Siya Carla - Solutions Consultant

There is a long list of tech-enabled changes that field-job based organizations can adopt to improve their operational efficiency and to evolve as a better fit for the present day competitive market. But one of the priority requirements for such businesses is the automation of workflow or automation of job scheduling among the team members. Effective job scheduling is critical for the timely delivery of services, especially if the business operates at a larger scale, and manages a larger team or client base.

The complexity in job scheduling is multi-dimensional, wherein the scheduling manager needs to ensure that the schedules are made considering various aspects such as:

1. The time gap between the subsequent schedules: The time needs to be managed in such a way that the field technician gets proper time to finish the job in one site, travel to the next job-site, and execute the service on-time, as it has been committed to the client. Failure in time management will restrict the technician to be on-time, and this can offend some clients badly. Now, for the manager, it is not just about managing one or two schedules of one or two technicians. He may require managing a schedule calendar of 5-6 schedules per day for per technician; and the number of technicians can go up to even thousand, depending upon the nature of the business.

2. Territory management: While making the schedules, the scheduling manager also needs to do the territory management to reduce the travel time for the technicians. More time on -roads means low productivity as well as increased fuel expense. So, if the manager receives a service request from x location, then he needs to find out who is the nearest and the earliest available technician. This requires strong coordination and real-time on-field visibility.

3. The skills and availability of the technicians: Not all the technicians are available round the clock for a job; some may be on their weekly leave or some may be pre-occupied with a job in hand. Also, not all the technicians are equally skilled. So, when there is a service request, the manager needs to check on the skill sets and availability of particular technicians before assigning them a job. Again this is a mammoth task.
Scheduling conflicts: Next challenge for the scheduling manager is to ensure that he creates a scheduling calendar avoiding probable scheduling conflicts like overlapped schedules, missed schedules, duplicate schedules, etc.

4. Emergencies: The real challenge for the scheduling manager is to adjust the schedules during emergencies. Pre-planned schedules can still be manageable, but it is to live by illusion to believe that everything will go as per the plan. Ad-hoc service requests, service cancellations, unplanned leaves, all these are sure to make variations in the schedules.

Service scheduling software - The solution lies in automation

While manually doing all the aforementioned aspects is challenging to the level of being impossible, but field service scheduling software powered with automation can impressively simplify the task of job scheduling while improving the accuracy. The software provides the manager complete field visibility, he can track the on-field locations of the technicians on a real-time basis, keep a tab on their weekly or monthly roaster to check their off days.

With a simple drag and drop technique, the manager can make the schedules for 'n' number of technicians, ensuring that their availability and skillsets match the job requirement. Also, he can use the web mapping services of the software to do the route planning for the technicians. Thus can pre-estimate their travel time, and keep a tab of their productive hours. 

At the time of emergency, the service scheduling software can automatically locate the nearest available technician and assign the job to him. When schedules are made, or any alternation happens to the schedules, the software sends automatic notifications or reminders to the technicians.

The evolution of sales models is a constant necessity for the distributors of financial products. Be it the selling of insurance, mutual funds, loans, or credit cards, the traditional selling tactics like cold callings, canned pitches, and advertising have lost their credibility and effectiveness. In the past, while conversing with a buyer, the salesperson used to control the conversation by regulating the flow of information. But now, that control has shifted to the buyers. Changes in communication methods, the circle of influence, and access to information have empowered them to grow smarter and intelligent. They are no more the silent listeners, they are well informed and thus they are the decision-makers. In fact, studies show that before being ready to speak to a sales guy, decision-makers, on average, tend to consume five pieces of content to enlighten themselves with information.

It won’t be wrong to say that the modern-day decision-making buyers are well acquainted with traditional sales techniques, and have developed a kind of mistrust for those. However, for the most part, the timeless fundamentals of selling i.e lead scoring, find prospects, create interest, communicate effectively, and ask for the sale, have remained constant and will continue to be pillars of modern-day selling as well. But, yes several things have changed, most importantly the consumer buying behavior has changed and needless to say that technology is one of the key enablers that has triggered this change and radically altered the consumer trends, expectations, and demands. Now, the question is how the sales community, including, sales processes, salespeople, and sales management, can cope up with this change?

Its time to adapt to the new world of artificial intelligence

If technology advances have changed the consumer buying behavior, it is also true that it has unveiled never-before kind of fin-tech capacities that with the right kind of adoption can help financial distributors to quickly adapt and fulfill the demands and expectations of their buyers. The bottom line is to understand the challenges in the sales processes and sales management in light of the changing dynamics of the new-age consumer buying behaviors.

