Tag: b2b sales

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Securing The Future Of ROI With Simulation Decision Support

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is about how to approach and think about Decision Simulation. True Interaction built SYNAPTIK, our Data Management, Analytics, and Data Science Simulation Platform, specifically to make it easy to collect and manage core and alternative data for more meaningful data discovery. For more information or a demo, please visit us at https://synaptik.co/ or email us at hello@www.true.design

EXCERPT

Simulation is simply the idea of imitating human or other environmental behaviors to test possible outcomes. It is obvious a business will want to take advantage of such Simulation technologies in order to maximize profits, reduce risks and/or reduce costs.

Simulation decision support is the backbone of many cutting edge companies these days. Such simulations are used to predict financial climates, marketing trends, purchasing behavior and other tidbits using historical and current market and environmental data.

Managing ROI

Data management is a daunting task that is not to be trusted in the hands of lose and unruly processes and technology platforms. Maximizing profit and/or reducing risks using simulated information will not be an automatic process but rather a managed task. Your business resources should be leveraged for each project needing long term ROI planning; computer simulations are just some pieces to the overall puzzle. Simulation decision support companies and platforms are not exactly a dime a dozen but should still be evaluated thoroughly before engaging.

Scaling Your Business

Modern software platforms exist to assist in the linear growth of your business initiatives. Algorithms have been produced thanks to years of market data and simulations in order to give a clear picture to your expectations and theories. Machine learning has also been rapidly improving over that past several years, making market simulations even more accurate when it comes to short and long-term growth. There is no lack of Algorithms or libraries of Data science modules, it is the ability to easily scale your core and alternative data sets into and easy to use platform that is configured to your business environment. Over the last several years these Data Science platforms, such as Synaptik.co, has allowed companies with limited resources to scale their operations to take advantage of decisions simulation processes that were once too expensive and required specialized, separate resources to manage.

Non-tech Based Departments Can No Longer Hide

All branches of companies are now so immersed in software and data that it is difficult to distinguish the IT and non-IT departments. Employees will plug away at their company designated computing resources in order to keep records for the greater good of the corporation. These various data pools and processes are rich in opportunities to enable accurate business simulations. In turn, simulation findings can be shared with different departments and partners to enrich a collaborative environment to amplify further knowledge for a greater propensity for success. It is no joking matter that big or small companies will need simulation decision support processes to ensure they not only stay competitive but excel in their growth initiatives.

Data and Knowledge Never Sleeps

In 2016, the Domo research group produced data visualizing the extent of data outputted by the world. By 2020, the group predicts that we will have a data capacity of over 44 trillion gigabytes. This overwhelming amount of data available to the average human has companies on their toes in order to grasp the wild change in our modern world. The data produced is neutral to the truth, meaning accurate and inaccurate ideas are influencing the minds of your customers, partners and stakeholders. Scaling profits and reducing risk will become an increasingly involved activity, which gives us another reason to embark on Decision Simulation processes to deal with the overwhelming amount of data and decisions needed in this fluid data rich world.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is about how to approach and think about Decision Simulation. True Interaction built SYNAPTIK, our Data Management, Analytics, and Data Science Simulation Platform, specifically to make it easy to collect and manage core and alternative data for more meaningful data discovery. For more information or a demo, please visit us at https://synaptik.co/ or email us at hello@www.true.design

By Joe Sticca

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Shocking? Predictive Analytics Might Be Right For Your Future

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is about how to approach and think about Predictive Analytics. True Interaction built SYNAPTIK, our Data Management, Analytics, and Data Science Simulation Platform, specifically to make it easy to collect and manage core and alternative data for more meaningful data discovery. For more information or a demo, please visit us at https://synaptik.co/ or email us at hello@www.true.design

EXCERPT

“What is marketing?” Isn’t it the attempt to sell products and services to people who are most likely to buy them? Would you be shocked to learn that Predictive Analytics is useful for completing sales? We have a tendency to think of our processes/departments and data in silo-ed terms. Though, with today’s platforms it is critical to harness insights across silos as well as bring in “alternative data”.

How is your Data Management? Can your sales and marketing staff use your data sets to up-sell products or services?” Data management is the biggest barrier as well as the biggest opportunity to surpassing internal KPIs.

Know Your Customer.

“Have you ever heard of someone lamenting about things they should have done as youth to be successful adults?” They might read a good book and suggest “they could have written that themselves.” They think that the path to success is “obvious.” Simply know everything about your customer and provide him or her with valuable products or services. That is the secret to success. “But how do you get to know your customer?” The answer is Data Management and Predictive Analytics.

What Do You Know?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has become very popular because it allows you to accumulate, manage and act upon client data. This can be an automatic data management system. You could even review past buying habits and automatically send an email for a hot new product, which might be appealing. Up Selling can increase your profits per customer. CRM is Business Analytics – giving you a deeper understanding of who your customer is, what he wants and where he is going. “Why do you think so many websites want to place cookies on your computer?” They want to track your behavior and anticipate your next buying action.

When Did You Know It?

“If you don’t know what your customer bought yesterday, how will you know what they will buy tomorrow?” The most agile business understands their customer in real-time. The Twitter world is about immediate gratification. People want to say “Hi,” see your pictures and plan your future together within the first 3 seconds, you meet. The profitable business knows the answers before the customer asks them. Predictive Analytics might be right for your future because it gives you the power to anticipate consumer buying trends and or behaviors across channels (Social, video, mobile, etc.). Your competitor might already be using these Business Analytics; you might be leaving “money on the table.” Sign up for a discussion, demo or strategy session today Hello@TrueInteraction.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE:This article is about how to approach and think about Predictive Analytics. True Interaction built SYNAPTIK, our Data Management, Analytics, and Data Science Simulation Platform, specifically to make it easy to collect and manage core and alternative data for more meaningful data discovery. For more information or a demo, please visit us at https://synaptik.co/ or email us at hello@www.true.design

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How can Your Business Optimize B2B Sales?

