It often seems
like everything on the corporate desktop is getting shoe-horned into
Web browsers these days, including salesforce automation (SFA)
software—collaborative applications that sales and marketing people
use to drum up leads and keep track of customers. A whole slew of
vendors have come out with SFA products that, instead of requiring
proprietary installs on each client machine, download over the
Internet and run in a standard Web browser.
So why cast off your well-tailored proprietary front-ends for a
one-size-fits-all Web browser? It’s certainly won’t improve the user
experience. Web browsers have limited and awkward interfaces for
doing much more than retrieving documents or dumping HTML onto your
screen. And performance is nearly always slower than with a resident
Windows or Lotus Notes application.
SFA is Web-bound for the same reasons that so many other
corporate applications have Netscape and Explorer interfaces.
Browsers are easy to use (if somewhat awkward), everybody already
has one, and you can reach as many users as you want without having
to install or maintain software anywhere but on machines in your own
server room. Security and authentication are good enough that you
don’t have to sweat sending sensitive customer data over public HTTP
wires. And for salesforce automation, the Web supports a changing
need for tools that don’t just serve the direct salesforce with data
gathered during the sales cycle, but also make relevant information
across the company available to indirect sellers, such as external
partners and channel distributors.
If you’re thinking of implementing SFA for the first time, here’s
why you should seriously consider a Web-based package. For anyone
who already has a traditional SFA system in place, we’ll look at
whether it’s worth the cost and effort of moving to the Web.
No More Pitstops for Your Laptops
SFA applications have traditionally fit the two-tier
client-server model. Your laptop or PC (the client) is loaded with a
proprietary application that, when connected to a network, can
access one or more servers housing customer data. Each client must
carry all the application’s code, which is installed by a system
administrator or software engineer. To equip a nationwide
salesforce, you travel to each sales office and train people there
to deploy your SFA application to their region. Each salesperson
must then bring their laptop in to the office to get the new
software.
Web-based products instead use a three-tier architecture that
offloads the application’s guts to one or more servers back at your
company’s central MIS department. What’s left on each person’s
machine is the user interface, which is contained in the Web
browser. The application’s functionality comes from Java or ActiveX
applets that download to your browser from a central server. Less
code sits on the laptop, which maybe isn’t that big a deal since
disk space is cheap these days. But you also get huge savings on
administration, especially if you have a large mobile salesforce
(unfortunately, a Web-based SFA may not meet the needs of mobile
salespeople, as I explain below). Instead of training a central
office to load each machine one-by-one, you post the application on
a server for people to download and install themselves. You can post
updates that way too, or even perform automatic installions during
scheduled synchronizations. The salesforce is spared an inconvenient
trek to home base, and the company saves on travel, training, and
time.
Not Just for Your Direct Salesforce
SFA software has traditionally been used only by sales and
marketing departments. But companies now want to get indirect
sellers like external partners and channel distributors in on the
action. In the client-server world, deploying SFA applications to
third parties requires that each external site purchase and install
your company’s SFA system—which means that you’ll probably be stuck
with maintenance and technical support. Dealing with a single SFA
system for an internal salesforce is hard enough so that most
companies don’t want to maintain other sites as well.
With the multitier model used by Web-based applications, however,
plugging third parties into an SFA system is relatively easy; you
can get any number of people at any location up and running simply
by issuing usernames and passwords. They download the client, load
it on their system, log in, and are ready to roll. If you don’t want
external users to access all your sales and lead data, choose a
package that allows granting different access levels—something most
Web-based SFA applications do. Give your own people a green light to
all data, and limit outside friends to less sensitive information.
SFA systems of yore have also typically accessed only customer
data gathered during the sales cycle. But now you can give your new
extended salesforce access to information in other department’s
databases. That way a salesperson can know before walking into a
sales call that the customer has an ongoing beef with tech support
or that his payment record hasn’t been so great. Many Web-based
products support such back-end integration under the name of
customer relations management (CRM) software—umbrella packages that
integrate the sales database with marketing automation and customer
service and support. Several products integrate with back-office
enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial systems as well.
