Guide producedby sales-i

It makes sound business sense that you are already using Salesforce, you understand the value of technology and can see the benefits such tools can bring to your organization.

Salesforce is a powerful tool for harvesting and tracking customer data, there’s little doubt about that. But is it really enough to take your business from something good to something great? Probably not. After all, haven’t companies been collecting customer information for decades now? The fact is that times have changed, and so too have your customers for that matter.

It’s not that CRM data isn’t useful - it’s still paramount, especially in today’s business world - but customers now expect more from you as a supplier.

Your Salesforce account is fine for collecting customer-oriented information, but do you really know your customers well enough to make smart, personalized business decisions and exploit every sales opportunity?

Salesforce is in need of something more, something that will empower you as a salesperson to make the most of every single sales opportunity. This is where Business Intelligence (BI) can step up and create a complete view of your customers.

Empower your sales team

every single day.

Manual data analysis simply isn’t feasible anymore; salespeople have far too many other things to be getting on with. That’s exactly where BI steps in and takes the weight off their shoulders.

It automates the task of analyzing data, providing a better understanding of company performance, championing a more proactive sales technique and offering a holistic view of your customers, streamlining your entire sales and management process from beginning to end.

Not only will BI show you what customers have bought from you but also what they haven’t, and, more importantly, what they should be buying from you.

By simply mashing your Salesforce data with your ERP data, it provides you with everything you need to make smart, well-informed business decisions.

Companies like Walmart, Amazon, eBay and British Airways are all making sense of their data and using BI to stay miles ahead of their competition. Let’s take a look at Amazon. With over 150 million accounts, the online retailer has embraced Big Data and changed their business model using it. Product recommendations, customized webpages and knowing exactly what their customers want are all contributing to their astounding growth. This personalized customer experience is all down to BI as Amazon track and monitor customer buying behavior to provide one of the best customer experiences of today’s modern world.

Search for infant car seats or pushchairs one day, and they may recommend you take a look at their special offer on baby wipes or diapers. This is the kind of advanced analytics we are talking about. It’s impressive and makes our customer buying journey so much easier.

Business Intelligence (BI) is the next step in outsmarting the competition and taking business to the next level with advanced reporting for sales, marketing, finance and management.

In short, a BI system will present all of your data as easy-to-grasp customer insights, giving your team a 360º overview of your customer base, which makes it easy to spot new opportunities and keep existing customers.

average productivity increase

sales increase across businesses using Big Data

of companies will be using BI in 2015

Salesforce contains no hard facts for you to make smarter business decisions. While you know who your customer is, what their pet goldfish is called and where they spent last summer, you will have little to no idea how much they spend with you, when they last spent, what they bought or even what they should be buying, not without digging back through endless sales reports anyway.

While you know the soft side of your customer like the back of your hand, it isn’t enough in a market where customers expect you to respond to their individual tastes, preferences and even take note of their latest purchases.

BI gives you a complete overview of your customer. While Salesforce is providing all the customer information you need, BI will supply the transactional information you need to successfully close sales. Looking after hundreds of customers and prospects, not to mention the thousands of products you sell; information overload can quickly become a big part of your day. BI tracks your customer purchasing behavior and provides you with the intelligence to spot opportunities and make informed business decisions.

You can make sales meetings truly personal when you’re using both BI and Salesforce. Forget talking about the weather or last night’s game, you’ll be making sales left, right and center when Salesforce is united with a BI reporting app.

How can BI help?

Until most Salesforce users see BI in action, uniting their sales data with customer data, they’re often confident that they’re making the most of the information in front of them, never missing an opportunity. But there are valuable opportunities passing them by every day. This isn’t down to a lack of skill, simply a lack of information and insight. Salesforce can help with keeping track of opportunities through the pipeline, but what’s the point if you can’t find them or even know about them in the first place?

BI proactively tracks and monitors your transactional data to spot opportunities that may be falling under your radar. Whether this may be highlighting customers who are down in spend by 20% or those that have bought mops but not buckets, BI will proactively alert your sales team to every single sales opportunity.

