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The Company 's Convergence Of Its Crm And E Business Efforts

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Chip Reeves knows all about the life of a sales guy. That’s because during his nearly 20 years at Dow Corning, a global manufacturer of silicon-based products, he was one. He knows all too well that salespeople ignore any new administrative process or technology unless it allows them to make more sales or use their time more efficiently. Now, as Dow Corning’s director of marketing and sales processes, Reeves is leading the company’s convergence of its CRM and e-business efforts, as well as streamlining its compliance and reporting functions. The goal, naturally, is to provide excellent customer service—and to make it easy for Dow Corning sales and marketing staff to use the expansive CRM system. Real easy . Reeves also served as the …show more content…

It’s sometimes tough to get them to use what seems like administrative functions so that management can have better control.” Reeves says he is always balancing the pushback from the sales folks with the CRM demands of the business. “Heavy involvement with the salespeople has been key, and we’re trying to be responsive to them,” he notes. “But by no means do we have that balance perfected yet.” A huge part of Reeves’ task has been to ensure that Dow Corning’s core enterprise applications, which rest on SAP’s suite of products, are intact and can be used by all users in Dow Corning’s sales and marketing group. “A lot of what we’ve done in the CRM space has been putting a foundation in to help our people work more effectively and give them more access to information,” Reeves says. While Dow Corning had been smoothing out the backoffice infrastructure, however, Reeves and his team also had to ensure that salespeople were being listened to and would want to use the mobile devices and applications. His team approached that by “looking at a day in the life of a salesperson,” he says. “Thinking through their information and task needs, what were their priorities, what were their common tasks, what were the process pain points.” One thing became immediately clear to Reeves: When equipping mobile teams (such as the sales force), less is always more. He says that he has preached a “low input, high

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