives at the same time.  Using mobile app company can reach out to all the sales rep or a set of sales rep whenever they want to - this gives them flexibility with mass communications within the organization. Important announcement, product related info, territory information etc can be sent to this app so that when user logs in they will have visibility.

History: App can be used to check historic information. Past records can be accessed any time to give insight into history e.g. before talking to a retailer, field person can check retailer's historic transactions and be prepared for the conversation.

Real Time: For sales team, business is on the road and decisions need to be made quickly. With ability to see real time information on the go puts business on the fingertips. With mobile app users can get real time updates on orders, opportunities, customers etc. Data updated by mobile apps from the field gives middle management instant visibility on field activity of the sales team.

The way consumer apps have transformed how we access information in our day to day personal lives, business apps will transform how we conduct business. Business apps have potential of taking us away from desktops/paper and give power in our Mobile phones so that we can take care of business anywhere and anytime.

Business Intelligence- customized ERP- SFA Business analysis platform

Pharma companies have started gathering more and more information about customer relationships through Sales force automation(SFA) tools. Information is available in tools but to get something meaningful out of it may take a lot of time and effort. That’s where Business intelligence(BI) comes into picture - BI as a tool can look through all the data and come up with meaningful answers in a very short time. In this blog we have tried to cover some of the analysis that can be done on SFA data.

Sales analysis : 

Access to cumulative sales figures on a daily / weekly basis is very useful for sales team. Field force and middle management can look at sales data to see if the direction they are moving aligns with the companies goal. Sales data can give insight into :

Which sales rep are performing to meet the target
Which regions are continuously reported in the bottom 10 for the last quarter
Which head quarters contributed the most to the total sales in a territory
Which three products are our top selling products of the month in the west region
Which HQ have insufficient list of Active Doctors and Retailers.


Product analysis:

Company can slice and dice sales effort and figures to find how products are doing across geographies. It can give insight into specific products, product categories, focus products etc. Product data can be used to shape product strategy as whole and different plans for separate regions. Some of the key questions that can be answered:

Which products are forecasted to meet the target?
How many SKUs are showing de-growth
Which SKUs achieved target in the last month
List of new products that were not sampled in a region
Product is exposed to which type of Doctor Specialization

Expense analysis:
Expense has to be kept under control to keep companies profitable. Analysis on expenses is required so that it does blow out and becomes a surprise at the year end. Expense should be monitored as it takes pace, some answers that management will need for expenses are :

In which 5 areas expenses increased by more than 50% as compared to last year
How does increase in expense co-relate with sales increase
Which head quarters have good sales to expense ratio
Expense analysis by different expense categories
Product / geography specific expense analysis

Outstanding analysis:

Companies need to be on top of outstanding in the market. Business intelligence can get appropriate information to keep outstanding in balance. Key things to monitor:

Outstanding aging analysis

Cash flow v/s Sales for different regions
Top customers with pending outstanding
Outstanding for customers as compared to average monthly sales
Outstanding analysis by region

Doctors analysis

Doctors are key to every pharma companies sales plan be it for new product introductions or pushing the current products. In that regard it is important to keep a close tab on sales reps ( or medical representatives) in the field. Product detailing and product sampling metrics becomes a good way to get insight into companies interaction with doctors.

How many Class A doctors were not visited in last month even once
CRM Doctors, their coverage and feedback
What type of Doctors are covered in product detailing 
Which doctors were visited more than the required visits
How many of focus products were sampled in the last quarter

This is just the tip of iceberg, there is so much more that can be done with the data that pharma companies have. Business intelligence can give insights which will be impossible for a human eye. Moreover ease of using various reports make it very useful for Top and middle management.

MR Reporting software, fmcg software for sales, customized ERP -SFA: How to Get A Jump Start

Sales force automation (SFA) allows companies to manage business along with data and relationships associated with them. In SFA companies can store prospect, contact, account, lead and opportunity among other sales related information. The information is centralized and accessible to the sales, marketing and other teams within the company. As SFA is build around people and relationships it is very valuable for any fast growing business.

When a company starts to sell its products or services it connects with people who need its product or service. As the company grows these relationship also grows, then you have not only buyer seller relationship but multiple new relationships - there are multiple people in your company who will have relationship with multiple people in the buying company. Over time this becomes complex and you as a company would definitely like to share the relationship and interactions with others within your organization who are connecting to customers. This is where SFA can help maintain and share information with the people in your organization easily.

 To reap the benefits of SFA, companies need good data in terms of potential, existing customers and relationships. Before companies start to use SFA concerted effort should be put to get the data in SFA. Couple of ways to get this information :

 Existing Data: Most companies should already have data which can be ported into SFA. This data may be in different systems - database, excel, note sheets or employees phone/memory. This data can be scattered within the organization from various units / departments like sales, marketing, product groups to human resource or finance. Data load templates can be used to collect data from various sources so that this important information is not lost. Data entry is possible on templates and then loaded into SFA or directly on SFA so that data is ready for users whenever they get on it.

 Third Party Data: With the rise of social networking and internet lot of data is available at company's disposal which can be fed into SFA. Linkedin, facebook, twitter already have wealth of information which can be funneled into SFA as prospects and contacts. Then there are posts, blogs, discussions, articles and posts from companies, government filing information, job postings and updates on websites etc. All this data is available on the web and anyone can use this. Companies need to figure out how to extract useful information and leave junk data behind. One way to do this is by monitoring on a regular basis and feed into SFA so that it creates prospects and opportunities. Monitoring can be done automatically by web crawlers (or manually if company has time and resources) intelligently so that only relevant information is brought back into SFA.

 Starting from a clean slate and building data in SFA can be frustrating for the users - no one likes to see blank in prospect list. If companies can work to get existing data and relevant third party data within SFA it can potentially jump start sales efforts.

MR Reporting software | FMCG software for sales| customized ERP- SFA can help improve Sales

Sales force automation has come a long way from its initial days of companies maintaining lists. Indian pharma market like most overseas market is very reliant on MRs (medical reps) and their relationship with Doctors. Pharma companies’ sales are directly dependent on how
well the MRs do in the field. So its very important to keep a record for daily and weekly activities of all the MRs - that’s where daily call report(DCR) is very useful. Daily call report should be exhaustive so to capture as much detail as important on the other hand be easy to fill so that it does not take too much time to fill - this is what most MRreporting software do.

Marketing and selling in Pharma Company depends on relationship with doctor and chemists. Attention needs to be paid to the whole secondary sales channel. Gone are the days when paper based logs were the only option for companies to keep track of all on field activities. With growing complexities and intense competition companies have started leveraging technology to maintain sales channel and relationships.

With automated sales force pharma companies can keep a pulse of day to day ground activities. Using sales force Automation Company can easily target on focused product. Some products can be picked and expedited for detailing. Specific regions and micro territories can be paid extra attention.

Sales force automation is just the beginning, use of Mobile (Mobile field sales reporting software) and business intelligence solution increases the potential for pharma companies by leaps and bounds. All that may be in next few weeks!

What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is a expression that refers to a multiplicity of software applications which are used by association to examine their raw data. Business Intelligence as a field of regulation is made up of numerous inter-related behavior which include online logical processing, data mining, reporting and querying.

                                       

Companies make use of Business Intelligence to get better their decision creating, cut costs and to recognize new business chances by analyzing data. Chief Intelligence officeholders of companies make use of Business Intelligence to identify the business progressions which are inefficient that are prepared for re engineering.