SFA (Sales Force Automation) has been used in China's FMCG industry for over a decade and is now a basic tool for sales management. It aims to achieve scientific, quantitative, and standardized management of every customer and salesperson's actions during the sales process, enabling team collaboration and improving management efficiency.

More and more FMCG companies have realized that choosing an excellent SFA product for sales management can significantly help improve overall management efficiency and performance, making it almost a standard IT system across the industry.

However, IT systems are highly specialized, and with the development of technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, most FMCG managers cannot keep up with how these new technologies can benefit their SFA systems, nor do they understand the maturity of these technologies. It is even harder to distinguish which SFA supplier is better and which supplier's product is more advanced.

This article will discuss the key factors to consider when selecting an SFA solution.

Try Before You Buy

SFA products have been developed for over a decade and are now very mature. More mature suppliers can provide trials and help customers go live quickly. Leading suppliers offer cloud-based products, allowing users to easily open accounts, import initial data, and experience every detail of the functionality.

It is best to have one department or team in your company trial the product for a period. Through the trial, you can understand how well the product matches your company's needs and how it performs in detail during use. Software products have this characteristic: even if 9 out of 10 functional requirements are met, if one key point is not satisfied, the entire system becomes difficult to use. Therefore, the trial is the foundation of the selection process.

For the now-popular SaaS software (provided on a rental model), a trial is even more necessary. There is a saying in the industry: SaaS software that does not offer a trial is just being unreasonable.

Flexibility of SFA Products

Is an Important Consideration in Selection

Business is ever-changing, and you often encounter changes in statistical forms, workflows, and visit steps, or different sub-departments may have different work requirements. Therefore, SFA software needs to have very flexible configuration capabilities to avoid having to ask the supplier to modify the software code every time requirements change.

From a product functionality design perspective, there is a world of difference between providing only fixed functions and providing flexible customization. Mature software focuses more on customization capabilities such as field customization, business customization, permission customization, process customization, parameter customization, and interface customization. For example, for a product information management function, immature software only writes custom programs to maintain fixed fields according to the customer's product requirements. When the customer's needs change, the code must be adjusted. Mature software only requires adding new fields according to the product information customization.

From a product architecture design perspective, software using traditional C/S architecture is vastly different from software designed with microservices architecture.

[Image: Illustration of Waiqin365's customization capabilities]

Speaking of custom development, for small and medium-sized enterprises, it should be avoided as much as possible. On one hand, it is expensive; on the other hand, the cycle is long. Moreover, the business models of small and medium-sized enterprises are relatively simple, and there are not many unique aspects. As long as the SFA vendor's product is mature enough, it can fully meet their needs.

For large enterprises, especially well-known brands and Fortune 500 companies, meeting personalized needs is more important. For new software, microservices architecture design is very important because it allows the standard product modules to remain unchanged while loading a new customized service module, thus not affecting the upgrade and iteration of traditional modules and also meeting new requirements.

[Click image to view microservices introduction]

Continuous Product Iteration

And Openness Are Necessary Conditions for Selection

In today's enterprise software development, the era of buying a CD and installing it on a computer is gone forever.

Nowadays, enterprise software has the characteristic of iterative upgrades, meaning that after you purchase, the vendor will regularly upgrade your software. This is crucial for enterprises because you are not buying a 'dead' software but a 'live' one. The day you buy the software is its worst state; in the future, it will become better and better. This is the kind of software that enterprises need and expect.

Of course, all vendors will tell you before you buy that their software will be upgraded in the future, but how often it will be upgraded after purchase is uncertain. So, as a buyer, how do you distinguish? It is simple: look at the vendor's upgrade history. Especially for SFA software, which has mobile apps, you can check the upgrade records on the App Store to see if the software is continuously updated.

[Image: Waiqin365 update records]

After years of informatization, many enterprises already have comprehensive information management systems such as ERP and OA. Whether the newly selected SFA system can integrate well with other systems, fit into the existing IT architecture, and break data silos is crucial. Openness has become an important consideration in modern enterprise software selection!

Good SaaS service providers will offer OpenAPI in their software. OpenAPI standardizes and matures API calls, allowing enterprises to integrate on their own even without vendor support. In contrast, many traditional software companies claim to have APIs, but they are unstable, not standardized, and rarely used, so they have many bugs. This is very unfavorable for integration between enterprise application systems.

[Image: Waiqin365 Open API diagram]

More Complete Overall Solutions

Although different IT systems can be integrated through OpenAPI, integrating multiple system solutions involves high coordination and implementation costs for enterprises. If a solution provider can solve multiple problems with one system, it is definitely the best choice for enterprises.

In the FMCG industry, besides SFA systems, common systems include DMS (Dealer Management System) and TPM (Trade Promotion Management). If an IT system can provide a comprehensive solution, it will greatly help enterprises in informatization and digitalization, and also reduce the overall cost of selection.

AI technology is also a recent black technology. Using AI for image recognition can help SFA upgrade intelligently. For example, taking a photo can automatically check shelf placement, paid displays, display standards, competitor situations, and refrigerator cleanliness. For enterprises, this improves management efficiency and reduces labor costs. On the other hand, it can also collect data that was previously unavailable, such as shelf share and competitor information.

[Image: AI intelligent image recognition application in Waiqin365 SFA product]

We believe that in 2019, intelligent technology will be a key consideration for many enterprises in SFA selection.

Source: Waiqin365 -END-