Develop an IT Strategy to Support Sales

IT must stand ready to support and collaborate with Sales. Armed with a robust technology enablement strategy, IT must provide Sales with the applications, data, and supporting human resources to efficiently and effectively carry out their operations.
Many organizations are plagued with outdated or ineffective sales application portfolios, poor sales data, and a support structure that is ambivalent towards the time-sensitive requirements of the sales organization.
IT must work hand-in-hand with Sales to build a robust strategy for Sales-IT alignment. This involves building a permanent alignment steering committee that can set shared, strategic direction on how best to enable salespersons.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

IT and Sales should build a program for shared technology governance.
IT should build a portfolio of applications that supports all sales processes, using best-of-breed point solutions where necessary.
A proactive and corrective program for sales data quality must be implemented and managed by IT.
IT should seek innovative, “art of the possible” sales solutions.

Impact and Result

IT should develop a robust set of applications that address end-to-end sales requirements. This portfolio can be centered on the CRM platform, but will often also include robust point solutions like lead management automation, sales collateral management tools, and social media management platforms.
IT should assist the business in auditing sales data and putting in place both preventative measures (i.e. data stewards) and corrective measures (i.e. automated scrubbing tools) to ensure customer and sales data is current, valid, and free of duplicate information.
IT should always keep the “art of the possible” on its radar: Internet of Things and Social are two examples.

Develop an IT Strategy to Support Sales Research & Tools

1. Review drivers

Assess the benefits and investigate the urgency for Sales-IT alignment.

2. Assess current and target states

Articulate business objectives and define vision for future state.

3. Design solutions

Identify sales solutions and build the roadmap for Sales-IT alignment.

Bring Sales back to your side with a rock star sales technology strategy.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.