Midsize manufacturers reengage with online sales; benefit from customer context
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/1/2006 7:00:00 AM
Large numbers of intelligent people once firmly believed that by the time 2006 rolled around, almost all buying and selling—from groceries to commercial real estate—would be done over the Internet.
But the complexity of selling sophisticated, feature-rich products online; fears of alienating traditional sales channels; and various sordid tales of the Internet more or less put the kibosh to that theory.
According to Bill Loumpouridis, founder and president of Chicago-based EDL Consulting, "Expectations were so out of whack during the bubble. ... But five years on, midsize manufacturers are looking to do more than just post brochures."
Loumpouridis says more companies are turbocharging sales efforts through integration of CRM, electronic commerce; and enterprise systems.
Definitions and background
CRM software lets manufacturers collect and share customer data with the goal of increased sales through more closely tailored products and services furnished at a lower cost.
E-commerce establishes a new sales channel via the Internet, although in many instances an electronic connection is made not directly to the product user or consumer, but rather, through distributors.
Although obviously related, CRM and e-commerce developed along separate paths. "E-commerce typically reported up through the IT department, while CRM initiatives were mainly driven by either sales or customer service," says Loumpouridis.
That's a problem because the transactional capabilities of e-commerce can't support quick identification, profiling, and marketing for customers, unless there are links to information in CRM, maintains Loumpouridis. Without such links, customer acquisition costs are greater, no systematic method for lead qualification and distribution is possible, and channel partners can't interact easily with OEMs.
Blending the online user experience of e-commerce with the supporting functionality of CRM, on the other hand, capitalizes on the dynamics of online customer relationships while leveraging the inherent scaling capabilities of e-commerce. The result is better understanding of channel partner performance, better lead distribution and quality, prioritized marketing spending, and heightened customer visibility.
Punching tickets
Taking orders electronically is a formidable challenge for manufacturers with complex product and pricing structures matched only by the sophistication of their channel strategies.
To make it possible, EDL integrates Salesforce.com, a subscription-based CRM package, with any one of several best-of-breed channel fulfillment systems, including those from Big Machines or Comergent Technologies. The resulting transactions are fed back into the enterprise system via the e-commerce engine.
"We do detailed mapping of the entire sales cycle—processes, systems, and linkages. We understand where data needs to go and when, and, using templates, get clients up and running quickly," Loumpouridis says.
This best-of-breed approach is warranted because e-commerce functionality of most enterprise systems doesn't include the latest capabilities, such as complex configuration and lead management, or sophisticated pricing and promotion.
Big Machines software streamlines sales of complex products using a configurator and tools for pricing and quoting, proposal generation, order management, and submittal generation. Configuration and proposal capabilities can be added to Salesforce.com's solution for marketing campaign automation, and lead, contact, account, and opportunity management. Comergent puts emphasis on its multichannel synchronization capabilities.
Integration is easy because hosted applications, such as Salesforce.com, are Web services-compliant. "Exposed" methods and objects can be interfaced through standard Simple Object Access Protocol messages accessed by means of an XML-based Web Services Description Language file and a local proxy server.
Rather than using proprietary application program interface protocols as a "one-off" integration, says Loumpouridis, resident applications can interact with heterogeneous systems—including external systems—without regard to the underlying platform. In this scenario, whether an application is resident or externally hosted makes no difference in terms of interoperability. This significantly reduces the barriers to externally hosted systems.
Concludes Loumpouridis, "We empower the sales channels to get products into the hands of customers more quickly and profitably, but also deliver better visibility as to which products are profitable in what channels."
