High five for 5G

The new service, the speedy 5G connection, is already out in the US as a pre-standard network by Verizon. However, standards-based networks of both Verizon and AT&T are so close to launching that we can already call 2018 a breakthrough year for the technology. 5G-capable smartphones from Samsung and other vendors (not Apple, though) are also in the pipeline for next year.

The EU takes a slower approach but it has just accepted new measures that would help the rollout of 5G in Europe. Industry body GSMA estimates 1.3bn 5G-connections by 2025, covering 40% of the world’s population. When in full swing, the new networks will allow for the rise of IoT and faster and safer connections to everyone.

Robos Rising

We’ve seen the robots before but never in such an abundance. Chatbots flooded the whole internet, taking over simpler customer service tasks, answering plain questions and, in case of more complex queries, they redirect the visitor to a human assistant. And those are only the robots hiding behind websites and only showing a set of characters of themselves.

Others get a physical body and come out to the limelight, though. SoftBank Robotics’ humanoid robot named Pepper made its first appearance already in 2014 but it has grown up: it now responds to human emotions and can answer questions about products or services. Two of its German versions, Luna and Monaco Pepper, take their role one step further. They have a permanent home in one of Bremen’s Sparkasse bank branches and keep regular contact with clients. They can even tell jokes! But, in the hindsight, there is more than that: by learning every day, they have the potential to take over more complex tasks as well.

Artificial or Virtual, Both a Reality Already

Smart glasses creating an augmented reality (AR) have found their way to the offices this year. At the Consumer Electronics Week in the summer in New York, ThirdEye Gen presented its X1 glasses: workers who wear them in the office can make remote colleagues see exactly what they see. These advantages can also be translated into serious savings in operational costs: according to Forbes’ report, as much as 40% can be achieved using AR or VR-technology in certain industries. One of the businesses in the know, French banking giant BNP Paribas, has also announced the rollout of a VR-based app and a set of new services for its retail customers last year. It allows the clients to manage their accounts in a different way or make decisions easier but it also allows the bank to create a new type of operation.

Foldable phones

California-based Royole and Samsung announced their own foldable mobile phone models almost simultaneously. Both can transform into tablets when unfolded – arguably the most genuine announcements this year. Creating a totally new product category, it has the potential to create a new definition of work as well.

Royole’s Flexpai phone, when folded, works as a dual screen with both screens operating independently or in interaction with each other as needed. It works on the Flexpai+ platform that can be integrated into other devices or applications as well, giving the California startup quite a growth potential. Meanwhile, Samsung has also presented its foldable phone, though only available commercially from 2019. The company calls the display technology Infinity Flex Display and Android has already announced to support it.

Hybrids Going One Step Further

Lenovo didn’t sit on its laurels, either, and came up with an innovation in the laptop-tablet hybrid category. The Yoga Book C930, presented at the IFA trade show in Berlin this year, has dual-screen with a 10.8-inch size, with the secondary display being an e-ink one that can also morph into a virtual keyboard. Actually, this second screen has three functions: keyboard, notepad, and e-reader. The first screen is a Windows-based regular display. Despite the many features of the device, Lenovo might still have a hard time selling it given the non-exceptional nature of either function but it is still an interesting product worth mentioning.  

AI in CRM

AI being the winning technology in the field is a claim also made by CRM market leader Salesforce and IDC, based on a recent joint study. According to them, 28% of the respondent companies already have AI in place, while 41% plan to have it in the next two years.

Salesforce itself has upgraded its Einstein software this year, giving it a new feature that integrates customer service tasks in the regular service offering and allows Einstein to handle routine requests building on customer history, natural language processing, and machine learning. one of the other major announcements of this summer was Microsoft committing to AI-based analytics. The tools to provide this experience include chatbots, predictive lead scoring based on communication traffic patterns, and automated welcome emails, among others.

Newcomers to the market already have AI in their initial offerings and investors are keen to support such projects. One of the latest announcements is of Spiro Technologies that claims downright the title of “the first AI-powered CRM”: it has raised USD 1.5mn in seed funding that will be used to add even more AI features to the product.

