Proceedings

Programme

Mitch Connolly, Yell, UK

Stéphane Kusic, Pages Jaunes, FR

Gianluca Ballocci, SEAT, IT

Anton Speer, Dumrath & Fassnacht, DE

I. Introduction

Richard Duggleby

Many of you have probably considered and maybe even started your own sales force automation programmes. The possibilities in terms of efficiency, cost savings, sales force reporting, customer satisfaction, and increase in quality, make it very attractive for many European publishers.

Four senior people from four different companies across Europe, all of whom have made some considerable progress with their own sales force automation programmes, will present the story of their sales force automation process and progress. They started at different times for different reasons, have made different progress, and all of them will explain how they got on. I have also asked each of them to share the problems they experienced, as when you launch major new programmes in any company, nothing goes smoothly. It is important that we learn lessons from those problems, as well from the successes they achieved.

II. Panel

Stéphane Kusic

SLIDES

1. Overview

I am the Sales Development Director of Pages Jaunes in France. Pages Jaunes’ major B2C and B2B operations are in France; it also has a presence abroad, with QDQ in Spain, Belgium, Morocco, Luxembourg, Lebanon and Jordan.

The Pages Jaunes French directory has 3,460 employees with a turnover of €856 million in 2002. Our database consists of 556,000 clients, of which 2,531 are online in Carnet; our directories are present in nine homes out of 10 and we have 171 editions distributed free of charge to every home and business each year. We also have a specific French innovation, Minitel, powered by France Telecom.

Our ambition is to be the most innovative and efficient European directory publisher in the first decade of this century. Our strategic objectives are to increase our database, to increase average revenue per advertiser, and to enhance local market penetration. In terms of sales, we have three main channels: the National Account channel, for managing brand advertiser and key accounts, we have an agency in Paris, 19 sales channels spread across the territory, and seven telesales agencies.

2. History of Sales Force Automation

The first wave of sales force automation began in 1993 in three agencies with after-sales formation software. In 1995 we made a software prototype called Sésame The second wave started in 1996, when we extended it to all three channels. We equipped our sales representatives with mobile Macintoshes, with our Sésame software for ordering ports, Caprice software for managing the customer portfolio and GIS connection capabilities. We matched telesales with Sésame and Oasis software. For the third generation, we have decided to shift to PC equipment and have dartboards with InfoCentre , with BO, to add customer analysis. We are also considering a new sales information system to improve the main stakes in the future.

3. Sales Force Automation and Workflow

Our headquarters sends portfolios to each agency and distributes software and references. Sales managers transfer the information to the sales representatives and when sales representatives negotiate with customers, they register the information. The after-sales service production delivery is sent by floppy disk to headquarters, so information and orders can be registered.

The main application is called Sésame. Caprice is our customer portfolio application for the sales force, with which we can access the prospective organisation’s portfolio. The portfolio distribution is according to the status of the customer. All the information concerning the address of the customer, the synthesis of his previous media plan, his turnover is also available.

We have another application called Oasis for telesales. This is in fact the same application, the only difference being that we can use the programme to manage the contact and its agenda. We also have access to online products for demonstrating to the client, and to present the products by phone.

4. Software Applications

Order input software Sésame displays all publishing information. We can format the logo, so the customer can see exactly what he is buying. We can also add in information concerning the address and what he would like to be shown, effectively making this an interactive publishing system.

Alongside the main software applications, we have online sales applications. We have a marketing portal for new products, an after-sales portal for sales rules, new products and training the sales representatives, we have CD Roms, and for external use, we have bienvenuepagesjaunes.fr, our internal portal, and the customer relationship and communication site, A Vous.

5. Benefits of Sales Force Automation in Pages Jaunes

Sales force automation allows customer proximity; the development of new products, as 25% of our turnover is now online products; the reduction of time and paper; better quality; management transfer of customer portfolio; and of course a better analysis of house results and performance. We believe that sales force automation accounts for Pages Jaunes’ low non-payment rate of 0.4%.

We have learnt that to be well positioned in terms of return on investment, we need to provide good offers and thorough software training for sales representatives. Our main issues today are that information is sometimes too top‑down, and that connection times should be reduced.

