When one thinks of the benefits of sales force automation, nothing is more convincing that a case study of a client's success. The case study presented in this article is about a restaurant that was growing rapidly.
The restaurant was the biggest in the region but because of its unique cuisine, which included hundreds of dishes, it was famous beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood. Like many other restaurants, this one offered home deliveries and subscriptions with discounts. The business was growing and so were the problems.
The biggest challenge was to manage orders. Keeping in mind that food cannot wait, proper timing was crucial. On the other hand, managing inventory was also crucial because there were cases of accepting orders for food out of stock.
After having studied some of the available solutions, it was decided that a custom sales force automation solution was better. There was already accounting software in the restaurant, so one of the conditions was to integrate them together. Invoices were also issued electronically, but there was no way to calculate discounts for loyal customers, for quantity or for promotional dishes.
The software development took about half a year, although the first module "delivery scheduler" was deployed a month after the start. The next urgent module was the products inventory module, which was implemented second. Then support for PDAs and mobiles was made, as well as improvements to the invoicing module to allow calculation of different discounts. Finally, the new sales force automation solution was integrated with the existing accounting system.
The result of the implementation of the sales force automation system was that the work process went more smoothly. The introduction of discounts helped in keeping existing customers and in attracting new ones. The reports function in the new software was extremely useful to the managers to track how business was going and what could be improved further.
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