Sales Force Management

A geographical split by minimizing duplication of travel patterns is usually the most economical basis. Other advantages include enhanced adaptability to local market conditions, greater control, and quicker sales reactions. Working against a geographical basis alone works against this type of specialization. I was talking with the owner of online blinds store who are selling vertical blinds and roman shades blinds. He says that with sales force management it is really easy for them to manage geographically large areas with one location office. To retain the advantages of the geographical basis without incurring its limitations, it is often used in combination with either the product or consumer basis.

Product organization
Two conditions are conducive to the use of a product basis in organizing field sales. One is that the firm markets a diverse range of products or product lines. By limiting the product types he is accountable for, a salesman can become more of a product specialist. This may be especially important from a competitive standpoint when products are technically complex in nature. For instant life insurance rates company who are providing life insurance quotes online, they says that they need term life insurance agents who are expert in their field. More experience they have more business they are going to give. The second is the determination that product knowledge is the primary marketing input for the salesman.

Order Fulfillment -1

The first research towards defining order fulfiment strategies was published by Mather (1988) and his discussion of the P:D ratio, whereby P is defined as the production lead-time, i.e. how long it takes to manufacture a product, and D is the demand lead-time, i.e. how long customers are willing to wait for the order to be completed. Based on comparing P and D, a firm has several basic strategic order fulfilment options:

• Engineer-to-Order (ETO) - (D>>P) Here, the product is designed and built to customer specifications; this approach is most common for large construction projects and one-off products, such as Formula 1 cars
• Build-to-Order (BTO); syn: Make-to-Order (MTO) - (D>P) Here, the product is based on a standard design, but component production and manufacture of the final product is linked to the order placed by the final customer's specifications; this strategy is typical for high-end motor vehicles and aircraft
• Assemble-to-Order (ATO) - Here, the product is built to customer specifications from a stock of existing components. This assumes a modular product architecture that allows for the final product to be configured in this way; a typical example for this appraoch is Dell's approach to customising its computers.
• Make-to-Stock (MTS); syn: Build-to-Forecast (BTF) - (D=0) Here, the product is built against a sales forecast, and sold to the customer from finished goods stock; this approach is common in the grocery and retail sectors.

In its broadest definition the possible steps in the process are :

• Product Inquiry - Initial inquiry about offerings, visit to the web-site, catalog request
  Sales Quote - Budgetary or availability quote
• Order Configuration - Where ordered items need selection of options or order lines need to be compatible with each other
• Order Booking - The formal order placement or closing of the deal (issuing by the customer of a Purchase Order)

we talk more steps in next post.

ref: agents web world, agency management system, wikipedia

Order Fulfillment

Order management System and Multi-channel order management we are talking here as part of insurance sfa software. The goal of a multi-channel order management system is to provide a uniform customer experience regardless of sales channel, and to enable customer-service and sales representatives to view and manage orders across sales channels. Insurance agency management software or insurance software with insurance crm software and insurance sfa software helps order management system to work properly.
Today we are going to talk about Order Fulfillment.
Order fulfillment (in BE also: order fulfillment) is in the most general sense the complete process from point of sales inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer. Sometimes Order fulfillment is used to describe the narrower act of distribution or the logistics function, however, in the broader sense however it refers to the way how firms respond to customer orders.

The first research towards defining order fulfillment strategies was published by Mather (1988) and his discussion of the P:D ratio, whereby P is defined as the production lead-time, i.e. how long it takes to manufacture a product, and D is the demand lead-time, i.e. how long customers are willing to wait for the order to be completed. Based on comparing P and D, a firm has several basic strategic order fulfillment options.
We continue our talk on Order Fuifillment in next post.

ref: Insurance Software, Insurance CRM, Wikipedia