Imagine a world where individual sales people could see how many customer contacts they take and make, be it mobile, desk phone or email. Then they compare their performance with their peers and can see how much sales revenue they each generate.
An underperforming sales person is going to either buck up their act or realise the writing is on the wall. That person’s manager can also see the same information, how much time is spent making personal calls, calls to colleagues or calls to customers.
Who’d be a salesman eh? The fact is that this type of management information isn’t typically available, or at least not easily so and certainly not in real time. If it was then companies would be able to use the information save communications costs and to optimise the effectiveness of their commercial teams.
I just saw a demo of an online product called the “Comms Dashboard” which integrates with a company’s CRM package. Every time a registered user makes a call it is logged on the “dashboard” and a picture is built up of an individual’s spend and activity levels.
This might sound a bit Big Brotherish but I doubt that the owner of a business cares if it is going to improve the bottom line, especially in this day and age. The Comms Dashboard integrates with pretty much any CRM system as long as the company database is available and doesn’t care how many users are registered so it can be used by businesses small or large.
The demo I saw was provided by Terence Long, CEO of RTP Solutions. I have to hold my hand up here and tell you that Terry Long has been a successful business partner of Timico almost since we started the company. Notwithstanding that the Comms Dashboard does represent innovation that will make the difference when business is difficult to come by – both for RTP Solutions and for their customers.
Since the product went live their clients have seen a reduction of over 30% of minutes usage with very little management intervention. Once users are aware of the system they manage their own costs. Result!
Check out their website if you want to see more but in the meantime here is a screenshot.