More transparency for more sales

They can find out about the various offers from a whole range of sources and then choose the best one. This gives them more power, which they are happy to use - even in the B2B environment. The pressure on sales is increasing. The most successful salespeople are those who meet the high demands of customers.

New technologies provide more transparency in sales

The new technologies help sales in a variety of ways. For example, a customer's customer journey can be tracked precisely so that the approach can be perfectly targeted - and the sales employee can provide the right answer before the question has even been asked. The increasing amount of data and ever more powerful analysis tools also provide sales with more and more transparency. And that ultimately leads to more sales and more profit.

Three aspects are important here. First, the sales department must know what its goals are: Is it to increase sales with existing customers? Is it to win more new customers? Or is it to open up new geographical markets? Secondly, once the goals have been defined, the right KPIs must be selected. The general rule here is: less is more. And third, the KPIs must be generated in real time and visualized in such a way that they can be grasped by sales management at a glance. A KPI dashboard for sales is therefore required.

Workshops bring clarity about goals

Supported in all three steps Camelot ITLabIn this way, we can establish a holistic and end-to-end sales controlling system. This begins with workshops in which we work out and prioritize the goals together with those responsible from management, controlling and sales management - and possibly also with sales employees. It is important to formulate these "SMART" goals. S" stands for Specific, "M" for Measurable, "A" for Attractive, "R" for Reasonable and "T" for Time Bound. KPIs ensure measurability here. In concrete terms, this could look like this, for example: Sales to existing customers in Germany are to increase by 7.5 percent from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020. In this case, "revenue growth in percent" is the KPI, and 7.5 percent is the target value.

However, it is not always that obvious. When entering a new market, for example, it is first necessary to consider which factors indicate progress. Is it the number of cooperation partners, the number of stores opened, the number of new customers, sales in euros or market share in percent? We also discuss such questions in the workshops.

Customized KPI dashboard based on SAP standards

In addition to the definition of goals, KPIs and target values for a defined period, a tool must also be established with which the current status can be quickly recorded and compared with the target status. Excel spreadsheets, which were common in controlling for a long time, are not suitable for this - because they are not real-time capable and also do not offer a suitable visualization.

All requirements for efficient controlling in sales are covered by a dashboard, which is part of SAP C/4HANA and accesses the data stored there. Most typical sales KPIs are already mapped in this sales cockpit in the standard version. However, the dashboard can also be customized to meet individual requirements. We take care of setting up the sales cockpit and customizing it for the user - and incorporate the findings on goals and target values in the process. If more sophisticated evaluations are required in addition to the comparatively simple KPIs, we also integrate the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). The results generated via the SAC are then also displayed in the sales cockpit. Sales management thus has the opportunity to assess the situation at a glance - is sales on the right track to achieve the desired goals? Or does it need to be readjusted if necessary?

If you want to learn more, feel free to download our Free whitepaper "KPIs in sales - more transparency for more sales". down!

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