Reports...as advised by my best pal -> the internet

If in doing a report, one has to cut and paste from all over to consolidate into an excel spreadsheet, then it is a bad system. Reports should be done at a click of the fingertip. Maybe one of the major lowlights in our company is that we do not have a powerful data management software and all the PMs are spending way too much time manually doing all these reports inefficiently. In times of poor business and slow moving inventories, management wants all these reports to study and understand market trends. Therefore, shouldn't management also incorporate better software platform to reduce unwanted stress to employees? Gosh am i whining??

This B***** needs so much reports and i am thinking isn't it best if they understand what are the reports that our company does monthly and both parties come to a consensus and alignment regarding all these dumbass reports. I mean like we improvised the existing reports that we already have and send them a copy instead of doing whatever they need...to prevent duplication and spoon feeding them with whatever info they need. I would like to think that there must be a reason why we are allowed to do all these EMS customers. Perhaps they themselves do not have hub capabilities to serve all these customers with VMI requirements. And parking the blame on us for not stocking up on inventories is easier and more convenient to get their own ass kicked by customers.

This is a relative informative website about the electronics industry..
www.electronics.ca
www.electronics.ca/reports/connector/index.html

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Sales Management Process
The four phase-model of Management Process:-
Conception
Planning
Execution
Control
This model is cyclical, so it is a constant/continuous process!

Sales Planning
Unfortunately, when the business is growing, customers need more products, service and customization, this individual activity oriented approach can become a barrier for sales to grow because unfocused and uncoordinated activity decreases effectiveness. Your sales department must be reorganized, and sales people should specialize and co-operate with each other as well as other departments of your company. Poor team sales management leads to loosing orders and customers so it is better to introduce a sales planning system as soon as possible. Appropriate software will help sales team leader to set sales goals which will motivate sales personnel (estimated sales volumes should grow steadily from period to period despite the seasonal variations of demand because decreasing estimated sales volumes discourages sales managers).

After setting sales goals, salespersons’ activities should be planned by regions, clients, channels, managers, products etc. Sales team leader or sales department head should choose volume and operational metrics to evaluate sales managers' effectiveness and to motivate them from achieved result. While planning it is important to consider market potential and structure, company's strength and weaks, customer relations history, etc. that's why sales planning software must be able to store all sales-related information and allow a flexible searching, filtering, grouping and showing statistics (i.e. flexible customer, task and order forms, calculated fields, tables, schedules and charts). It is a good practice to let sales managers describe how he or she will execute assigned sales tasks to check his or her motivation to get things done. So the software for sales planning should allow breaking a task down into to do items with possibility to set such parameters as time, resources and measured results. It enables tracking intermediate and final results, sales force effectiveness and sales plans accomplishment.

Sales Tracking
Sales tracking is an integral part of sales management. Without tracking sales tasks it is hard to find out if everything goes right and estimated intermediate results are achieved in time and in the limits of expected resources. If anything is out of expected range, you can analyze the details, talk to a sales manager responsible for this task and take corrective actions.

Sales Tracking tracks selling activities as opposed to Revenue Tracking which focuses on tracking the progress of forecasted opportunities. The most difficult part of tracking selling activities is knowing if the activities will actually lead to sales. Management must have a method of knowing if sales reps are correctly engaging in enough of the right activities to produce revenue in the future. This leads to three key metrics: the right activities, the right way, the right amount. An individual sale is a stepwise process and key activities, or “Transitional Milestones”, must be achieved along the way. Sales Management must collect data on how the sales function as a whole is progressing through these “Transitional Milestones” to determine the likelihood of future revenue.[1]

Software used for sales tracking should allow sales team leaders to control sales tasks completion by using reminders and notifications, highlighting overdue tasks, analyzing task history, etc.

If your sales task management system is really great and duly implemented, you are informed about all details of your company’s sales process in real time and know who does what, when, and how.

Sales Reporting
The sales reporting includes the key performance indicators of the sales force.

The KPI indicate whether or not the sales process achieves the results as set forth in the sales planning and enables the sales managers to take corrective action in time in case the indicators deviate from the projected values.

More process than result related is information on the sales funnel and the hit rate.

In addition, sales reporting is a source for motivating sales managers, because awarding best managers without accurate and reliable sales reports is not objective.

Also, sales reports are made not only for internal use or top management. If other divisions’ compensation plan depends on final results, it’s needed to present results of sales department’s work to other departments.

Finally, sales reports are required for investors, partners and government, so the sales management system should have advanced reporting capabilities to satisfy needs of different target audiences and help sales force to be more effective and make more sales.

Actual Sales Management Challenges
Managing sales is not difficult while a company is small, customer count and sales persons count are limited, and sales process is simple and transparent. However, when sales start to grow, companies understand that it is very hard to manage enlarged sales workflow as effectively as they did before. Managing increased sales volumes is more difficult because sales management process becomes more complicated and sales department has to deal with all aspects of the process. Not only the number of sales tasks grows but also grows the number of regions, customers and products. It is almost impossible for salespersons to handle with sales grows without a special system for planning, tracking, analyzing, reporting, and controlling all aspects of sales activity, projects and tasks.

Effective Sales Management Solutions
Sales management system helps sales departments to organize sales process details, find potential bottlenecks, discover new opportunities and strategic advantages, save cost and time, etc. The system should provide clear vision of what salespersons did yesterday, what they are doing now and what they will do tomorrow. Many companies have already implemented sales project and task management on the basis of appropriate software. Now it’s time to benchmark their best practice for all the rest organizations.

Sales Management Software
Sales project and task management software helps sales departments develop comprehensive, prioritized sales plans, track their completion and create real-time reports. Implementing a centralized sales data management leads to better understanding of sales tasks and how they rely on sales strategy, their priorities and status, new ways of sales growth and new sources of motivation from achieved results.