For years, industry and analysts have been touting the benefits of integrated systems that would improve the decision-making process by taking information from disparate functions and processes and organizing it efficiently. Strides continue to be made in driving efficiencies throughout the organization through just this sort of thought: Inventory and purchasing systems, payroll and HR systems, HVAC and fire systems, door entry and VOIP systems all coming together in solutions that drive productivity by correlating the data that these formerly disparate systems generated.

The industry calls these "converged" solutions, but in the end these efforts are all focused on creating systems that conform to business processes. By driving efficiencies throughout the organization, those systems improve productivity of the workforce. Broadening this view; looking at the business holistically allows the opportunity to question why these disparate functions that are now partially integrated, not all within one system.  What would that do to your business?

Once your business has a single repository of information; everything and everyone is communicating in real-time; you start to build a knowledge base that is specific to how your business operates.  Workflows are identified, bottlenecks are presented faster or headed off altogether, your business is continuously becoming more efficient.  This is a technology evolution on a path that takes your organization through more systems-level automation and productivity as your business grows.

Automation in sales and marketing is about improving the ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time via the right channel.

Automation or repetition of more generic, higher volume tasks is more likely at the early stages of engagement and lead nurture and then post sale around delivery. More personal, higher value (and higher cost) sales tasks and activities can then be undertaken with qualified leads to close the sale.

The first challenge facing most companies is that processes are often not well defined. In sales, often large portions of the sales cycle are not defined at all. Put five salespeople from the same company selling the same goods to the same market into a room and within 15 minutes you will hear ten different sales processes described. Business Process Management typically hasn't penetrated every corner of the business, and the sales department tends to be the last wilderness to tame. There has also been a lack of useful tools to implement BPM automation within the dynamic world of solution sales.

With the tool set problem address; you can now get to the work of defining the processes.  For each solution sold into each market, create a methodical list of major and minor steps to effectively qualify leads and then the steps to provide the highest probablity of closing those qualified leads.  At the end of the sales cycle you should stand alone as the only choice.  If not, go back and tighten up the qualifying phaes. 

I've been a salesman in a company which did a very good job of defining both marketing communications and the sales process. It was much easier to manage the business than at any of my previous employers. Just defining and executing the processes, using Customer Centric Selling, for example, really turned the company around because we could cookie cut a lot of the activities after creating them and we could use history to predict the future much better than our competition and make necessary changes far enough in advance to get back on track.

Five reasons to automate business processes

1. Quick Turn-around: Process Automation enables companies to dynamically involve appropriate resources, driving speed of execution, and enables them to address customer and market requirements faster than the competition. 

2. Reduced Expenditures: Reduce paper usage, reduce travel time, reduce manual effort of your staff and customers saving time and money.

3. Visibility: Automated business processes enables companies to record, monitor, measure and accurately account for every activity within a business process effortlessly. This drives accountability and transparency into the organization, highlighting improvement opportunities, allowing innovation to take hold.

4. Operational Effciency: Reduces the unit cost to execute tasks by streamlining business processes and allowing your company to better orchestrate time and resources to non-reduntant tasks and manual processes.

5. Best Business Practice: Process Automation Software standardizes working methods and provides audit trails improving managerial control.