Sales Force Automation

Software to help manage the SalesProcess, or the Sales Force

A frequent SmallCo need

Shared Contact Management

Group Calendaring

task planning, prioritization

status tracking

etc.

Generic Sales Force Automation Modules --2003/10/17 19:36 GMT
Having been a CRM Administrator and evaluator in the past, I can offer up the names of the standard modules of the SFA flavor of the CRM application spectrum.

Accounts: Manage information about organizations Contacts: Manage information about people in the organizations Leads: Manage incoming requests for information or sales inquiries. Or manage collected business intelligence that you want your sales people to act upon in a centrally coordinated fashion so that sales reps aren't calling on the same people. Opportunities: What mature leads become. Opportunities are selling engagements with Contacts at Accounts who have expressed interest in purchasing.
Tasks & Events: The group calendaring and to-do list area.

Anything beyond this and we're talking about a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) application rather than just an SFA. Most commercial quality SFAs are in reality shaded toward the CRM functionality side and also have Customer Service and Marketing functionality to support the sales people in their selling and customer retention activities.

Compare against: Contact Management applications (ACT!, etc), Customer Relationship Management/CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning/ERP, Supply Chain Management (Sheldon Chang, sheldon@hyperlinked.com)