Some of the key challenges experienced by sales leaders of financial products are:

1. Customer Profiling – Most businesses have volume-driven databases, how to make it quality driven?
2. Productivity – Is every sales guy in the team is being productive enough, or the monthly business is resulting from the heavy-lifting of the top performers only?
3. Visibility- Is the sales team rightly adopting the sales model? What are their day-to-day activities; is it that what is being documented in their timesheet? What is the status of a particular lead? What is the best deal size in the sales pipeline?
4. Core activities- As data suggests, are the sales guys not being able to rightly utilize their time, wherein 14.8% of their time goes into administrative tasks, 20.4% is spent on social activities and only 35.2% of the time is dedicated to actual selling.

At a glance, it can be observed that financial distributors need a more data-driven insight into  their sales processes to overcome these challenges. Every aspect of sales management starting from lead scoring to customer profiling, performance and productivity regulation to sales workforce management, can be improved with betters data insights. Artificial Intelligence is indeed the new way to deal with data.

How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Overcome the Challenges and Improve Sales?

In B2B Sales, artificial intelligence can be deployed through new-age sales tools like Field Sales management software, CRM, or ERP. These systems are equipped with automatized data mining features and machine learning. These AI-enabled systems are intelligent and they can equip the sales processes with capacities like:

1. AI helps with accurate lead scoring by facilitating automation and predictive analytics of sales data that helps to create well-defined buyer personas based on age, demographics, corporate background, etc.

2. Databases are huge and building a quality-driven database means filtering oceans of data. Instead of stirring the ocean for tidbits, AI can help determine how and from where to gather the right data, by automating the sales data gathering process.

3. AI-enabled field sales management tools are invaluable in adding insight into the structuring of sales teams. It helps with preparing more accurate sales quotas, optimizing sales territories, revising staffing requirements, realigning sales policies and compensation.

4. AI analytics can reveal customers’ needs, how they relate to a particular product or service and accordingly make informed and accurate recommendations like pricing strategies, ideal customers visit hours, when to close sales, suggest sales KPIs for the sales guys, etc.

5. Artificial intelligence is a smart way to take over mundane and repetitive administrative tasks that consume much of the sales team’s time; tasks such as appointment scheduling, task allocation, self-service, reporting, etc.

6. In financial product sales, customer retention is crucial to leverage the advantage of recurring revenue. AI predictive analytics can provide a deep insight into the customer satisfaction quotient.

Conclusion
The evolution of the sales model is upon the sales community only. Sales tools like CRM, ERP, Field sales management software, market research, and other sources have already made the sales community rich in terms of data. But that’s raw data, and it needs to be turned into intelligence and then data can help in improving sales remarkably. AI can make it happen. Thus, it’s the peak time for financial product distributors to adopt artificial intelligence in their sales processes.

Originally Posted: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/19814/how-financial-product-distributors-can-cope-with-sales-challenges-with-ai

Dealing with business challenges is tricky in the face of changing technology, consumer behaviour, and regulations. It is not surprising that only 25% of businesses survive for 15 years or more according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

If we bring the spotlight on what these businesses do differently to overcome the challenges, we could probably be able to decode the secret of staying afloat in the market for long. Starting off with the idea, we tried to catch up with the ways successful landscaping companies counter common challenges or say causes of growth stagnation, operation inefficiencies, and profit erosion.

Read in details about Landscape Business Challenges

Selecting the best app development company is not easy. There are thousands of service providers claiming to offer the best services, which makes the selection task harder for individuals and businesses looking for similar services. Let’s have a look at the criteria that could help make this selection effortless, less time consuming and worth an investment.

App Development Company

Software development cost overruns could lead you to kill your project or even threat the existence of your business. With proven practices and right approach, you can reduce your software development cost as well as bring your off-the-track project back on track. Read the blog to learn how you can control cost and achieve project success.

Software Development Cost

IoT is revolutionizing the healthcare space. There are better services, improved devices, and advanced connectivity which is unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things in Healthcare space. Here is a detailed coverage.

IoT in Healthcare

Here are the top 5 tools that make it easy for developers to take further the development task and remain efficient while creating innovative applications.

Custom Mobile App Development Company

Design thinking prototype if developed thoughtfully can serve as the roadmap for the entire development. Here is an extended approach to the same.

#SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareApplicationDevelopment #SoftwareDevelopmentCompany

Software Design Company

Security of an application is the foremost concern that should never be missed. It ensures that the app is secured from vulnerabilities. In case, you are planning an app, here are the security practices to keep into the consideration.

Best Application Security Practices

#ApplicationSecurity #AppSecurity

As the new technologies are taking their expected roles, the fate of the modern business is largely dependent on reaching the finish line of technology milestones first—a poor second is left with little to savor. The challenge in winning the race to AI is not the threat of losing to someone stronger, but to not practice steadily, not choosing the best starting position, and not making a steady start.

As for now, artificial intelligence technology is used only in narrow situations, generally limited to surveillance, security, and marketing personalization. If the experts of artificial intelligence to be believed, even only considering what appears to be the least possibility, and provided the necessary infrastructure are made available, stronger artificial intelligence has the capability to change the course of human civilization and countries, least a business.

On the country level, China is determined to win the race, investing billions of dollars in creating an AI ecosystem, with a top-down approach to the proliferation of artificial intelligence and machine learning, availability, and easy access to a massive amount of consumer data.

AI implementation in the United States otherwise is largely concentrated in Silicon Valley—Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. The role play of these ai companies in determining the future of ai is crucial yet not enough. And this is a call for lawmakers, technologists, and strategists to work for increasing influence over alternative possibilities—public sector organizations, start-ups, and entrepreneurs.

Implementers such as a software development company also has a bigger role to play when it comes to making AI available for end consumers.

Brilliantly Differentiate

For start-ups and entrepreneurs to succeed, they need to align multiple factors to make a commercial concept of artificial intelligence work for their businesses. The major task is to identify the specific goal of AI in their business, whether with respect to a process or a product-specific solution.

The plan seems to be working for start-ups and entrepreneurs in the current digital ecosystem is to research, develop, and disseminate the most basic yet important Artificial Intelligence technologies. The objective should never be to look at the larger picture and compare your stand with formidable entities like Google, Microsoft or Amazon, if so, you will force yourself to toe the line, ending up with a cheaper replica of their products or solutions.

The goal should be to identify the real-world problems, the pain-points of your users and employees, finding out what is stopping your business and resolve the issue while brilliantly differentiating your solution not just in context with the use of AI but the product or service you provide.

Big companies engage with a larger audience base and so they already own massive datasets. They will always be in an advantageous position to teach the AI how we behave and the gap will only become wider with time. With the help of your custom software development company If you successfully differentiate your AI project, you can at least create strategic competition in many business areas in years to come.

Artificial Intelligence—Research Vs. Applied

When you are on the applied side of Artificial Intelligence, as explained by Cassie Kozyrkov of Google, you simply need the understanding of how AI tools work and what you can achieve using those tools.

For example, if you are in the restaurant business, applying AI tools to your software systems could help you provide specific details about your business, depending on what information you need, such as at what time most of your customers visit the restaurants, what do they order most, what is their order pattern in general and so on. These types of information about your business can help you mobile resources to a more efficient process.

Regardless of your business type, integrating AI tools to business process management applications can help you process massive amounts of data to generate insight, process historical data to identify patterns, precision-adjust demand forecasting models, automate account closing, and connected sales, accounting, and inventory processes. You can closely work with your software application development company to bring these functions in your application.

On the research side of Artificial Intelligence, it requires an acute understanding of mathematics across a range of disciplines to develop those AI tools that help you achieve all those above-mentioned functions. Technology companies like Google and Facebook work on the research side of Artificial Intelligence. In the higher league, there is little empty spaces to play your own game, and yet the real-world problems are never-ending, which means you will always have enough scope to create your niche, identify the challenges and build AI tools to resolve the issues.

For say, a San Francisco based technology company, Chooch AI, is working with state agencies, researchers, and technologists to address the fire incidents in California forests. They are building AI which is trained to identify heat and smoke using infrared technology and so can spot the fire over thousands of acres of land.

Acquire Human Intelligence

No matter which side of artificial intelligence technology you are, you require significant human intelligence to use the technology in the ground. As artificial intelligence and machine learning is gradually entering into mainstream technology, crossing over the boundaries of elites, a lot many companies will pedal to acquire the essential human intelligence, resulting in a shortage of talent.

Beginning early has the added advantage of getting the right talent by your side. You can acquire this talent initially by hiring an agency with hands-on experience in artificial intelligence technology implementation or building a team of your own. And before all that, imagine your business in a variety of ways to resolve problems, increase revenue, and foster innovation.

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