Having spent over twenty-five years in the semiconductor industry, I have experienced almost every account management, opportunity tracking, contact management, and reporting option available. Starting with SAS on a VAX system, using Excel spreadsheets and Access databases, through today’s best CRMs -- one thing that is apparent, no matter how “state of art” and customizable [...]
Forecasting has always been referred to as part art and part science. The art is the human factor. How well does the sales person know the customer? How well can they judge what the customer is telling them and how well can they extract fact from fiction? How well do they separate what they believe [...]
NEHANET is integrated with many leading ERP/MRP solutions including SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Tensoft, Consona and others. Integrating NEHANET with your ERP is usually straightforward, and adds significant value to your operations. We typically pull in the following information from your ERP: parts master, customer master, actuals (shipments), backlog (requested, committed, delinquent, unscheduled), bookings and risk [...]
The key to having a successful sales channel is making sure external partners are engaged and rewarded for their success. Creating this environment requires great communication and an accurate way to track, record, and monitor business activities. Additionally, transparency -- allowing partners to judge what their current and future revenue streams will look like, can have a [...]
CRMs is in today’s market are designed for general usage and for a broad range of customers. While this is beneficial for the CRM vendor, this often leaves the customer with a solution that only partially meets their needs. This is especially true for the semiconductor industry, which has several unique complexities associated with its [...]
Many CRM systems provide forecasting solutions for business that are single event sales of a system or software package, or box. These expertise-based businesses forecast when the event will happen and its value BUT what if that is not your typical sales model? Generic CRMs have forecasting solutions that perform well at providing an environment for [...]
While most industries are global and need to deal with managing customers in multiple locations, the complexities in the semiconductor and components industries are increased significantly through the inclusion of multi-level sales channels and design-in partners. The sales management team needs to coordinate activities between their direct sales team, their manufacturer representatives and their distribution [...]
Distributors, both national and international, are a critical part of the sales channel for Semiconductor and Electronic Component companies, as well as many other businesses worldwide. The distribution channel comes with its own specific challenges and requirements to be successful. First and foremost is the realization that your line is one of hundreds of lines supported [...]
To manage the sales funnel you first need a process that captures the new business opportunities in an organized, concise way. Capturing opportunities is one of the core capabilities of a good CRM system and the opportunity capture capability of your CRM can make managing the sales funnel a manageable process [...]
Finding and capitalizing on cross-sell and up-sell opportunities is a common frustration, so it was not a surprise that it landed in the top 10 list of areas that VPs of Sales in the semiconductor and component industries wanted their organizations to improve upon. One of the key issues I discovered in researching this [...]