Extending Your ERP: Optimizing the B2B Sales Process

Manufacturing and Distribution organizations are traditionally managed by their ERP. This is where almost everything lives and is effectively managed: Finance, Supply Chain, Assets, Materials… everything except Sales teams.

Driving organic growth is challenging, especially when systems and tools are working against you.  Unfortunately, Sales teams are forced to engage with ERPs that aren’t intended for them, as that’s where what they sell lives. While there are some companies that have had limited success with quality CRMs, there are a number of scenarios where both CRMs and ERPs are inflexible and fail to collaborate or solve for what the Salesperson needs: 

• Intelligent Quote/Order Generation: Feed the Salesperson recommendations leveraging GenAI for critical metrics like Profit Margin, buying patterns, and Lead Time, amongst other critical data to solve for the customer. Also, language translation for incoming and outgoing written communication for a better global customer experience.
• Managed Sales Price: Enable the account manager to quickly request and receive price relief while with the buyer, improving the likelihood of securing highly competitive sales.
• Request for Proposal Automation: Leveraging GenAI to ingest the Requestor’s RFP and populate the correct SKUs for review. This can include specific configurations of your products.

Without these things, Sales work is cumbersome, an administrative headache.

Leveraging modern workflow technologies to orchestrate processes across many systems and meet all these needs, Sales teams are more successful.  Across these multiple aspects of a day in the life of Sales, companies are finding that the teams are spending less time on Administration, giving more time for sales efforts and securing incremental revenue and organic growth. This growth is a combination of:

• Better Decisions resulting in Higher Profit Margins
• More Time Selling leading to Higher Revenue Growth
• Reduced Revenue Leakage equates to Higher Revenue Retention

Reps love this! It allows a rep to provide answers quickly…and a recent Sales survey had it as the glowing success story in terms of feedback!

- Key Stakeholder

Macedon + Appian: Solution Offering and Key Values

These scenarios are some examples of solutions that Macedon has delivered for clients leveraging Appian's automation software. We offer a comprehensive solution to streamline and optimize many Sales workflows.

1. Data Classification and Parsing
   • Automates the classification and parsing of data, ensuring accurate and efficient processing of quote requests.
   • Automates the tactical human actions required, enhancing productivity.
2. Task Management and Review
   • Identify potential substitute SKUs that offer a higher profitability and/or higher customer satisfaction/value.
3. Managed Sales Price
   • Optimize the request and approval process for adjusting one-time or contracted pricing when meeting with the buyer to minimize lost sales and revenue leakage.
     

From my 15 years of sales leadership experience, it is clear sales professionals have a strong desire to achieve significant customer satisfaction and robust business results for their organization. To achieve this, it requires more time spent with customers and solving their problems. User-friendly workflows which effectively bring together AI and ERPs and are geared specifically towards Sales teams help simplify their work. They also provide what is needed for sales professionals to spend more time on what matters most: solving for the customer.

Would you like to learn more about how we've helped teams like yours improve the efficiency of their sales team by extending their ERP?  Book time with Ryan