6. The Next Generation

In terms of market issue today, in an economic context, there are budget constraints and growing competition in alternative media from direct marketing, national and regional newspapers, and customers are more focused on investment returns. We need to prepare all sales proposals carefully to make the best media plan. For sales representatives, we must simplify the information access system and structure both the information and the offer to facilitate customer knowledge.

By simplifying and concentrating information for user-friendly tools and applications, we will become more flexible, and will have communicating information for top‑down and bottom‑up approaches, sales reporting, and better knowledge of the competition. We are developing new communication methods through GPRS or ADSL. It is important to have a 360‑degree customer vision with history, events and marketing files, in order to have a one‑to‑one customer approach.

Anton Speer

SLIDES

7. Overview

I have worked for Dumrath & Fassnacht in Hamburg, Germany for 18 years. Starting as an address book in 1794, Dumrath & Fassnacht has changed over its 200‑year publishing history into an information providing business. We have a 120‑strong face‑to‑face sales force, 30 people in telesales and three in direct sales. They sell ads for eight Yellow Pages, five White Pages, 26 local White Pages, 20 regional Yellow Pages, and many different online directory assistance services.

8. Reasons Behind Sales Automation

We began automation of our sales process because we wanted more quality for our customers. With computer printed documents, people’s handwriting is not an issue, there is no space for interpretation, orders are readable, free from errors and miscalculations, and there is no more retyping of orders for processing. We also wanted to reduce costs by reducing the personnel for retyping orders. After sales force automation was in place, our compensation rate fell below 0.06% annually. We wanted to use less paper and calculated substantial savings by not printing paper, although we have not yet been able to achieve this. Another reason was to gain daily control of our sales representatives, to be informed on a day‑to‑day basis about sales progress and performance.

9. History of Sales Automation

We started in 1995 with the necessary programming paperwork. To get the most accurate picture of sales, we placed a salesman in the software specialist team, thereby developing a system to benefit customers and sales representatives, rather than one driven only by technical experiences.

After programming was completed in 1996, we started to roll out the computer‑aided sales system. We named it DUF‑CAS in 1997. The first team of 10 people worked as a pilot for about three weeks and then we put the entire sales force, including telesales and direct sales, on the laptop system. We also equipped them with portable printers and communication devices. We learnt through oversights, and had significant input from our sales representatives, so in 1998, we redesigned and enhanced the system, rolling out the second laptop version in 1999.

10. The Sales Automation System

All sales channels work with computer-aided sales and our entire production portfolio is supported. We integrated processes like sales management and order capturing. The sales representative does everything like order processing. We linked them through communication devices to our major database for updating information in both directions, meaning that our sales representative is on the same information level as our back office, which no longer deals with order capturing. All orders are imported automatically by software. Sales reports are available on every laptop, so the sales representative knows his performance, what he has to do, what he should do, and what he did so far. Commission is calculated on a monthly and yearly basis and the report is set up like a bank statement. All information is also available on the laptop. All relevant information for our finance department is transferred automatically from the SAP system to the laptop system.

11. Sales Automation Processes

All business information is stored on laptops, like which sales area the representative is responsible for, which products can he sell, which customers are within his area, which customers he should contact, which customers are in what kind of payment status. He is informed in real-time what is going on with the customer, all relevant headings, prices, and additions. There is no way to sell advertisements that are not within the price list, so the sales representative is forced to stick to our prices. All communication details like telephone numbers, address, fax numbers, homepage, email, or any other information gathered in the back office is also available on the laptop system and to the sales representative online. We provide the customer’s complete history including all the products the customer has ever bought. We also put information about our competitors on the laptop, so our sales representative is informed about products bought from our competitors.

12. Lessons Learnt

Sales representatives can be happy with computers, although they think they don’t need them, fearing loss of independence and organisational freedom. There are many benefits to the company: we achieved significant cost reduction in personnel, reducing our staff by more than 60%, and increasing the number of orders processed by more than 50%.

I mentioned the low rate of error compensation. A paperless system between back office and sales representative saves time giving rise to better customer care. We have seen a huge increase in quality. There is a saying: ‘there is no second chance to leave a good first impression’. If a salesperson is trying to sell you new ideas like the internet, a laptop is the best way to show that you are technically up‑to‑date.