Fast Finance with Apps

Let’s not forget about mobile app innovations, some true delicacies for an enterprise mobility vendor like us. Our favorite this year was also awarded a Mobie Award by Enterprise Mobility Exchange as the most effective mobile app integration: financing solution specialist DLL’s Express Finance. It is a sales tool that helps sales reps quote financing payments to customers, a complex task with many scenarios with a process that is just as confusing for the clients as it is for the sales workers.

The new app, Express Finance, is a user-facing app that simplified the pricing process by offering a real-time pricing service, proposal generation, and POS closings. The reps can find all the relevant information they need to quote a payment in the app, no other information source needed. As a result, they managed to achieve a 90% reduction in their time-to-quote rates. DLL calls it an amazing success and it’s hard to think otherwise – we are glad to see the direction enterprise app development is going!

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The post Outstanding Digital Innovations in 2018 appeared first on Scolvo.

1. Draw blueprint drafts and technical details

An obvious use of a mobile device with a digital pen is to draft or sketch blueprints and technical details while out and about, even when in front of a client. The user has to be neither an engineer nor an artist: unlike in maintenance or technical design, the sketches serve only the purpose of telling a story, not to be a measure. However great work your sales enablement team is doing, there can be times when the rep is not equipped with the blueprints and detailed designs he or she needs. But expertise and some drawing skills are there to move the deadlock.

2. Sketch processes

Especially in B2B selling, reps need to present complex processes that lead to the solution the client requested. However, the complex nature of these processes require a complex explanation and that is sometimes too much for the other party – not to mention the important details that can be lost meanwhile. In order to make things easier, reps have a great tool at their disposal. They can make a quick sketch of the process they are talking about at any point in the presentation! Prospective clients will also feel unique as the meeting notes come with handwritten sketches, made only for them and following their own requests.

3. Highlight important points

Personal conversations are invaluable but so much can be lost while talking. By highlighting (underlining, circling, etc.) important points of a presentation or a product documentation, salespeople can make sure the agent will have the most important messages delivered even when forwarding the materials later to the client. Reps themselves might find it useful as well to get a quick overview of the points they need to act on.

4. Make presentations complete

Presentations are mostly known as the boring variations of stories. Surprises, on the other hand, will help get the attention of the audience. They come in many shapes and forms but sketches are certainly among them. So how to show the client that an agent is listening to them? By drawing and writing missing information in the presentation during the meeting, it is more than obvious that the agent listens and makes an effort to add even more relevant details to what is being told.

5. Take handwritten notes

Handwriting is more comfortable for many than typing and, therefore, can be quicker. But there is another aspect of handwritten notes: it suggests a higher level of authenticity, so it is great for building trust with clients. You should never underestimate the power of trust: the average sales cycle has gotten longer in the recent years and it has been paired with a growing skepticism from the part of the prospective buyer. The only thing that is able to speed up the process now risk-free is trust, and any tool that helps build it should be honored and nurtured.

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Voice Command Is Taking Over

Humans love to have their voices heard – you can see the proof in the ever-growing popularity of voice-enabled digital assistants or VEDAs. The likes of Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are invading the households. What’s more, they are effortlessly slipping through the “personal mental firewalls,” a phenomenon that surprised many opponents concerned about privacy issues.

Consumer technology that becomes so popular so soon always finds its way to the offices. Think about mobile devices, and you are only a step away from the thought of robotic assistance fighting for a cubicle. Putting it simply: they will come regardless of you liking it or not. Besides, you have to love what your customers want to stay competitive.

Don’t try to find counterarguments just yet. Accepting VEDAs to the workplace is a spectrum rather than a point in time. The question is, what’s your stance on that spectrum? Are you looking to replace all your sales reps with a cheaper alternative, are you entirely against robots, or are you trying to find a compromise?

Naturally, some industries and professions are more prone to such automation of workflows. Translation, customer service or logistics are the first to come to mind, but legal, medical, or educational professions are not safe, either. Plus, wherever administration occurs, voice-activated functions will appear and, well, take people’s jobs.

