Increasing Sales Efficiency & Strengthening Customer Relationships through Sales force Automation (SFA): A case study of the CRM practices at Pakistan Tobacco Company.

Abstract

In the famous old American joke, when Tarzan returned home to Jane (his wife) at the end of a particularly rough day, she asked him how his day went. He replied while looking at her “it’s a Jungle out there!” A very true representation of a tough competitive world out there, and the breadth-taking speed with which businesses are adapting breakthrough technologies to compete in acquiring and retaining customer has not been witnessed in the business paradigms ever before. In today’s business models and blue-prints of success, the services, the knowledge and the behavior that come with the products leave a more impressionable and lasting marks on the channel partners and the customers in developing a lifetime relationships with the organization then a product of the organization itself. The infusion of information technology and marketing sciences has made it possible for the marketers and business people to make such lasting impressions on their customers. This has been nothing more then to bring into an action an age old business concept of developing lifelong customer relationships integrated with and leveraged by the 21st century state of the art information technologies. It is called CRM-Customer Relationship Management. In this study we will look at the practical application of a subset of CRM called SFA-sales force automation in a Pakistani business environment. More precisely, this study explores, investigates and documents the implementation of a relationship-building technology business model, namely, sales force automation, by one of the most well known Multinationals Pakistan Tobacco Company at its Islamabad distributor’s office. It studies both qualitatively and quantatively, the impact of automation of sales force on PTC’s over all sales, salesmen ,sales cycle/ process productivity and to some extent PTC’s customer relationships in general.