13. Plans for the Future

The next step is to get rid of paper by introducing electronic signatures. All our sales guy will need to get a signature is this device, similar to those used for credit cards or parcel deliveries. That saves the printing of order sheets at the customer site and saves paper, which otherwise has to be processed in our office. We are going to roll this out at the end of the year as the software and the organisation are ready, but there is one important thing left, to train our salespeople.

We want to open our closed shop system in terms of communication. We have been in command by calling the sales representative for data exchange, but are going to open that up so that the sales guy can call or get data exchange whenever he needs to. We also want to be able to do order processing online, so that order processing is done at the customer site. For this purpose, we need communication devices, but our telecom providers are not yet ready to provide low‑cost, high‑speed access to the internet, and the whole thing has to be mobile.

Gianluca Ballocci

SLIDES

14. The Sales Force Automation Unit

I am the sales force automation manager of SEAT PagineGialle. Sales force automation is a business unit within our sales department. As we work mainly with business issues, we are closer to the users. We have specific business targets to achieve, linking the business needs and the business user to IT solutions. The unit was built to help sales representatives achieve revenue targets and objectives. To understand how we work and how our sales force automation organisation works, we have to understand some of the basic items that represent the characteristics of SEAT PagineGialle.

15. Objectives of Sales Force Automation

Sales force automation tools and applications have as their main objective to try to achieve the best results from our two main assets. The first is people and we have close to 2,000 independent sales representatives. Independent means that they are freelance, linked to SEAT through a contract that can be revoked at any time, and earning money only if they sell something. We provide them with computers, but they have to pay for consumable materials. So we are dealing with businessmen, in effect, and their relationship with the firm is different from a relationship with an employee. The other asset we want to stress is our set of products. We have a lot of products, close to 20 today, and the problem we have is to build up the best mix of products to address different targets.

16. Organisation

The sales division is organised into four channels, the biggest being the field channel, based on close to 99% or 900 of our sales representatives. This is our core business. Then we have the top of the market, the key accounts, serviced by a few employees, and the two other channels are telesales and the Unio channel. Unio is a specific channel designed to gather new clients from prospects.

Coming back to the main channel, we have to remember that the salespeople are freelance, and yet they are organised into something like a multi‑level marketing model. We have close to 18 branch offices in the territory, which belong directly to the company, and we also have close to 300 independent offices run by the salespeople. In these business offices, sales representatives work in teams that have to organise themselves according to the targets we give to them. They have to achieve targets by selling products, but they have independent rules that we must comply with.

17. IT Solutions

IT is a strategic tool, able to change the approach of 300 different offices, into one single method of selling and method of approaching the business. Often, what we see as a solution, our sales representatives see as a problem. From a user’s point of view, we try to use the constraints of an IT solution as a means to drive sales representatives to adopt the same selling methods.

18. Deployment

The first wave of information and application deployment started in 1998 and we decided at that time to focus on main clients. The main target was to reduce costs and increase efficiency. To do that, we equipped every sales representative with a PC, with an application with whatever we could outsource out from the company to the sales representative in a loading activity.

We learnt that such an activity is complicated. We had to set up a win‑win approach, not just outsource and stop. We could not produce an application and simply deliver it, as they do not use it if they do not find advantages. Secondly, we have to share our vision, otherwise it is something that will not be used by everybody. The third lesson we learnt was that they have to buy it, implying that we had to set up a way of doing things that brings some clever, fast, pioneering people to the team. We had to train and use them to sell the application, the ideas, and the usage to others.

The first issue was to fill the gap. The basic application was designed to load a contract. We needed an application to prepare mock‑ups, to prepare offers, to segment, split and target the clients, to do whatever is useful to prepare the sales. And we developed a lot of applications to fill the gap. In this second wave that is still running, we fine‑tuned the programme.

We started the third and last, for the moment, generation of software systems just a few months ago. But during the second generation that is still in place, we learnt that coming back to the end user, the sales representative and looking at their needs is not enough. At the end of this period, we developed a huge number of applications, for post‑sales, for carrying this to prepare mock‑ups, and we have applications to segment the portfolio. We had so many applications that in the end, they used to say we had too many. The gap was filled, but the view was built just like a sandwich, putting together pieces, not blending them in an intelligent way from an end‑user point of view.

