This is Big Data era right? And everyboy is just so happy with all this new Intelligence pouring in and all these KPIs literally falling from the skies which will all of a sudden enlighten us and magically empower us with infallible decisions and grant us assured success, right?
And we’re all writing down new figures of « big-data augmented » sales and revenues and God knows just how fantastic everything will be from now on for us all!
Well, the thing is I don’t want to kill it for you all but really, don’t you feel that as CXO we’re all already pretty much flooded with data, information et metrics of all sorts?
Two considerations I’d like to submit to you.
Question of Intelligence, what KPIs and not even Big Data will ever tell you!
Big Data, as Big as you want it, will be of little help if it is not well gathered, filtered, analysed and categorised in meaningful KPIs to be displayed on your Intelligence Dashboard, no matter your field of activities, and of course rendered available anytime, anywhere, on any device.
The world was going fine before and will be going fine after Big Data and KPIs, a business vibrates to the rhythm of its processes which efficiency’s its success depends on. We say that a business is just as profitable as the weakest of its business process.
Hence, if in your Sales & Marketing cycle, your chain of Supply & Logistics or your Production line, you are still depending on non performing paper processes, chances are it is seriously slowing down productivity and profitability. And this is even more true with Sales & Marketing.
The true Nature of your Marketing and Sales process
The Marketing & Sales function is more crucial today than ever before. If your product or service is not searched and found, you’ll pay the price… and a lot much more if your business depends on eCommerce.
We forget that a lot of enterprises still conclude their sales on a P2P mode, with paper playing a central role in the process; paper proposal, paper signature and paper contract including all legal documentation which sometimes goes through more than a dozen versions before final approval!
You would be surprised to discover all the resources both material and human and the cost involved in a paper Sales process. If you would know you would immediately begin the digitalization of your paper Sales process and maybe of all your Sales Department processes by the same token.
But very few enterprises are planning the automation of their paper Sales process including automating their legal Documentation Generation. And even much less see the value of digitalizing their legal Documentation. Well…
But let’s forget Big Data, Cloud and KPIs for a moment to get back to reality. So if your business is there now, here it is:
5 steps to digitalize your Sales Documentation (Sales paper process)
- Digitalizing Contracts, Purchase Orders and Proposals
- Digitalizing the Signature and Approval process (eSignature)
- Automating the Legal Documentation Generation
- Digitalizing your Legal Documentation
- Providing availability of all Sales Documentation anytime, anywhere, on all devices
Conclusion
Even though it might look simple, very few enterprises today have analyzed and seen the necessity and usefulness of digitalizing their Sales Documentation process; Proposal + Approval + Contract. And God knows in this time and age, if there is one non-performing process, the Sales paper process is and one can only imagine how much it slows down Sales… and growth!
Even though this is Big Data era where we live and die by the data and KPIs, it is still worth taking the time to get back to the basics to ensure that your foundation is built upon solid ground before thinking about jumping with both feet in this brave new Big Data world; otherwise, your enterprise might find itself trapped into muddy waters instead of enjoying a smooth landing.
Denis Paul & Michel
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