Use of technology to improve the efficience of marketing operations: Design of a sales automation system; WISA

Abstract

Due to the very broad definition of the project, early efforts in this project were aimed at locating a more precise area for focus . In my initial meetings with company managers , the suggestions that came up most often were related to the creation of a MIS which, it was felt, would considerably reduce the marketing executives data collection & analysis problems. The WISA ( Wipro Infotech Sales Automa— tion System ) concept took shape from these initial suggestions & from further feedback from the marketing executives. The objective was to create the broad outline of a system which would be very simple to implement and use and one which would grow with the company’s needs. The chief advantage of this system would be the easy availability of information in the desired format . For instance the competition information will be available as a competitive matrix of machines selected by the user. Besides informing the marketing executive, this matrix can be used for presentations & be tailored for a specific proposal. This system would be designed in PARADOX and would be made available to the marketing executive at his regional office itself. While the Head Office will be responsible for disseminating product & competition information ( along with some static account profile information), over e-mail, the regional offices would maintain there own databases. This system avoids the complexity of a centralized system - For the initial automation (Phase-I), the areas of focus determined are the product database, competition database, account profile database and a call planning module. The details for these modules, including descriptions of information content and user interface, have been defined as part of this report. The appendix contains sample screen formats and the database design.