On the other hand, it is still a long way until they can accurately analyze a person’s tone and realize emotions. It is also a long way until human customers get so comfortable with robotic interactions that they don’t mind a non-human selling them something. Today, Capgemini data shows 20% thinks so, and it will grow to 31% by 2020. So until then? Let’s make friends!

Reps and Bots = BFF?

So voice-enabled digital assistance might as well be a beginning of a beautiful friendship, and not just based on commanding a shopping helper hidden in a speaker in the living room. After all, is it that bad if the new digital assistants do the dirty work and make sure all the data is in place or flowing in the right direction? The administration is something humans hardly ever enjoy and, besides, the strengths of our kind lies more in finding creative solutions.

Voice assistants can be the first line of contact and sales enablement can support them by providing the data for the initial communications and research. Further along the pipeline, human reps can take over and give the different quality of the connection. Remember, empathy, caring, or even competitiveness are emotional traits that have a big say in a deal, and they all belong to the human character.  

So reps don’t have to abandon their newly found BFFs even during a personal sales meeting with clients. When you integrate a VEDA into the mobile sales app, the whole experience changes for both the rep and the client and not as to exclude the agents.

The bottom line is that voice command function facilitates for example, the note-taking during and after the meeting when on the go, but if further developed by artificial intelligence, it can also “take part in the conversation,” and find out in the course of the meeting what materials it should present at which point.

Analytics and emotional intelligence: the digital assistants can analyze tons of data that helps the rep understand the client better and use his or her emotional judgment to find the right time and place to offer the right product.

Meanwhile, the personalization of VEDAs is an issue that you cannot ignore. Languages, accents, or “just” preferences and mental pathways are some of the things users expect their digital friends to recognize – sales reps are no exception. The best is when the sales reps know their way around programming: they can then make the voice assistant their partner and not their competitor.  

Integration: The Peace Treaty of Sales

The basis of the friendship between a rep and a VEDA is the proper integration of the artificial intelligence into the systems used. Speaking of sales, it goes without saying that CMS or CRM will be the top references and the data within these systems peculiarly clean. Other than that, the integration itself is not rocket science, and it is available for mobile apps, too – so reps can take their new friends with them wherever they go.  

You might want to develop your interface on the platform of Amazon, Apple, or Google, but integration is a more viable option you should consider. That is the starting point if you want to upgrade your mobile business application to the latest standards, and it only involves some particular API’s completed with the specific tools provided by your developers.

Essential voice assistant features for sales can be the following:

• Communication: Your VEDA will call, text or email anyone on the contact list
• Content: It mines the documents, presentations, images the rep needs
• Scheduling: Appointments, follow-up calls, conference attendances, report preparation times
• Navigation: Finds the way to and from meetings

For that, you will need some key technology like speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS). Furthermore, it can even have noise reduction and voice biometrics (to recognize the rep’s voice). We bet it will not be long until even more features become mainstream and VEDAs will be able to adjust their tones and languages to the user automatically or also develop their personalities.

No matter how artificial intelligence and voice assistance is all the rage these days, let’s not forget about conscious professionals to provide the right input for the technology and use the human creativity to find out more business cases where robots can add value.

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It Won’t Work Without Measurement

Before we take a look at the figures that show how much the business can gain by enabling sales, it is essential to stop for a minute. The mentioned numbers would not be available without companies measuring their efforts.

Sounds so fundamental, right? However, you would be surprised how many of them forget about that in the rush of implementing the new workflows. Alternatively, according to our sources from around the online water cooler, each of the stakeholders considers different measures the most relevant and the projects slip on disagreement.

Don’t be that company! Arrive at an agreement with the C-suite on the measures in advance and continuously monitor your KPIs – just as you are already doing it with your targets. Sirius Decision’s State of Sales Enablement 2017 study shows that 57% of the companies use some impact-based measurement of their sales enablement efforts.

Have the Cracks Been Fixed?

