UK - The recession held no prisoners over the festive season with the final closure of Woolworths and MFI and several large retailers going into administration. As businesses head into the New Year the first half of 2009 has to resonate around customer service and focus on three vital areas: retaining profitable customers, maximising on any new selling opportunities and improving sales efficiency whilst cutting costs.

Although the government has cut VAT in an attempt to stimulate the economy, for many businesses this is the time to think SMART about spending money in ways which will see an immediate ROI, and looking to use company assets and data more effectively to increase sales.

So, how do businesses focus on their most profitable activities to improve both sales effectiveness and sales efficiency? If you haven’t already done so you need to ask yourself the following question:

Does your company have simple access to trusted information and the system in place to evaluate in real time what your customers have bought, might buy and have stopped buying, so you can generate up-sell, cross-sell and switch-sell opportunities? Can you view operational performance by time, region and product?

Although you may have CRM and financial reporting systems in place, this will not provide you with the necessary data analytics to quickly understand which salespeople, distribution houses or promotion deals were most effective, or even which SKU’s brought in the most revenue and profit.

With cash in short supply and capital expensive and difficult to raise, there are viable alternatives. SaaS may become more popular but since most software providers are still wedded to the need to receive capital upfront, development of this area is likely to be slow. However, because of the big capital cost-cutting and security benefits of software rental, we are likely to see an increase in popularity of this model. Software Rental can be implemented as part of a low-risk simple, pay as you go monthly subscription, involves no big implementation project or contractual loopholes and can provide an immediate return on investment.

phocas, specialists in Simple Business Intelligence and sales analytics, provide an out of the box solution which enables salespeople, finance and Senior Management to successfully identify profitable opportunities, cost reductions and ways in which the business can harvest extra value from their most profitable initiatives and product lines.

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