Underperforming Industry Benchmarks

Industry benchmarks underperformance can indicate your need for DPA.

Cash flow is a perpetual business concern, and financial KPIs are prevalent in most industry measures. For example, in manufacturing, Cash-to-Cash, Order-to-Ship, and Order-to-Cash are commonly measured and compared KPIs.

Incoming orders are great news, but only if an organization can realize the cash in a reasonable amount of time.

If your order-to-cash duration is high compared to industry benchmarks, there may be opportunities to shorten the time from sale to payment. Even with Salesforce helping field sales teams input orders while still out of the office, approvals and other intercompany transitions could be slowing down revenue realization.

If a linear order model gets snagged at any point – an example could be a delay of notification from salesperson to manager approval or from fulfillment or shipping to accounting - there will be a slowdown in how quickly the funds from a purchase are received.

A DPA process would facilitate multiple system updates, data synchronization, and appropriate alerts and notifications. Visibility into order status, throughput, and financial outcomes could be optimized.

Bottlenecks

Bottlenecks are another sign you’re ready for DPA. Whenever a process is held up, waiting for a single person or resource to act, you either have the potential for a bottleneck or already have one. These bottlenecks can happen anywhere in the organization and are likely to be seen in claims, warranty, returns, and trial processes or systems. But those aren’t the only areas.

Approvals are the most common and obvious place to look for bottlenecks that can be automated. Complex sales processes that involve approvals by different departments or have conditional approvals are an ideal example of this.

Let’s examine this scenario: your sales team draws up a contract. The contract needs approval by the sales manager, the line-of-business manager, and legal before being finalized. Each of those touchpoints could slow the process down. If a busy legal team only needs to review contracts with a particular clause or alteration, but every contract is sent to them to see if that clause exists, you’ve got an unnecessary step and a bottleneck.

When the sale is added to Salesforce, a flag could indicate if the clause is needed or not. If not, an alert for the contract could keep legal in the loop, and the bottleneck could be eliminated. Not only does this prevent contracts that don’t need review to wait on the legal team for availability, but it lets the team concentrate on those contracts that do require the clause.

Unable to Stand Up Field Service Management Tools

Field Service Management (FSM) is a range of technology tools that simplify the jobs of your field teams and when paired with DPA, can vastly improve customer service. There are a million ways FSM can improve customer experiences, but something as simple as notifying customers when a technician is on the way can help increase satisfaction.

Taken one step further, DPA can automate a whole ecosystem of communication. When a technician is dispatched to a customer, for instance, they can check in with an FSM app that automatically records their arrival time and tracks how long they are at the job site. With the job information in Salesforce, multiple business units could be notified, and their units' business processes initiated. This could ensure the customer care team is scheduled for follow-up, and registration and warranty systems are updated.

Once the customer digitally signs off on the job, the timer stops. The customer is emailed a survey of their experience through Paradot. The technician is sent their next appointment, which is dynamically assigned based on GPS location and skillset. Dispatchers can concentrate on routing team members to emergencies or issues that might arise instead of micromanaging assignments. Across the process, both customers and team members are happier with the work and the outcomes.

Conclusion

Staying competitive is no longer about whether you should be concentrating on digital transformation and digital process automation within your organization but where you will implement it first to get the greatest value.

The customer experience is an ideal place to start, and implementation can be jump-started using Salesforce. The tools and structures already in place as part of your existing Salesforce platform shortens the path from a need to realization.

If you are looking for help with DPA, Six Consulting has the experience and knowledge you need to get moving forward on the right path. Whether you’re looking to architect a solution that will launch your automation efforts quickly or you need expert assistance implementing DPA with your Salesforce platform, we can engage with you to get you exactly the service you need.