The Challenge

Business to Business (B2B) sales can be an incredibly nebulous, complicated, and uncertain arena to navigate and manage. The products may be varied and complex, the sales cycles are wide-ranging, and many decision-affecting influencers, contingencies, and persons/agencies may be involved.

Compete in B2B at the global level, and your challenges compound exponentially. Consider the situation of Lifetime Brands, a leading global provider of kitchenware products that include household brands such as Farberware®, KitchenAid®, Mikasa®, Pfaltzgraff®, Built®, and Fred and Friends®.

Cliff Siegel, EVP of Global Supply, at a Lifetime Brands warehouse in NJ.

Encompassing a vast, global network of factories, production schedules, warehouses, distribution points, demand planning systems, budgeting processes, and scheduling, you can imagine that Lifetime Brands’ B2B sales ecosystem is both complex and ever-changing. The sheer size and breadth of the product line makes the sales ecosystem especially vulnerable to issues and challenges that include prohibitive lead times, continually changing or unclear data, redundant manual tasks and interactions, difficult to manage budgeting processes, and difficulty in clearly aligning budget to strategic plan, among others.

Taking Action

Exactly how can a company sidestep or conquer these perils? Lifetime Brands reached out to True Interaction to help mitigate the inherent discord typified by complex sales operations. Cliff Siegel, the visionary EVP of Global Supply Chain at Lifetime Brands, had championed a set of core goals for his organization that should be familiar to all business leaders: Lifetime Brands wanted to grow revenues and increase profitability. They wanted to attract new customers, and keep existing customers happy. They wanted to make Sales operations as efficient and effective as possible. And they wanted to be able to identify and track opportunities and threats within their sales ecosystem.

Mr. Siegel knew that in order to attain these goals, Lifetime Brands would need to assume a proactive, progressive stance and shape their circumstances rather than react to them. They would need to true up the core engine of their business – the Platforms, Processes & People within their sales ecosphere – in order to transform a patchwork of disparate applications and methods into a harmonious, unified entity.

Liam Wright, CEO and Innovation Specialist of True Interaction, teamed up with Mr. Siegel to conduct an exhaustive bottom-up inventory of the existing system and all external data points and data sources, such as Demand Solutions and SAP. The disparate pieces were gathered, identified, organized, defined (and refined) using True Interaction’s proprietary innovation process including several rounds of whiteboard sessions and data identification meetings. Based upon this process, Matt Tidd, TI Chief Technical Director, had a complete map of the information landscape, and was able to architect a full-stack custom solution for Lifetime Brands, complete with the appropriate features and specifications; including Milestones, User Stories, and Tasks laid across a well-articulated development path.

A Solution

The product outcome is a fully articulated and unified Sales Portal platform, encompassing both an operational planning component and a financial planning component, that can provide sales estimates based on past history as well as the numerous continuous factors, events, and data points that influence day-to-day operations and financials. As a result, the entire value-added planning process accepts revisions quickly and easily. The Sales Portal system is able to link planning and planning procedures to the strategic plan, minimizes the time spent gathering data, maximizes the time for strategic decision making, automates collections and consolidation of budgets, enables collaboration, tracks sentiment, provides various level managers with fiscal control, and establishes a data warehouse for insightful financial planning and reporting, all within a beautiful user-experience. But most importantly, True Interaction built a custom product for Lifetime Brands that is not only cost-effective to implement, but also saves Lifetime Brands hundreds of thousands of man-hours in future enterprise operations.

“Sales portal allows us to simplify and focus the sales process, and ensure the lines of communications between sales and marketing teams are in perfect harmony. Additional benefit is gained from the resulting structured data that we can use to make informed decisions on what our customers are looking for and to better equip our sales team,” says Cliff Siegel. By investing in technology and implementing the proper digital solution, Lifetime Brands has amplified both financial and human value for its organization.

Now that Lifetime Brands has harnessed all of these disparate data sources into a unified system, they are also reaping serendipitous, unplanned-for benefits as well. For example, based upon the collaborative sales projections that the system now provides Lifetime Brands, the organization is now able to more accurately plan the related inventory requirements throughout the calendar year.

Reflection

Is the B2B sales process in your business well-organized? How well does your organization wield technology to achieve their better achieve their goals? According to SMB Group’s 2015 SMB Routes to Market Study, 29% of small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) view technology as helping them to significantly improve business outcomes. These “progressive” SMBs are 18% more likely to successfully forecast revenue increases than their peers. Progressive SMBs spend 29% more on technology, are 55% more likely to have fully integrated primary business applications (financials, CRM, HR, etc.) and are 86% more likely to use analytics than their counterparts.

 

By using technology to streamline workflows, slash time spent on repetitive data entry and inefficient processes, gain better insights into opportunities and threats, and create new business models, progressive SMBs are well positioned to tap into new customer requirements, improve customer engagement and experience, and enter new markets. As they move forward, they will continue to outpace their peers and reshape the SMB market. ~Laurie McCabe, Partner at SMB Group, Inc.

 

Are you able to make informed, actionable business decisions? Is your organization evolving with our digital ecosphere as it expands and develops? It’s time to invest in the future.

By Michael Davison