Pain
With territory sales reps located throughout the world, individual sales managers relied on a combination of emails, Word Documents and Excel spreadsheets to track and manage sales activities. If an executive wanted to understand the sales activity in multiple territories, she would need to request copies of the e-mails and documents and put together a picture of what was
going on. This was a time consuming process that led to missed sales opportunities.

Vision

The Global Chief Information Officer and the Vice President determined that a standardized sales call report was necessary to bring together information about corporate sales activities. Together
with MPS Partners, the leading global provider designed an InfoPath form that captured information about sales call. Each report was submitted weekly by at territory sales rep. The report was then reviewed by a regional manager and ultimately approved and made available to all executives via a SharePoint sales management portal.

Value
Managers and executives now have a timely view of sales activity across the organization. This allows leaders to effectively plan how to best spend their time in order to drive revenue. It also helps surface any customer service issues or business challenges quickly through effective communication.

Solution
The call report system is built using InfoPath 2007 in conjunction with SharePoint 2007 Enterprise. Call reports are available either through a web browser powered by InfoPath Forms Services or off-line within the InfoPath client. The call reports are stored on SharePoint and exposed through a series of views. Each week, a “current” report view is refreshed for executives.