19. Third Generation

The focus of the third generation is completely different. It is not about efficiency, nor about providing functionality, but rather about making more money. We defined the best practices, identified the and best users of the products and media and tried to model the best approach. The application will become a leverage tool to help everybody to adopt a method, instead of a menu or a set of functions, the user must navigate, remembering what he has to click to get the function.

We have now designed an application that is closer to the workflow. It is a prototype that will help us produce a book that will be used to make our gap analysis. It is what we want to use as a basic component for the sales representatives.

At the top are four tabs representing selling methods and you click on the way you want to work. In the first screen, there is information about the business, printed in weekly targets. I can see how close I am to this week’s target. I have information about the canvass, and here it tells me that this is the third day of my campaign, that I am in phase one, which is development. This is designed to help each sales representative understand the focus that he has to address in each company.

The sales representative knows that he has to get five new print customers and 10 new web customers in the next week by setting up meetings that are able to provide the new clients. He has a lot of selection criteria, mostly prepared by trade marketing, with each one designed to help people in a specific area of the company to extract the exact target from a portfolio that is best suited to the canvass period. All the customer information is available: complaints, credits, etc., and in the office, where the contact with the client is taken, there is also a button which helps the people prepare for the phone call to set up a meeting. By dragging and dropping, the client that you are dealing with appears on the agenda, and you can start preparing the meeting.

So in the first stage of the application, we prepare the visits that are necessary to achieve that weekly target. When we move the business to the end of one bill, it implies that we have sold and it stops. It helps you identify what to do to achieve targets, what the activities are, and what preparation is needed. After filling in the agenda, each single visit is organised and opens a window. The programme suggests offers prepared by trade marketing and tailored to specific targets. By dragging and dropping the one you prefer into your dashboard, you can modify it, add or delete information and prepare the account. We have an automatic system to change from a small advertisement to a big one, or to reuse key words, for example. This helps people sell basic ideas, by selling content instead of space. At this point, everything is checked and controlled by the system, ready to be sent to the publishing.

. Sales representatives must have a strong and aggressive approach and are encouraged to use the most relevant tools to negotiate with. Once negotiation is over, he selects the proposal that the client has accepted and signed, and the order entry is finalised.

20. Sales Automation Goals

That gives you an idea of the concept that we have tried to achieve in the design of the next generation of our application. Our vision is not about efficiency, or providing pieces of information, but rather about revenue. We want to build a new set of applications that will help sales representatives sell more. Our approach is that the more you sell, the more money you get from your activities, making your career more successful. By following our strategy, salespeople can reduce time wasted by preparing, loading and addressing businesses and gain free time.

We are working towards two main goals. One is to address more clients and make more visits. The other is to sell more products to those clients, by having the best, tailored offers, being able to change the number of products and the average revenue per advertiser at any time. We aim to get something close to 800,000 more visits each year from the same number of sales representatives, using the same number of working hours each day.

We changed our aim from trying only to benefit the company to creating benefits such as IT tools and applications for sales representatives. We are convinced that our third generation application is the best way to achieve our goals. By identifying the best performers, we not only identify those selling a lot, but also those selling in the best way. They tell us how they work, how they organise the office, how they organise their day, and what it takes to achieve targets and by modelling this operating method within an application, it becomes the means to get everybody to adopt the same working method. If we can get one more visit each day from each salesperson, we can achieve 50% of the 800,000‑visit goal.

Mitch Connolly

SLIDES

21. Overview

I am the National Sales Manager for Yell UK, where I have worked for 20 years. I will cover a brief overview of the company, the history of automation in Yell UK, some reasons and drivers behind why we initially went into automation, a look at the current functionality of our salespeople and then will move onto probably our most exciting project at the moment in Yell UK, mobile audicapture , before drawing some conclusions from what we have done over that period.

Yell UK is a regulated business, with a turnover in the order of £650 million. We have 450,000 customers, with about 85% market share. We print just over a million advertisements, and have some 3,400 employees, of which 1,800 are in our sales divisions. Within sales, 1,060 work in face‑to‑face premise channels, 668 in our telesales channels with a primary responsibility for acquisition of new business, and our national and key accounts make up the remainder 72 employees.

