InformationWeek

But such traditional SFA implementations have had disappointing results, says David Caruso, VP of enterprise application strategies for AMR Research. AMR found dismal performance after implementing traditional SFA. Few companies can talk about quantitative benefits, Caruso says, and "salespeople say they saw no significant improvement in their sales performance." The reason? The lack of integration with enterprise systems meant that important information at the point of sale was missing, and back-office workers didn't have the latest data from the field.

Corporate culture can be another SFA barrier: A purchasing manager may select software that's difficult to use, or the sales staff didn't buy into the automation plan from the start. It could be that the staff didn't see the benefits of such an implementation or wasn't motivated to make the change. Other problems arise when a company doesn't provide adequate end-user training. As a result, up to 80% of SFA implementations are canceled or fail to deliver promised benefits after implementation, according to a 1999 study conducted by Giga Information Group. Successful SFA implementation means first addressing these cultural issues.

Hybrid suites may reverse the poor performance of SFA, says Stephen Diorio, president of IMT Strategies, an affiliate of Meta Group. They "allow companies to sell through a network of many channels [by integrating] direct sales, marketing, telesales, face-to-face communication, and the Web," he says.

So far, demand for hybrid sales systems is brisk. The market for SFA solutions-which encompass technology-assisted selling, self-service/self-sales, field service, and marketing automation-is expected to grow from $3.72 billion in 1999 to $16.8 billion by 2003, according to AMR Research.

For many companies, these new systems are transforming the sales process itself by decreasing the salesperson's involvement with low-level transactions and increasing time spent on CRM. "If your sales executive is making a high six-figure salary, then it costs you about $400 for him to make a quick call to the customer regarding a billing error. Companies need to eliminate that kind of waste."

At New York investment firm Quick & Reilly Inc., for example, the traditional role of a financial adviser was to process paper transactions on buy/sell actions-but that's quickly changing, says Ron Valeggia, senior VP and CIO. "Our aim is to transform brokers into relationship managers, while also giving customers a way to transact over the Web, wireless systems, or phone systems." Because the customer can reach the company at so many entry points, brokers need to see all activity on an account in order to react quickly to problems, he adds.

Since the implementation of Siebel Sales two years ago at a cost of $5 million, 600 Quick & Reilly brokers nationwide view transactions, profile the objectives of each investor, and understand how successfully an investor's accounts are working together. Brokers also receive pop-up E-mail alerts indicating when a customer buys or sells a security, at what price, and through which channel. As a result, brokers have a better understanding of their investors' activities so they can better manage those relationships.

Improving the management of customer relationships is also the goal at Del Webb Corp., a $1.4 billion real-estate development company in Phoenix. Before it implemented SalesLogix two years ago, Del Webb relied on a legacy contact-management system, and its sales leads were housed in 18 separate databases. "Consolidating the databases was crucial because customer leads were in multiple banks. As a result, different salespeople could be calling the same customer or sending out the same brochures again and again, which could alienate prospective customers," says Byron Augustine, the company's information-services project manager. Today, Del Webb maintains one database that supports 650 internal sales, marketing, and research personnel, tracks 500,000 new leads each year, enables the modeling and analysis of customer data to qualify potential leads, and lets the company better serve its target customers, Augustine says.

At BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota, the implementation of FirePond Sales in 1998 led to the elimination of a paper-based system and the ability to do interactive transactions. Previously, BlueCross' third-party sales agents had to locate the right forms and fill them out by hand before they could they present a preliminary quote to a potential customer. By developing the Blue Edge system-which cost $1.5 million-agents give product configuration and price comparisons for potential customers in one real-time session, says Sandy Shapiro, director of sales management with BlueCross, in St. Paul, Minn. The $2.9 billion company covers nearly 2 million members through its own health plans or those administered by affiliated companies.