As we look ahead to Dreamforce 2009 next week, I wanted to share some experiences and recommendations for those seeking to augment their SFA deployments with sales analytics. Having interfaced with the Sales divisions of over 200 B2B companies while at Siebel, LucidEra and PivotLink, I thought you may find the following observations pertinent:

1. Analytic requirements should be part of your SFA deployment

Thinking ahead to how your analytics needs will look 1-year out from your SFA deployment will help you get your business processes and data quality issues addressed up front. I remember distinctly seeing this best practice executed by a Fortune 500 CIO. He defined very well his analytic requirements and created a usage analytics dashboard to make sure all SFA users were diligently populating the key fields with the right data to help future reporting. His team was then able to quickly take action to gain insight into their business, and take action to drive results.

2. Take an integrated view of your business

Every company needs to manage and grow cash, customers, sales, product and people. Looking at Pipeline analysis is useful, but looking at all the factors that affect Sales is much more impactful. For example,

• To better analyze your target/addressable market, integrate D&B, or D&B-like data, with your sales and marketing data to help you align the right marketing resources
• Integrate hire date information to look at ramp rates and compare with benchmarks from CSO Insights to help model and forecast more realistically
• Integrate Bookings, Billings with Discount information to highlight sales process issues and sales, customer service and finance coordination opportunities

3. Beware that migrating pre-existing Excel reports into your new Analytics system is risky

Asking your Analytics vendor to replicate your Excel report may appear to be a logical way to get started, but it can limit the power of your analysis. It would be like using an iPhone just to make calls. Consider developing a broad list of sales KPIs / sales metrics, and the different ways you’ll want to look at them. You will accelerate your success by creating this framework ahead of time. For example,

• If you are in a high growth business you may want to compare the performance of new vs. seasoned reps to uncover training opportunities. Is there a pattern of competitors and type of deals that new reps lose when compared to deals lost by seasoned reps?
• If you are in a finished goods business you may want to dig deeper into returns and cancellations or analyze average days from opportunity open to book, ship, bill and collect
• If you are trying to sharpen your view of the ideal customer, you can start adding more attributes to your SFA to analyze win-rates by account and deal attributes.

At Dreamforce next week, PivotLink will be showing off a new Salesforce.com analytics solution that makes it easier, faster and more affordable for you to get to the insights that matter the most to your business. Visit us at Booth # 1012 and visit our Dreamforce 2009 page to learn more.