So many hard-working hours and good intentions can fall through the cracks if those have not been fixed. Processes tend to erode over time and, before you introduce any new technology or method, they should be checked for faults and fixed.

The most common mistake is letting data gather in different systems that are not integrated with each other. The bottom line is your CRM is well-connected. Even better is a mobile app, combined with the CRM, that can also function as a distribution and command center for sales ops. From a C-suite perspective, that central hub becomes essential when creating the reports, which are only as good as the input of data.

The other well-known phenomenon is the inability to react to changes midst the complexity of the products and customer demand. More complex products require more consultations, and engaging today’s more informed customer requires competent advice all the way through the buyer’s journey.

Numbers, please!

So if everything goes as planned and you have avoided all of the above pitfalls, how far can you get with sales enablement? With 44% of Sales Tech survey respondents stating that failing to get approvement from the C-suite for their sales technology purchases, it is more important than ever to see clearly about the return of such investment. However, sales enablement is even more than tech: it needs to help the organization excel in many ways.

A 67% improvement in closing deals

One of the significant advantages of sales enablement technology is that it can closely align the sales efforts with the marketing operations, e.g., by providing content for all steps of the journey the potential buyer goes through. With this close cooperation, companies can become 67% better at closing deals, as well as grow their revenues 24% faster and their profit 27% faster in three years’ time, according to a Wheelhouse Advisor infographic.  

At least 10% increase in conversions

In their Sales Enablement Practitioner Survey of 2016, Highspot found that half of the respondents could increase their pipeline conversion rates by at least 10%, with 12% of the companies recording an over 30% increase. Higher conversion rates mean the revenue per rep increases, too.

59% of top performers use it

Of those organizations that earned more than their targets, 59% have a dedicated sales enablement function. Moreover, of those that could do even better, achieving a 25% growth compared to goals, 72% had already invested in sales enablement, a Forrester Insights and Brainshark joint report claimed.

17%-21% potential improvement in quota attainment

An essential pillar of sales enablement is training, including the onboarding of new reps. With a dedicated investment in the necessary services through sales enablement, the potential to attain quotas improves by 17.7% for conventional methodology or process training and 21.3% for onboarding, according to the Sales Enablement Optimization Study by CSO Insights.

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Enablement Is More Than Support

Has your marketing team created content (brochures, presentations, photo galleries, white papers, ebooks, blogs, infographics) to support your sales team? If it has: great! But you’re not done just yet. (If you haven’t got such assets, our best advice is to stop reading this article right now and create some.)

Have you ever asked around if the sales agents use those materials? More often than one would think, the answer is no. And the reason, more often than one would think, is: “I have no idea where to find them.” Or, sometimes: “It doesn’t fit my client’s needs, and I have no way to customize it.” In fact, stats show that, although 95% of clients make a buying decision when they get content at each step of their journey, 65% of reps can’t even find the content the clients are expecting and 90% of them avoid using the material they locate because it is outdated and not fit.

Thus, putting the corporate content in a central place is the first step. The next one would be automation. When you have a well-specified workflow, it is quite easy to associate the right content with the right step of the process and offer the agent just the piece he or she needs at the right moment. For example, the sales insurance products always starts with an assessment and most likely goes on with product presentations. Sales enablement automation will make sure the assessment questionnaire is the first content piece an agent sees and that they won’t see any presentations until that questionnaire is clicked through.

Having the content in place is the support that forms the base for enablement, where the material provides a seamlessly integrated background to the sales rep’s work, i.e., using the persuading power, product knowledge, and personalization skills to offer a tailor-made solution to the client’s problems.

Enablement Triggers Efficiency

Sales reps are pushed from two directions to increase their efficiency: the employer wants them to contribute to more profitability while the clients expect them to save their time while helping them make well-informed decisions.

By its very definition, sales enablement does just that: it creates a business-friendly environment by giving the agent all the engagement tools and information that he or she needs to forward the sales process.

