How can your business make the right Microsoft Dynamics 365 decisions quickly and cost-effectively?
Sales has remained relatively the same for the past 20 years. In this time, the iPad was invented, facial recognition moved mainstream, Netflix started streaming and changed the way humans consume television, and Uber and Airbnb reinvented their respective markets. Sales, on the other hand, stuck to its traditional guns as it followed a clear flow from start to customer sale.
This flow? To gather the requirements, create the request for information (RFI) or request for purchase (RFP), shortlist partners, evaluate responses, attend demonstrations or workshops, develop a business case, present the business case, select the preferred partner, look for references, agree on the final contract, sign on the dotted final approval line.
This approach costs the customer and your company a lot in terms of time and money and isn’t the optimal way to invest into a new technology or solution. Why?
Because this approach will:
- Take a long time to get to the point where the business case can be presented to the board with confidence.
- Time: three to six months lost to following these steps.
- Eat into resources and daily work as there is a significant amount of time spent on mapping out business requirements and expectations alongside market research, shortlist management, solution assessment, workshops, and more.
- Time and money: resources not used optimally resulting in productivity losses.
- Limit control and engagement as the business has expectations and requirements, but usually the suppliers lead the sales process once it’s started.
- Relationship and time: Delays, slow processes, and limited visibility impact the relationship between client and supplier and directly impact deadlines.
- Take up to a year to complete the process from end to end, depending on the size of the business.
- Time and relevance: A year lost and the risk of technology evolving faster than the solution.
- Open the business to unnecessary risk around relevance, requirements, and expectations. Often, suppliers ask questions that are subjective rather than objective to the business which can result in limited implementation. Plus, it’s worth highlighting that the rise of virtualization and cloud architectures is putting pressure on the underlying hardware and that every part of the process must be covered to ensure that the solution fits the purpose and the parameters.
- Time, cost, and risk: Will the solution be relevant?
The solution is to reinvigorate the sales process
Customers want their solutions to be relevant, cost-effective, agile, scalable, and flexible. They want a return on investment, a tangible benefit, and an architecture that can evolve with innovation. They also would like all of this yesterday and without the hassle.
This is why it’s become essential to revolutionize the sales process. For your business to have better control and coherence throughout – from system evaluation through to deployment, customer empowerment, and partner engagement. You want a solution that will make the entire process of implementing any of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 iterations and architectures as simple as possible.
There is a solution that does this, one that’s capable of automating many of the key system evaluation and project-related activities, that reduces risk, cuts costs, and speeds up implementation by a measurable percentage. It also provides your business with a comprehensive output pack within 16 hours and that includes extensive analyses of your business needs, license, and implementation estimates and completes the analysis and the solution design at speed, at a lower price point, and to your business expectations.
Welcome to sales 4.0 – a reimagined digital transformation that fits your timeframe and your business. Read part 02 which will take you through how Mint’s sales innovation will change your sales perceptions.