What About Mobile Salespeople?
The advantages I’ve described so far are greatest if your users
are always connected to the Internet, as with call-centers of
operators who stay glued to a desk all day, office-bound
salespeople, partners, and distributors, or anyone else who doesn’t
make their living on the road. Armed only with a Web browser, these
people can access a common database with the most up-to-date
information, and they always have access to the latest application
update.
But what about when your people can’t connect to the network—when
they need to get at sales and lead data on an airplane, in a phone
booth, or while chatting up a customer over lunch? In this case,
their laptops have to be self-sufficient offline. It must carry more
application code and be able to store copied chunks of the central
database locally. Alas, the client-side database does have to be set
up back at the office. You can still administer machines over the
Internet later, but downloads and installations may take longer. No
matter how you look at it, the advantage of remote administration is
partially lost.
Some Web-based products support offline work, so if you’re
implementing salesforce automation for the first time, you can
choose one of these packages and still get the other advantages of
the Web. But if you have a traditional installation, you might find
that since you still have to drag your people in to stick a database
on their machine, the cost and hassle of switching to a Web-based
SFA application isn’t worth the effort. Perhaps wireless technology
will soon let us be connected enough of the time that we can do away
with client-side databases altogether.
Web-Based SFA for Notes
There are a number of SFA packages for Notes databases that can
be run in either a Web browser or the Notes client. These systems
have an advantage over other Web-based packages in that they
integrate all the goodies we get with Notes/ Domino—e-mail,
calendaring, workflow, and collaboration. Plus, Notes’ database
replication is better at keeping server and client-side databases in
sync when people work offline.
However, while other SFA applications use relational databases
like SQL or Oracle, which make it easy to do things like multiple
condition queries (for example, to find all customers from
California who have bought a specific product), Notes databases
aren’t relational and don’t query as well across different data
sources. If you’re primarily interested in the flow of data between
sales agents (say, to manage the collaborative workflow of a single
customer lead), a Notes-based SFA may be what you want. If you care
more about manipulating data, to maintain comprehensive sales
histories, manage leads, and track other related information from
disparate sources, you may want to go with a non-Notes package.
Finally, the functionality you get using a Notes-based SFA
application in a Web browser can be less than what you get when
running it in the Notes client. In Notes 4.61, for example, the
Relavis SFA client used in a Web browser gives you only about 60
percent of the functionality you get in the Notes client. In R5,
though, this will go up to about 95 percent.
SFA and the Internet
The Internet is changing our use of SFA software in a number of
ways. First, it reduces the need for one-on-one interactions with
customers. Company Web pages can provide customers with detailed
product information, leaving fewer questions for a salesperson. You
can solicit leads through HTML questionnaires rather than by
contacting customers yourself. And certain low-margin products can
be sold directly using e-commerce, without the need for even a phone
operator. With your salesforce relieved of these more menial tasks,
they can concentrate on moving bigger ticket items.
In addition, Web browsers can make SFA applications available to
more people, both inside and outside the company. Newer products
give this extended sales team access to not just sales data, but to
information gathered by departments across the company. The savings
on installation and maintenance over the traditional client-server
model makes SFA more affordable for small businesses. And because
you can add users, databases, and application functionality without
having to fuss with each person’s machine, big implementers can
easily scale to accommodate a large number of seats.
As for which Web-based SFA product to choose, take a look at the
table below to see what’s available and which packages have the
features you need. Some are updates to, or work in conjunction with,
existing client-server applications, where the vendor added glue to
make it work in a Web browser. Others are designed for the Web from
scratch. If there’s a Web update for a system you already have in
place, you might want to go with that—you probably won’t have to
change data formats or drastically alter your salesforce’s habits.
If you’re putting SFA into place for the first time, consider one of
the ground-up solutions, which are more likely to be optimized for
the Web.
PATRICK HEE is an industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, an
international market research, consulting, and training firm
headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. E-mail: