Sales process automation: Removing admin

These data tasks heavily distract the team from their revenue-generating activities, impacting sales efficiency. Evidently, the manual input of orders and rekeying of information sent from clients is not an effective use of time and needs to be eliminated where possible.

Therefore, to support consistent sales growth, employing digital transformation solutions allows the sales team more time to nurture client relationships, reduce churn and identify new opportunities.

This blog explores the types of sales process automation solutions Sales Directors should be considering and includes two client success stories that follow this exact strategy.

For many B2B businesses, the sales function is essential in building positive connections and relationships with clients.

Sales teams are expected to identify new potential prospects and additional revenue opportunities from existing clients. However, an inordinate amount of admin can come in addition to these primary responsibilities.

At Transalis, we recommend investing time in optimising the sales function with digital transformation solutions.

Sales Directors should consider the best application of the departmental budget to gain the greatest return. This department might not seem an obvious opportunity to digitise, however, sales teams spend much time on manual data entry. Therefore, the budget can be repurposed to remove manual processes and free up time for more revenue-generating activity.

The automation of order processing is the priority in this case. Implementing either an EDI or a Paper-to-Digital (P2D) solution can achieve this objective. These solutions convert all incoming orders into a compliant format and feed them to the appropriate internal business system, e.g. an ERP.

Transalis undertook a process review for a manufacturer selling natural pet products via their retail channels and Direct to Consumer (D2C).

The table below highlights the findings from the analysis. In summary, it took the client two days a week to manually process incoming orders for a single D2C channel.

Two of the FTEs in the customer service team were predominately tasked with administration across four marketplaces rather than customer engagement. This totalled an annual cost of £44,800.

The client entrusted Transalis to address this inefficiency. The solution relied on a blend of direct EDI connections and OCR technology between the four marketplaces and the 3PL. Ultimately, this resulted in a 2.5X return on the investment.

Sales Directors should also explore sales process automation to convert inbound “paper” documents.

These can be PDFs, scans, or email attachments that are all commonly processed by sales and customer teams. Digital transformation solutions that can tackle this burden rely on P2D (Paper-to-Digital) processing.

A client (IT hardware distributor) approached Transalis to tackle the complexities of processing incoming orders from B2C retailers and B2B resellers. Similarly to the situation outlined in the prior case study, the sales function was manually rekeying order information into business systems.

We proposed implementing a P2D solution in this situation. P2D solutions are especially useful when individualised EDI connections aren’t financially viable. For example, due to the scope of this particular project (which included hundreds of retailers and resellers), P2D was the most cost-effective and scalable solution.

P2D can pull inbound orders of all formats through a digital transformation process. It automatically manages the extraction, conversion and routing of information to the right system.

As before, with this solution implemented, the sales function can fully concentrate on nurturing client relationships for increased revenue-generating opportunities.

Sales Directors should be mindful of the following points when exploring sales process automation solutions:

As demonstrated in the above case studies, Transalis can offer bespoke solutions that support the automation of sales administrative tasks. These solutions offer greater efficiency for the sales team and a high return on investment. Both in terms of the cost of an automated solution vs. manual processing and the benefit of a team focused on revenue-generating activity.