Two-Tier Channel Visibility into POS Data through the Salesforce.Com Interface.
As an organization expands its business channels, it becomes increasingly important that its POS data is in a unified and easily accessible place. With organized channel sales data, sales reps don’t have to waste their time locating contact information and account reporting from different sources. It is because of this need that POS data integration with CRM products like Salesforce.com offers, is becoming more and more prevalent in serving as the industry standard for strategic partner management.
Importance of Channel Sales Data and POS Information
POS data is vital to channel sales professionals. In order for sales professionals to be effective in the future, they need to know the key elements of their customer base:
- who they are
- what they’re buying
- how much they are buying
Therefore, the sell-through data should be available in the same system as customer data.
As powerful as Salesforce.com is in providing tools to easily create automated workflows, custom account records, views, and reporting, the default setup lacks one of the most significant data sets required to truly analyze an organization’s bottom line—channel sales data or point of sale (POS) data.
Today, Salesforce.com is rapidly becoming the preferred tool for managing customer relationships. However, it neglects to include what all channel sales organizations require to truly evaluate partner performance metrics — the sales activity.
Computer Market Research (CMR) understands the importance of a cohesive PRM effort. Therefore, the company has created an interface that incorporates all aspects of viewing revenue data by:
- account
- territory
- the product line
- built-in tools for better managing opportunity reconciliation
CMR’s interface enhances Salesforce with sales summary data that has been analyzed by a team of channel experts. This integration allows users to see both their customer data and POS data without having to switch back and forth between systems.
Channel POS Data Integration
“The Salesforce.com platform is ideal for seamless POS data integration into a company’s SFA and CRM systems;” said Del Heles, president of CMR. “The AppExchange partnership between CMR and SalesForce.com is a symbiotic relationship that benefits both companies and our mutual customers. More importantly, our users gain tremendous cost savings and time management benefits from being able to access customer relationship information and channel sales data from the same screen.”
The POS data integration with SalesForce.com allows users to have access to two-tier POS data from designated tabs on the Salesforce.com portal without the expense and effort of . SalesForce.com’s AppExchange technology enables external developers like CMR to create and share on-demand applications within the Salesforce.com ecosystem.
CMR’s application filters and matches channel sales information, resulting in lean POS data in Salesforce.com. This channel sales management app will clean data by matching resellers, part numbers, etc. Subsequently, the data is presented in clean customizable views. As a result, the user can actually view accurate sales data by account, lead, opportunity and more. Also, usable reports can be filtered by:
| Distributor | Date | State |
| Reseller | Total purchase price | Zip code |
| End-user | country | and more |
Using integrated screens within Salesforce.com, CMR customers are now able to:
- Generate a variety of POS reports including data verification reports, reporting partner reports, reseller reports, product reports, and custom reports.
- Employ a POS analysis tool to display multidimensional OLAP cubes; for example, to show sales by time frame, product, reseller or distributor.
- Gain secure, 24×7 online access to specific POS information relating to customer accounts. Information such as:
- how much a customer bought for a given time period
- which distributors the reseller bought from
- what products the reseller sold
About Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company’s Salesforce suite of on-demand applications enables customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing, and partner information on-demand. AppExchange, salesforce.com’s on-demand platform, allows customers and partners to build powerful new applications quickly and easily, and customize and integrate the Salesforce suite to meet their unique business needs. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com’s world-class training, support, consulting, and best practices offerings.
About Computer Market Research
For more than 30 years, CMR has delivered cost-effective, web-based applications. CMR has provided services to manufacturers to assist them in managing channel data, optimize their trade promotion investments, and maximizing the effectiveness of their distribution channels. CMR’s Web-based solutions accelerate and automate distributor and reseller data collection, processing, analysis, and reporting. CMR’s clients include Comtrend, Buffalo Technology, D-Link, and Targus.
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