Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 13

Management - Essay Example In modern Business Organization it is well understood that customer satisfaction guarantees the health of a company. This can be achieved only by awareness of customer needs and being able to fulfil them both within time and the acceptable price and quality parameters. The big question is how to be able to obtain this awareness and further how to make the sales force or the marketing people understand the vital role this plays in the ultimate performance of the company. The firs exercise to apply the control approaches to the sales force was made by Anderson and Oliver (1987). A few tests of the performance of the sales force control system was conducted by Challagala et al (1996). Cravens et al (1993), Oliver and Anderson (1994 & 1995). It is only recently that this has taken shape as SFA. It is fortunate that Information Technology is here to assist businesses across board with a multitude of solutions that can help them to tackle this issue. There are many Sales Force Automation Systems that are based on Information systems and are used in marketing. These are automated solutions that combine the marketing management functions and the customer relationship management systems. The aim is to gather information of each individual customer’s behavioural pattern. The purchases they make, the brand and quality preference. The price ranges they accept, the ratio of purchase within seasons, schedules and the variances in selection of products etc. The list goes on depending on the product type and the location and other circumstantial factors. A pattern emerges which can then become predictive and the solution can then forecast the possibility of a sale at a particular time or when a suitable product is available. It also has inbuilt interactive features which can encourage a customer to engage in a dialogue and offer a direct lead to the sales or marketing people to carry on the