How can BI help?

Salesforce is fed entirely by the information that you record within the system. It doesn’t prompt you to follow up with customers, nor does it alert you when their spend may be dropping off. This is simply because Salesforce is a reactive tool that stores information and heavily relies on your team to update it regularly. The very nature of it means that you only ever react to issues or opportunities as they arise; being proactive however is the key to a successful business in today’s market.

BI systems constantly mine your sales data and alert you to any changes in customer spend, any sales opportunities you may be missing or even prompt you to check in with your top 20 customers regularly. This proactivity will spread throughout your workforce and give your people the ability to ensure that a trick is never missed when it comes to sales or business opportunities.

How can BI help?

Analyzing a substantial amount of data, no matter what business you’re in, takes a lot of manpower, time and often money. The good news is that technology has moved on leaps and bounds in the last few years and there is now BI software that will do it all for you. You ask a question and it’ll supply the answers. Some of the best BI solutions will even preempt your questions and provide an answer before you even know what to ask.

We’re living in a data driven world and it makes no sense that we aren’t making use of the stacks of data that we produce every single day.

Lets look at just some of the ways BI can benefit Salesforce users from every walk of business.

Salesforce is great at telling you who your competition is (if you’re asking your team to find out and store this information, that is), but have you any real idea when said competition may be moving in on your patch? I doubt it, not without watching each of your account’s spend like a hawk.

Consistently monitoring and analyzing your sales data manually to predict any changes in customer behavior or any competitor threats would take some time. Time that no salesperson or marketer has to spare.

As BI solutions feed off transactional data, they can produce sales-ready, actionable information in a few quick clicks that can be used to counter any competitive threats. Are sales falling in a particular region? Clusters of falling sales could indicate a competitor undercutting you on price, stealing away your customers.

Reporting is tedious, and there is seemingly little getting away from it. While Salesforce is useful for monitoring call volume, activity, outcomes and next actions, there is no getting away from the month end reporting on sales. Reporting on deals won, lost, sales value, profit, margin and anything else your boss demands from you is incredibly time-consuming as month end draws perilously close.

BI makes it easier for you to produce reports with little effort on your part. Reporting back on product performance, best sellers, top spending customers, biggest profit margins and just about everything else you can think of.

Even if you’re a fan of leaving reporting until the very last possible minute, BI can quickly produce rich sales reports that will satisfy your boss’ requirements. We’re talking seconds, not hours or days. Unite this with a customer report from Salesforce and you’re done in a matter of clicks.

Competition is always going to be a business challenge, no matter what industry you are in. The good thing about BI is that it levels the sales playing field. Local companies will be empowered to step up and compete with the ‘big boys’ using detailed information and analytics about their customers. Sales calls will be meaningful and encourage loyalty, marketing campaigns will be personalized and you can watch your business blossom into an empire.

And if you’re a big multinational, you’ll be able to manage your diverse customer base with ease and improve your customer retention. Competing on price alone is no longer an approach that customers need or want; it all boils down to the level of service and customer satisfaction you can provide.

As mentioned earlier in this whitepaper, CRM systems are great, but simply not enough to ensure today’s customers are wholly satisfied. As customer demands get more and more advanced, mass marketing is no longer an acceptable tactic.

When coupled with BI information however, your CRM information becomes a complete 360° view of each and every account. From key contacts and account information to recent purchases, spend trends and valuable sales opportunities. Together, the two will empower any sales team to make smarter decisions and extract the most value from the CRM data trapped within Salesforce. What’s more, marketing can also use this information to create personalized, targeted campaigns that resound with customers.

Research shows that an average salesperson costs companies $500 per day to employ, for $502 (as sales-i costs $2 per user per day) sales-i provides a profitable focus for sales activities so that time is not wasted.

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Empower your sales team to be the very best by downloading the sales-i Advanced Reporting app for your Salesforce account today.

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