Home
Smart Services
Smart System
Career Ops

Technology Available Today

No topic regarding sales seems to be more misunderstood than the cost of automating the sales force.  Since 1994, Insight Technology Group a consulting firm that specializes in researching how companies are reengineering the way they sell to and service customers, has had the opportunity to review more than 1,000 sales reengineering initiatives.  Through those surveys, they have seen companies spend as much as $38,000 per sales person to design, implement, and support their SFA systems.

They recently surveyed more than 200 firms regarding how much they budgeted for first-year expenses for hardware, software, system customization and integration, training, and support.  In 1998 the average was $10,385 per user.

This amount roughly breaks down as follows: $4,000 for hardware, $2,100 for software, $2,400 for customization, $1,000 for system support, and $500 for training per user.  However, it should be noted that 37.5 percent of those surveyed stated that they ended up over budget, and many projects failed to deliver the benefits promised.  Taking into account only those initiatives that met or exceeded expectations, the first-year investment to successfully automate a sales person today comes in at $17,003.

Navtej (Kay) Khandpur analyzes in some detail the real costs of implementing your own Sales Force Automation solution in his book "Sales Force Automation using Web Technologies" published in 1998.

"Actually implementing and deploying anything but the most trivial Sales Force Automation solution requires a considerable amount of planning.   After all, you may be spending anywhere between $10,000 and $25,000 per user in direct start up costs and over $5,000 per user per year in direct operating costs.

Mr. Khandpur further points out that rolling out a system of this complexity may take over a year and the selection of a suitable vendor may, in itself, take several months.

He goes on to say that between half and three quarters of all SFA implementations are deemed unsuccessful by the companies that undertake them.

Introduction      Technology available today      A new solution
Empowering sales     Empowering management      live demo