If this is too vague, let’s take a closer look. The most critical barrier to efficiency, according to a survey conducted among sales practitioners but also confirming common beliefs, is the time spent in the CRM. However, searching for content is also among the most time-consuming activities. When enabled by technology, sales reps have a more streamlined process for CRM use (as it is integrated into the sales enablement tool), and a central place to look for the content they need for their work. In return, the conversion rates, as a measure of efficiency, have improved at 95% of the companies of the survey mentioned above, at least to some extent.

A sales enablement automation tool also support the sales managers in being more efficient. The technology can log all the processes, all the time measures, and all the content usage, that managers use to inform themselves and make decisions. These logs are then quickly put together into a report and can be automatically sent to the management level. The time previously spent on administration and chasing down reps for the report now can be spent to work on strategic initiatives!

Mobilization Puts the Icing on the Cake

Today, when no technology is binding sales agents anymore to their desks for any tasks, sales enablement cannot be complete without a mobile solution, either. Companies are already investing in mobile technology, hardware and software alike, and it’s just a bonus that some of those solutions have the potential to also enable their sales teams.

The interaction that requires the most support from mobility is the personal meeting. In today’s customer-driven business environment, not being able to respond to a client request immediately and adequately easily becomes a dealbreaker. Meanwhile, a mobile device, equipped with a corporate app specially developed for these sales interactions, is a tool that delivers accurate information to the prospect, in real time.

A mobile sales enablement tool is the sales rep’s Swiss army knife: it has all the functionality for the assessment and the engagement of the prospect, as well as all it takes to contract on-site. What functions are we talking about? We have mentioned questionnaires and product presentations before, but integrated client data, emails, todo-lists (either by the manager or by the agent himself), multimedia, electronic signature, or voice notes. Furthermore, tracking and reporting is also an essential part of any mobile sales enablement tool.

The sales profession has exciting times ahead as the digital transformation allows the traditional interactions to develop in many ways. Technology helps to achieve a sense of purpose again by offering opportunities to win the almighty trust of the prospects. Who, in turn, become more engaged by experiencing a new type of sales activity. As much a higher achievable pay, this engagement will drive the agents’ commitment, too, and motivate them to perform better and better.

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When our clients build an app with us, they want to grab the opportunity to implement it quickly while still getting the full functionality needed in a particular role, in a specific industry. Any time these companies save on implementation and the onboarding of the team, they can immediately translate to increased productivity and profitability. They have been enjoying the benefits of the ready-made building blocks based on Scolvo’s industry-specific expertise in financial services, utilities or retail – you name it.

But we have also understood that the same simplicity and ease of use that building blocks provide is necessary for updates, too. Despite all due diligence during the implementation, the needs for new features or data options unavoidably emerge. Datasheets are incomplete. Not enough space for adding new assignees. Status update options not satisfactory. That’s just business as usual.

In a typical scenario, the updates mean a lot of hassle. Take an example from logistics: the sender takes on delivering a unique cargo and decides to require additional identification criteria from the recipient, to make sure the shipment is safe. So it wants to add another field to the app, for an ID number.

No big deal, you think? The traditional solution is to rewrite the code, to redefine the database, and to issue a new version of the app for all the users to make the changes visible. But our mantra of simplicity and the Scolvo app that we built accordingly doesn’t allow us to settle for something so long and complicated.

To prove our app’s value even in this situation, we have recently opted to store and manage the data using a more flexible method: a semantic database. It is driven by a configuration file that is in charge of telling both the backend and the admin interface how to handle the information. So when the client asks as to add a field, we expand the configuration file, and it tells the backend how to structure the new data and tells the web admin interface how to display it.

The semantic data management also makes maintaining data consistency simple. A “flow engine” keeps the modifications in order even if the network doesn’t allow for instant synchronization. In our logistics example, status updates for the loading and discharge of shipments will always appear in the order set by the workflow, regardless of network availability. When several changes happen in the offline mode, like the tasks of loading and unloading a truck get done, the flow engine will make them wait in line until it accesses a network and will make the updates in their original order. Because of keeping all modifications this way, they can instantly go live without causing chaos in the management of previously and recently added data.

