What are the big three business issues that a Commercial Director faces?
1. Managing the sales pipeline
2. Managing and maintaining client and prospect relationships
3. Overseeing the delivery of products and services
With responsibility for all commercial decisions and direction – including sales, a Commercial Director takes on managing the sales pipeline. Companies need to have sufficient sales and that means a mixture of reorders from current clients, up-selling, cross-selling and converting new prospects into customers. Having a good ERP system like SAP Business One can provide the Commercial Director the information to identify the gaps where there is opportunity.
Nurturing sales relationships is extremely important for businesses. It keeps the flow of sales coming. The Commercial Director needs to ensure a good relationship is maintained with clients/prospects – ensuring their sales staff are recording the right information to ensure they have the information to hand to ensure customer satisfaction is maintained. How do you know what offer to make to a client? How do you know what sorts of discounts to offer for volume? Using an ERP system like SAP Business One is the best way to understand not just sales but the complete commercial environment. It will keep commercial relationships strong and well informed.
A Commercial Director has a broader remit within a business, in that they are also responsible for the product portfolio as well as sales. That means they are responsible for reviewing and, when necessary, sunsetting products that are end of life. The development of new products is role undertaken by the commercial director. This is a complex process. It is important for the commercial director to launch new products at the right time as well as evaluating new products in the market from customer feedback. Having good sales reporting and customer relationship management tools helps in this task.
The Commercial Director needs to have his finger on the pulse of the business, to understand how current contracts are performing in order to price new work accurately. So a system that gives information across the whole business is going to give them a distinct advantage.
With the advent of e-commerce and selling direct to customers from a website or web ordering system, pricing decisions are becoming more frequent. How can a Commercial Director make these changes with any degree of confidence without a dynamic view of margin, volume of stock and utilisation? The ability to view all these components in one interface gives the Commercial Director a more holistic approach to decision making.
And looking long term, a Commercial Director needs to have a view on the performance of the product portfolio to know what is selling well, what needs to be refreshed or what needs to be replaced altogether. Which is where SAP Business One can be an important tool in their armoury. Through accurate reporting, there is an opportunity to evolve the product mix, or increase market share through innovation and improvement.