Yellow Pages is the core of our business. We produce 88 directories with a distribution of some 28 million, full national coverage. Our Business Pages product is at nine editions, giving a national B2B coverage. Yell.com is a leading online classified UK directory service, and has been an important growth area. Finally, with the deregulation of the directory assistance market in the UK last month, our product, Yellow Pages 118 247, provides classified telephone directory assistance. All our salespeople sell this portfolio of products to our customers.

22. History of Automation

Our history of automation in the UK started in 1992, with the first moves towards the automation in our field sales premise channels. We looked at handwriting technology through IBM ThinkPad but the technology was not as advanced as our thinking. So whilst initially we wanted to automate our field sales consultants, we actually started with our telesales pilot scheme in 1994, which soon moved to national roll‑out in 1995. By then, we had seen the benefits that we could leverage from automation and started a pilot scheme for our premise sales channels. That led to the roll‑out of our automation processes for field sales in 1997. We are probably currently at the most exciting part of this development, as we move towards mobile audicapture in our face‑to‑face channels, where we are trying to capture not only audit cons , but also the content of the advertisements.

23. The Five Primary Drivers Behind our Sales Automation Drivers

a. Customer care

Those of you in sales will agree that salespeople talk but do not write very well. We wanted to improve our end product through the quality and accuracy of advertisements, because with automation comes auto-validation, key NATC (name, address, telephone and classification) information. Our customers were demanding more professional paperwork. Handwriting errors, theoretically, cannot exist with orders captured electronically. We had a vision that all our data would come from one common platform, which we introduced with SAT 18 months ago.

b. Process efficiency

Process efficiency is a key driver for our business. All order entry now happens at point of sale, rather than back office. There is no need to re‑key orders, or indeed, advertisement content, be it in semi‑display or, in the future, in terms of graphic content as well. We reduced back office costs and were able to reduce back office staff and invest in more salespeople, so that we could continue expanding. Equally, through the automation of these processes, we saw a compression of the production cycle from the time of sale right through to the directories being delivered in the UK. Our view was that ultimately, the salespeople would become the publishers of Yellow Pages.

c. Campaign organisation and control

When we moved into the telesales arena back in 1994/95, we were trying to control the chaos that surrounds just having so many printed records in terms of contacting a client base of 1.6 million across the UK. With automation, you could assign workloads, automatically create targets, you had timely and accurate sales reports and forecasting through trended information, and you had far more effective market coverage. Our salespeople, through having a controlled data flow, were able to contact, and indeed were guided and forced to contact, all of our clients, not just the primary classifications. We could see the segmentation of the client base we wanted to contact and because we gave the salespeople access to update records, we ended up with better database maintenance.

d. Sales efficiency

The reduction in paperwork gives our salespeople more time to sell. They no longer have to plan accounts or calls individually, as this process is fully automated. More importantly, we found too many of our first line managers were spending time on administration and clerking. Through automation, our managers can spend more time coaching and developing salespeople’s sales techniques and customer service; far more beneficial than clerking and administration.

e. Information

As our business became more complex, with more products, more propositions, greater segmentation and pricing offers, it was obvious that we needed more information for our salespeople at point of sale. Such information cannot realistically be stored on pieces of paper and needs to be controlled. All our marketing information that is of interest to customers is either on a laptop, or on our telesales computers, including classification usage and testimonials. We have up‑to‑date market information on all products, from print to internet and voice products. Industry profiles and full demographics by directory area, allow us to provide our customers with value‑added information about their competition and marketplace, the number of households, businesses and type of industries they work with. As our propositions at Yell UK become more complex, automation takes over from calculators to ensure that rates for customers are 100% correct.

24. Functionality

We have a whole host of functionality options for our people. The advertising history of all our products is available on the live databases. The sales force’s workload is controlled by automation in terms of both new business, and especially our current customer base. Sales planning is automated, highlighting sales opportunities, be they within the printed directory, or other products.

We worked extensively on freehand graphics packages for our premise salespeople. An interface between our field salespeople and artwork studios, allows salespeople to request artwork for customers online, which is sent back over broadband. We have comprehensive marketing information and would like to achieve complete order and content capture for graphics and display advertisements, as well as for non‑display advertisements, already achievable in telesales.