For the clients, this background procedure is mostly invisible. They only see that the app can be seamlessly updated and they can manage the workflows or users correctly even when they add some new data to the mix.

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Too Much Or Not Enough Data

We all know the primary reason why: the time it takes to send a document back and forth before it contains all the information correctly and gets signed by all the parties is just too much. According to a survey commissioned by Qvidian, 75 percent of sales operations, management, and enablement professionals work with an average of four persons on a proposal, many of those are in product teams or remote locations.

The data to fill is just too many and, in the midst of circulating it, it’s quality also deteriorates. If a CRM and some templates are involved, at least the reps don’t have to fill the data manually. Still, the redundancy of registering information is usually way too high and, again, circulating that many copies take its toll on time-effectiveness. The worst part: the more time the agents spend on such rounds makes the client more likely to look elsewhere and find a better deal.

Time to Automate and Accelerate!

Automation in itself won’t solve all the problems of an organization or even a proposal-making process, but it does contribute its fair share to the acceleration and improved efficiency of a workflow.

There are several levels of automation that each adds a severe degree of life-points to both the reps and their managers:

• Digitalization of documents (templates, presentations, calculation databases): Flipping through pages is outdated, did you know? Unless you work in book sales, your clients will likely expect to get the material from you in a digital format. It’s also easier to search this way.
• Cloud storage (of documents): A central storage location for all the records cuts the searching time significantly while ensuring data safety. According to Brainshark, 41% of top-performing companies say they want seamless and fast content access in the field.
• Integration of CRM and quote calculators: No more typing and retyping client data or missing figures in a quote. Reckoning in the head is right for your brain but not always for the accuracy of a quote.
• Mobile app with electronic signature feature: The most advanced automation of proposal preparation is when the sales reps take it with them. Mobile business apps on tablets free the agents from the latest barrier of purchase: location. If completed with the option for electronic signature, the deals can be closed right on site.

Beyond the Speed

Clients and businesses are equally busy in the rat race of processing and reacting to information faster. Time is money has never been more valid but what if we concentrate too much on speed and forget about the rest of the equation?

Right automation shifts gears in creating proposals yet it remains relevant because it combines quickness with personality and transparency. Automating bids through a mobile app is one level higher: the agents sit next to the clients while showing the presentations, the client clicks through the integrated calculator, and the meeting ends with a digital quote made by the app, ready to be signed electronically.

Because the reps use the same database for the calculations, the same service will always cost the same for the client. Such process gives an impression of professionalism and trustworthiness. And are any of you, sales managers, familiar with the onboarding of new reps and how painful it can be and with what an uncertain outcome? Now a mobile app can navigate the agents through the same process every time and gives them the same documents and add-ons, making sure they check all boxes of the to-do list consistently.

Sales proposal automation has just reached its maturity with the introduction of mobile software, creating a culture of efficiency and success among the sales professionals and a rise in the almighty client engagement.

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The post Be the Winner Who Takes It All with Mobile Sales Proposal Automation appeared first on Scolvo.

Meanwhile, clients expect even more personal and up-to-date solutions from the financial service providers. With mobilization, the sales of insurance can be better controlled, the data quality improves on the back-end, resulting in better, more tailored offers for the clients.

Digitalization with a Doubtful Outcome

Insurance distributors have already realized that they need to take steps to stay competitive, so the establishment of new working methods and technologies that make workflow more effective has already begun. There is some CRM to store client data and some registration system for the agents, and digital calculators, questionnaires became an essential part of everyday work.

But some problems emerge more often than others: because of the employment specialties of the agents, quality assurance is cumbersome, the administration is hardly free from paper, and there is not enough information available about the clients. The management is struggling to get an idea of what is going on at the personal consultations, let alone to control it, so the options to control the outcome is also limited, at least with management tools.

Have the agents made it to the meeting? How much time did they spend there? Did they present all the necessary documents? Did they ask all the essential questions? Did they assemble the quote according to the real demands of the client? If the client calls of the appointment, how can it be rescheduled efficiently?

