SAP Sales Order Processing Issues

The Shocking Truth About Your SAP Sales Process [Checklist]

Table of Contents

Do You Have a Good Sales Process?

Think your company has a smooth running SAP enabled sales process.  You might be shocked to learn that your highly paid sales staff are  probably suffering from some of these symptoms of sales order hell.

SAP Sales Order Processing Issues 

11 Common SAP Sales Process Issues


 

  • When trying to qualify a lead, they suffer from an inability to consistently and efficiently qualify and prioritize sales leads or the value of each lead. In short, they waste time because there is no well-defined sales process.

    Further increasing the sales cycle in sap.

    Improper Business Process configuration settings with the SAP ERP System can also cause huge headaches.


  • Sales management suffers from inaccurate pipeline information because each sales process stage is not fully defined.  This severely limits the ability to manage the business and report to stakeholders.  It also results in 90% of all deals being closed just prior to mid-night at the close of the quarter.

    Not benefiting from following a Best Practices Sales Process

  • Up-Sell and Cross-Sell opportunities are limited due to incomplete and inaccurate views of the customer.

    Resulting in Lower Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

    Poor Inventory Management practices, including inaccurate stock information, both within your own warehouses and with those of your business partners, can prevent your offer management system from working properly. 

    Many business processes can be negatively affected by inaccurate inventory count and must be addressed if you are to optimize your revenue.

  • Profits and margins are negatively impacted by inconsistent pricing practices for products and services across sales territories, divisions and selling channels.

    Ultimately impacting Account Executive Bonus' and Increasing Turnover

  • Sales forecasting and reporting of progress within opportunities is inconsistent from opportunity to opportunity and across the sales force.

    Resulting in reduced sales order flow in SAP

  • Management has a limited ability to define and track key metrics from the order to sales process like average sales cycle length, average deal size, close rates, and quota achievement. 

    Resulting in inability to provide Sales Coaching in an effective and timely manner.

  • Highly complex and lengthy sales cycles result in a limited ability to leverage the appropriate sales team for each opportunity and efficiently share information.

    Requiring the use of Virtual Account Teams which allows you to put the best people together to address a particular opportunity.

  • High level of order errors as a result of a manual, error-prone sales order process that does not leverage related quotes.

    Resulting in significant customer irritation if the inaccurate quote gets to the customer and does not reflect what has been agreed upon, often after long, complex engagements to determine the requirements.

  • The overall sales effort and ability to efficiently allocate your sale’s team time is limited by an inability to get insights into the alignment or misalignment between sales activities on one side, and, current & future, customer value on the other hand.

    Leaving 'White Space' unaddressed and money on the table.

  • Sales reps spend more time with customers they are more “comfortable” with and less time with customers that can drive the most revenue and profit.

    Resulting in lower overall Sales Team Productivity as regards Top Line Revenue Generation.

 

Fix These 11 Issues To Develop A Well-Designed Sales Process

If you want to have a good sales process, these and many other  sales process pain points need to be identified and addressed both with process improvements, i.e., proper configuration of the software, as well as training of the pre-sales and sales force and the deployment of sales analytics on the desktop and mobile devices from the customer facing sales force to the sales management team.

 

Importance of Master Data

Having a well-designed B2B sales process is crucial for any company using SAP. The 11 common issues outlined in this article can all be traced back to one fundamental problem: poor quality master data in the SAP system. Inconsistent sales processes, improper configuration of pricing tables, inaccurate pipeline information, and poor inventory management all stem from a lack of accurate and reliable master data. To address these pain points, it is important to invest in proper configuration of the software and training for the sales force, as well as deploying sales analytics on both desktop and mobile devices. With a well-designed sales process in place, companies can improve sales team productivity, increase revenue and profit, and ultimately provide better customer satisfaction.

 

Well-Designed B2B Sales Process

We've recently created a checklist from these known pain points with some recommendations on how you can address them to have a well-thought-out sales process.

 

Sales Process Self-Audit Checklist

 

If you would like, you can download it by clicking the button below.  

 

Get My SAP Sales Process  Self Audit Checklist!

 

If you found this sales process takeaways useful, please share them with your network so everyone in the SAP ecosystem can benefit from these lessons learned.

 

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Topics from this blog:
Sales Processes Best Practices BW

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Lonnie D. Ayers, PMP

About the Author: Lonnie Ayers is a Hubspot Certified Inbound Marketing consultant, with additional certifications in Hubspot Content Optimization, Hubspot Contextual Marketing, and is a Hubspot Certified Partner. Specialized in demand generation and sales execution, especially in the SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Partner space, he has unique insight into the tough challenges Service Providers face with generating leads and closing sales using the latest digital tools. With 15 years of SAP Program Management experience, and dozens of complex sales engagements under his belt, he helps partners develop and communicate their unique sales proposition. Frequently sought as a public speaker in various events, he is available for both inhouse engagements and remote coaching.
Balanced Scorecard Consultant

He also recently released a book "How to Dominate Any Market - Turbocharging Your Digital Marketing and Sales Results", which is available on Amazon.

View All Articles by Lonnie D. Ayers, PMP

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