All of our telesales paperwork is automated with a centralised fulfilment process, again releasing more time to make more sales. Of course, with automation you have the benefits of accurate and timely sales reporting and importantly, sales forecasting, giving management the information it needs to direct the business and improve any sales performance.

25. Mobile Audicapture

This is the most exciting, but also the most difficult part of sales automation today. All 1,000+ premise sales consultants work with laptops. They are connected at the office and also at home via either ISDN or ADSL broadband connections. This facilitates daily information downloads and uploads between sales consultants and head office. This information goes into a SAT database, allowing salespeople to be aware of any new client information, be it telephone calls, requests for information, or bad debt issues, everything is on a live, real‑time system. We want to achieve a vast reduction in the mountains of paperwork that our salespeople necessarily complete today.

26. Sales Processes

In terms of sales process, our face‑to‑face salespeople operate with a two-call structure. Their primary function is to develop customer accounts and the spend of our renewal customers, and to sell new products. This whole process is in some way touched by sales automation.

In the first call, planning and preparation is affected by automation, highlighting sales opportunities, giving customers’ details, advertising history, and all payment records, so we can avoid dealing with customers who have debt issues with our business. In the first client call, the salesperson conducts a business review, requesting new artwork for the client from home over an ISDN connection on file transfer software. Our studios complete the artwork request over two to three days and it is sent back to our salespeople electronically and stored on their laptop for the next customer visit. They also have a paper copy sent directly to their home.

This takes us to the second call, as our face‑to‑face channel salespeople are responsible for keeping and growing advertisers. The consultant will make a laptop presentation to the customer, with up‑to‑date marketing information and any of our television advertising on video, and they will propose a new programme for the next directory edition, with automated rate card calculation. If the customer wants to amend the proposed artwork, this can also be done at point of sale.

Through mobile audicapture, instead of individual order forms for each product and order line, we use a till‑roll concept, where customers sign one piece of paper printed at point of sale. Roll out for this latest sales automation tool began in 2002 and we aim to take it to all our UK salespeople.

27. Key Learning

You may not all have begun sales automation processes, or you may be in the middle of what can be a long and difficult process. Key learning from Yell in the UK comes down to four points.

a. Sales force buy-in

The buy‑in of the sales force is critical. Salespeople need to see this as beneficial to the way they work and I think in Yell UK, we have successfully achieved that – I do not think our salespeople would want us to take away the laptops with which they are now so familiar. However, they demand that the technology is robust and works first time, every time. The technology needs to be completely ‘plug and play’, like a Sony Playstation, otherwise a disenchanted sales force will quickly turn off.

b. Training

Training is also critical. We found that you cannot train people in applications only once, but need to revisit the training so that salespeople are completely comfortable with any new technology.

c. Pilot schemes

We found that testing our approach with pilot schemes was beneficial. Once we are confident that an approach will work after a small trial, we then extend to national deployment.

d. A modular approach

We also found, latterly in some cases, that trying to do everything at once often equals failure. It is better to take a modular approach and roll out different functionalities, which people can become familiar and comfortable with, and then build on that, step by step.

28. Conclusion

Automation in Yell UK has been a 10‑year journey that we have not yet and, arguably, will never complete, as new technology comes to market. It has certainly been a worthwhile business evolution, enabling far better quality for our customers and the users of our products, which are more accurate and up‑to‑date. We have benefited from efficiencies in our business processes, enabling us to invest in the sales force by reducing administration and back office costs and importantly, automation supports a continually professional image for our industry.

Questions and Answers

Participant

This question is for Gianluca Ballocci.

Every time you rolled out a new generation you also changed supplier. Could you comment on whether that was due to trial and error?

Gianluca Ballocci

We are still to decide on a partner. The first generation established the application’s core with our partner Endox . The next generation consists of hundreds of different applications and we used a local supplier for flexibility, speed, and to be able to manage the deployment and building of the application in a different way. We are now deciding on our next supplier. Changing supplier wastes time, but this is a colourful new system that must be produced with a competent supplier. The application is part of a project that will do away with 99% of past programmes. Everything from sales to publishing and accounting systems must be repackaged and started from scratch.