When the agent faces these questions, the answers show the amount of administration (signing in to more systems, mixing paper and electronic documents, the difficulties of data recording and reporting) puts the margin of error too high.

Mobile Solutions Preferred

Finding all that you need for your job in one place, regardless of whether you work as an agent or a manager – sounds impossible? However, that is precisely what a mobile application has to offer. Adapted to the particular challenges of insurance distribution, SCOLVO Sales, for example, provides access not only to client data stored in a CRM or to corporate email but also to other back-end systems, and they can also be synchronized on the go. The agents can also find all the presentations, contract templates, or corporate calculators in the app.

All this is easily manageable on a mobile device since the agents only have to log in once, to a single application. After that, all the crucial information appears on a simple dashboard, together with the tasks for the day.

The mobile app offers an interface for the management as well, to communicate tasks and changes more simply and quickly. They can schedule the team’s resources on demand, in real time. They can also see where, in what timeframe, and what kind of information did the agents deliver to the clients, and what new data could he or she could get.

Well-managed Information = More Clients and More Engagement

Thanks to the central management available through the mobile app, the daily organization becomes smoother and more efficient, and it gives more information to the managers about the contents of a personal meeting. The work of the agents is trackable, and the team can do the tasks following best practices. Meanwhile, the management receives automatic and instant feedback on that.

The easy-to-use application and the easy-to-understand, easy-to-oversee functions allow the agents to record data easier and quicker, improving data quality. They don’t abandon the CRM for difficulties of usage, so it also becomes more accurate, more current, so more useful for the business.

The better data quality allows the management to get to know the clients better. The summarized information, completed with other, automatic reports made during the personal sales meetings (like the length of the session, the material presented, emails, follow-ups), result in offers that better suit client demand and promote further sales opportunities (upsell, cross-sell).

SCOLVO Sales – The ultimate selling machine for financial institutions has arrived:

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Lost in Conversation

There are many steps in the retail banking sales process where it could be a demand for increased effectiveness. During a personal meeting, the agent might miss several opportunities to get to know the client and give them a more precise, more tailored offer.

There is, for example, one of the first steps of a personal consultation, when the agent tries to find out as much as possible about the client’s financial situation. The conversation will eventually shed light on the type of advice the client needs, considering their existing or non-existent savings (credit-focused or savings-focused), but the mid-term and long-term plans usually remain unexplored. As a consequence, financial institutions lose billions by not knowing the client enough.

With the current administration practices, documenting “hints” is accidental and depends on the preparedness of the agent. The management, on the other hand, only has limited possibilities to intervene in the process. They mostly have to rely on the onboarding and training period to get their messages through or suggest a necessary change while controlling productivity.

There is a problem with transparency, too. During the necessary data registration process, the retail banking agents don’t use systems that could allow them to share the registered information with the client (e.g., financial snapshot or sending a colorful PDF about the suggested products), and there is no possibility to make the necessary calculations together. It makes winning the trust of the “always-on” clients, and the fact that the agents only send out the quotes days or weeks later doesn’t help either.

Value for the Client

An application that was developed keeping in mind the priorities of personal sales meetings helps to complete the consultation and keep it transparent. A piece of software that serves as a central access point for the official documents, contracts, as well as the product brochures, client databases or quote calculators, will make it easier for both the consultant and client, as well as shorten the sales cycle. Such an application is a useful tool for the sales managers, too, to coordinate teamwork and to better distribute the available resources.

Because of the integration with internal legacy systems, many would think it a desktop application is the solution. But the surprising truth is that a tablet application is a way more modern sales tool, and it is also easier to implement. When using a tablet, the agent and the client sit next to each other, the client is involved in the sales process, increasing its effectiveness.

The application can easily integrate internal systems, so it can contain all the necessary information and also make it available to the client immediately or as an attachment of a follow-up email. If it’s a returning client, some of the data can be accessed from the database, so it reduces the administration. Even the calculators can be used outside of the corporate website, by accessing it directly from the application, and print a contract right on site if the client accepts the quote.

