MeasureProductivity

Companies need to consistently measure and increase sales productivity for them to stay alive in today’s highly competitive industries. This can be achieved through effective sales planning strategies and highly efficient sales force.

Finding a concrete way to measure and increase sales productivity is one of the prevailing needs of many companies. This may be an impossible feat given all the internal and external factors that could affect a company’s sales performance.

The term “sales” generally refers to all activities done to be able to sell products and services. This is the completion stage of any commercial transaction. At this point, the customer has already agreed to partially or fully pay a certain product or service. Sale can be culminated through direct selling, pro-forma sales, agent-based selling, door-to-door salespeople, electronic exchange or business-to-business selling. There are several aspects in a company’s sales performance that need to be analyzed and evaluated to determine its sales productivity. This include new customer acquisition, client control and client retention. Acquiring new customers may be based on database marketing performance, channel recruitment and development, lead generation, and trade show support. Client control, on the other hand, may be based on customer relationship management, system integration tools and partner relationship systems. Lastly, client retention can be evaluated through account management methods, channel management and development of new opportunity in existing accounts. Sales productivity is essential for commercial organizations because a business cannot expand when its sales volume do not increase.

Improving one’s sales performance is getting more difficult every day. This is essentially because of tighter competition, development of more innovative products and technological advancement. More recently, companies have taken to providing their sales force communication tools like mobile phones, pocket computers and laptops in order to make them more efficient with what they do. Companies also have come to acknowledge the importance of conducting regular training sessions to their sales people to make them more convincing as sellers. A perfectly designed sales plan will not work if a company does not have the sales people who can meet their sales targets. Moreover, the sales force should be able to continue to supply a steady flow of customers and increasing sales revenues.  Given the important role that they play, sales people usually take part in the sales planning stage. It is at this stage that activities aimed at improving sales are planned and prepared. Sales targets are also set during this stage with the use of sales planning system and appropriate software. Sales goals and activities may be planned according to regions, channels, products or clients. Sales tracking is also an important part of managing sales. Through this, sales are continuously monitored to ensure that they conform to company targets. Sales reporting is likewise important as this allows companies to recognize the efforts of those people who consistently achieve their sales objectives.

More recently, sales management software products have been offered by software developers to their clients. They contend that these products enable the latter to measure and increase sales productivity. Through these software products, it is now easier for sales departments to develop effective sales plans, track sales completion and obtain real-time sales reports. Furthermore, the data obtained from these will allow companies to come up with new ways of attaining sales growth.

The performance of a company’s helpdesk is one of the factors that will determine employee and customer satisfaction. This is why it is important to continuously measure and increase helpdesk productivity by regularly monitoring helpdesk service levels.

It is imperative for many companies to measure and increase helpdesk productivity to be able to achieve more efficient business processes and obtain highly satisfied customers.

Help desk is commonly defined as an assistance and information tool or resource that is concerned with troubleshooting problems with computers and other products. Help desk support is often provided by corporations to their customers through several modes including a website, email address, or a toll-free number. These help desks are designed to assist external customers. Some help desks, on the other hand, are designed to assist the company’s internal customers who are its employees. Traditionally, helpdesks function as call centers since in the past, telephone support was the primary medium used until the emergence of the Internet. A lot of people found online help desks more convenient since in this set-up, they would no longer have to deal with being put on hold or navigating through automated phone menu.

Usually, help desk requests are managed through special help desk software that comes with an incident tracking system that assigns user requests unique tracking numbers. This software help companies identify common computer problem so that something will be done to minimize or eliminate them.

A typical help desk scenario usually starts with a user informing the help desk about his problem. He is then issued a ticket that contains a brief description or summary of his problem. He is then forwarded to a first-level support agent and id his issue is resolved at this stage, his ticket is then closed and documented with the solution provided by help desk technicians. Otherwise, the issue would have to be escalated to second level help desk officers. Usually, first-level help desk is trained to provide assistance and answers to common issues or questions. Concerns in this level are usually answerable and resolvable with basic knowledge on certain products or services. Personnel who provide second-level help desk support are trained to handle calls on more complex issues or concerns. Queue managers or supervisors are tasked to manage the tickets that are handled by the help desk as well as conduct helpdesk auditing. Common objectives of such include determining if sufficient controls have been set in place. These controls make sure that all service requests are documented and that only authorized personnel access to them. Another objective is to ensure that guidelines have been set in escalating issues according to priority levels. Moreover, helpdesk auditing also ensures that all customer requests are monitored and have been resolved within a given period.

Companies have different ways and methods to measure and increase helpdesk productivity. Generally, management calculates all reported problems every month. The number of problems resolved by individual helpdesk staff is also determined. The number of reported problems vis a vis resolved problems are also computed and carefully analyzed. From these data, certain measures are implemented to ensure the better performance of help desk personnel. Moreover, by analyzing the common problems reported, something could be done to make a company’s system easier for both its external and internal customers.