Participant

All the panellists mentioned sales representatives’ buy‑in as crucial to achieving success. Could they share their different approaches to achieving that buy‑in?

Mitch Connolly

In Yell UK, we worked with small pilot teams to engage salespeople. Equally, salespeople and sales managers designed a lot of projects, as we did not want technology people designing projects for salespeople. They were very much engaged in the projects, in many cases moving from their day‑to‑day selling activity to work specifically on designing a programme for their colleagues.

Anton Speer

We started by placing a salesman in the software design team. The next step was a pilot, as changes to software during development meant that we needed feedback on whether the product worked in the field. Training is crucial and you have to train the sales force extensively and often, not just once. You have to continue teaching salespeople that laptops are not only order processing instruments, but can also be used for better selling, better support, and better knowledge of customer needs; in short, to take better care of the business.

Participant

This question is for Mitch Connolly.

To what extent can salesmen amend artwork and how knowledgeable and efficient are they?

Mitch Connolly

It depends on each salesperson’s skills. Training is critical and we have just started national deployment. It also depends on how much of the visual needs amending. Some people can create new artwork from scratch at point of sale. Our studio produces 180,000 visuals a year and minor changes can be made at point of sale. We cannot yet deploy freehand skills for full creation of visuals nationally, but when we get good graphics that do not need significant changes, it is possible to achieve not only order capture, but importantly, content capture that goes straight through to publishing at point of sale, particularly with non‑display text advertisements.

Participant

A follow-up question for Mitch Connolly.

Are the graphics that are forwarded to the field in a graphics software package?

Mitch Connolly

They are sent via ADSL, but I do not know what format as I work in sales, not technology. We use a graphics package to send freehand artwork from our studio that can be amended at point of sale.

Participant

Freehand is the name of a graphics package; does freehand style mean something different?

Mitch Connolly

It would be the Freehand package.

Participant

Does “modify artwork” just mean changing text and typesetting, or are you talking about changing real artwork, like photographs that are created in Photoshop or another bitmap program?

Mitch Connolly

We can amend size; for instance, advertisements can be shrunk, and we can change the text side too. Unique advertisement creation is not yet a skill set with which all of our people are familiar, but some have the ability to create advertisements using graphics libraries.

Participant

Most of you said that you give sales representatives access to change the client database. As a result, have you faced more or less problems with quality or with the accuracy of the data?

Mitch Connolly

At Yell UK we have not suffered a degradation of quality of data, because with manual records amends were not always captured. We have to trust the fact that our salespeople want to work with up‑to‑date, accurate information next year, so it is in their interests to get that validation correct.

Anton Speer

We gained quality, because sales representatives can key in information for next year’s sales campaign that was previously on paper and so could get lost. This is held in a database available to everybody. Whether a sales representative deals with the same customer each year or not, the information is accurate and the quality improved.

Gianluca Ballocci

The advantages of having everything in the system are improved quality and speedier processing. We want to enhance value by identifying content, splitting it into pieces, reusing them, and eventually changing the value of each piece into a basic component to be resold in different media – a complete offer. By reusing and integrating the process from sales representative to publishing system, we are discovering the system’s benefits.

Stéphane Kusic

Quality is imperative and we have key indicators to follow the quality of orders. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are perhaps the most important things for us, because new customers are expensive to garner and it is more lucrative to keep our customers.

Participant

A question for Anton Speer and Gianluca Ballocci.

You both have independent sales forces and moved your back offices forward, so the representatives are now putting their own contracts in. How did you deal with the perception that the representatives were doing more work for the same provisions they had in the past?

Gianluca Ballocci

The biggest issue we have is organisation. We must help salespeople organise themselves to be more effective. We are working closely with them to understand how we can all benefit from the application, and using this as a means to sell it to the sales force.

Anton Speer

Implementation was initially a problem. Salespeople felt they had gained back office tasks like keying in orders, but soon saw the advantages of capturing orders at the customer’s side with printed order sheets. Customers are less likely to ask questions, errors are avoided, and salespeople save time by not having to clarify things. Our biggest problem was that printing order sheets took too much time, but this will change when we introduce our electronic signature system.