Financial Planning as an Experience

Using a mobile application in retail banking radically transforms the current processes without making them more difficult. Due to the smooth operation, the agents are happy to incorporate the tool into their workflows. The client will experience a new way of banking: during a personal meeting, sitting next to the agent, they can be active participants of the financial planning – a feature that builds trust and increases satisfaction.

By accessing the documents quickly, the agent can get from the first registration of data to the contract, and they can also complete their administration duties without paper. Meanwhile, the managers can control all steps of the process, keep the information up-to-date, and receive automatic reports. The sales agents can always see in the application what meetings they have and when do they have to follow up with a particular client.

According to SCOLVO’s industry-specific experience, the mobile sales enablement tool has dramatically increased task management, both on a team as on a personal level. The productivity of the banks has increased in general, with the help of the features accessible through the tablet and due to the modern sales tool. Further advantages that financial institutions mentioned included the seamless data flow, a proper CRM-usage, current reports, and paperless processes.

SCOLVO Sales – The ultimate selling machine for financial institutions has arrived:

The post Retail Banking: Sell More with a Mobile Solution appeared first on Scolvo.

New version or not, the iOS has already bagged a clear win in the business sector when it comes to mobiles. Even though Android-based devices are way more popular, recent data from content collaboration tool maker Egnyte shows that, of all mobile activities in the enterprise, 82% happens on an iOS platform.

We collected some specific “sexy” and useful features that might push the corporate user further to the Apple universe. The new functions show Apple’s commitment toward the enterprise usage and also make it easier for businesses to use mobile apps.

1. Built-in NFC

Apple finally lets you break out of Apple Pay and extend its NFC-capabilities to make it fully operational as a third-party service and offering new payment options to be integrated. For enterprises, field maintenance might profit the most from the added feature. NFC-tags on objects, e.g., a water pump, can now be scanned by the field worker’s mobile device that identifies the object and allows the worker to download the relevant manual or repair guide.

2. Security

Apple has been systematically building its reputation security-wise from day one, and the new iOS is no exception to this priority. In the latest version of the platform, users or admins can control when to allow an application to access location data (e.g., deny it when the app is not in use). Apple MDM also lets users blacklist individual apps for the employees without affecting the use of other apps.  

3. Scan and Sign

Another essential move forward to eliminate the need for third-party services for crucial functions is Apple adding a document scanner to the Notes app. The scanner function is automatic once placed above a document but also lets the user adjust the corners if it can’t capture it right. This feature, together with another improvement on the Apple Pencil, is a considerable advancement for sales agents on the move. Deals can now be closed by letting the clients sign the contracts and other documents on-site and instantly scan those with the mobiles and share them with the managers.

4. Augmented Reality

The ARKit has been available for a while for iOS developers, but now it’s given a boost to target enterprise users by making it native to iOS specifically. Field maintenance work is one focus area where AR can add significant value, for example, by fitting technical drawings and blueprints on the tablets to objects in real life. Retail and manufacturing can also widely benefit from such a feature, letting users match furniture in a room or planning production lines.

5. Siri

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have improved the well-known mobile assistant, Siri’s, voice and language capabilities. Siri is now able to learn from its users, and it can come handy when assisting in organizing work schedules and fieldwork routines. It seems more than one new feature of the iOS11 release targets field maintenance professionals: Siri, for example, can now take dictation-based notes through the “Type to Siri” option, an ideal companion for workers whose hand often get dirty in the field.

6. Indoor Maps

Indoor mapping is now ready to assist notorious but time-lacking customers in finding sale items in a mall or passengers in a hurry on an airport. While the latter has undoubtedly some advantage to business travelers, enterprise users might be more excited by the future such a feature projects. Imagine when a tablet can navigate workers in office buildings or industrial properties of a more extensive scale: of course with the matching security features that limit the app’s access to the corporate property to authorized employees.

The post 6 Reasons the New iOS Will Rule the Mobile Enterprise appeared first on Scolvo.