Made with XME: How to Make Real-Time Sales Tracking in 3 weeks

How to predict the future of business correctly? Based on facts or intuition? Following the SalesForce study in 2019, only 24% of respondents made a prognosis based on accurate analytical information. Besides, they were members of the most effective sales teams. Thus, the only way to get up-to-date data for analysis is efficient sales tracking. And the business growth directly depends on how well the received information will be used. Why? Let's figure it out.

Sales Tracking: Why Is It Needed?

Sales tracking is not limited to the number of closed deals. It gathers information about all the stages of interaction with potential and real clients. Hence, monitoring covers the length of the sales cycle, the rate of success deals, the number of leads being tracked, and so on. All the information updates in real-time mode. Due to properly tracking sales, a company can pay attention to each process and improve it. The result will significantly increase income. And not only.

This instrument also allows to:

• understand how effectively the company works

• quickly identify and solve problems in any analyzed area

• make the right management decisions

• build a strong development strategy

• analyze employee performance

• manage and prevent fraud cases

• control the correctness of reporting

Thus sales tracking is not a work with a sheet and pen or Excel spreadsheets. Now, it's possible to get a sizable amount of data using special digital instruments. Based on them, the management understands where the business is now and how it will move tomorrow.

But what software is used for sales tracking? Companies have a variety of programs that suit their needs. Someone buys licenses, others develop corporate applications from scratch. The priority task of any tracking application is to seamlessly provide detailed reporting about each monitored process.

Regardless of the business industry, there are several universal sales performance indicators. Among them:

• the percentage of potential customers that became real ones;

• sources of customer acquisition;

• sales revenue.

Any sales tracking software should provide information on the specified criteria. Anyway, there are some highly specialized tracking applications required to obtain a small amount of important information. It all depends on the company’s needs.

How To Organize Simple Sales Tracking

Any sales tracking instrument must be simple in use. Each involved party should understand how it works. In such a case system will always provide a business with relevant data.

XME team recently created a smart business solution for the retail company with 85 brick-and-mortar stores for 20+ million clients (End-Seller). It's a chatbot that allows monitoring of sales processes easily and efficiently. Let's consider what motivated us to take a fresh approach, how the development process went, and what came of it.

Idea. The primary goal was to track sales after goods transfer to distributors. What will happen with products next? Can they be the subject of fraud? To answer these questions, it was necessary to develop a convenient tracking mechanism. It always had to be at hand. We settled our choice on a Telegram chatbot.

Development Stage. The development was carried out based on the XME fast-code platform. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was tested after 2.5 workweeks. The system allowed identifying sellers by phone numbers, scanning Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) codes, and transmitting data to the End-Seller in real-time mode.

How It Works: Every seller who works with the End-Seller directly or through distributors must connect to the chatbot. This is regulated by provisions of relevant cooperation agreements. Upon receiving each consignment, the seller is obligated to scan the SKU codes, pasted them on the boxes, and pass this information to the End-Seller via chatbot. Hence, the last one can track the movement of goods.

“The chatbot performs several actions: identifies sellers, determines their geolocation, and recognizes barcodes. Based on these data, End-Seller forms statistics on the types, volumes, and points of sale. The company can determine how much the actual result matches the plan.”

Victor Kmita, CEO XM^Online

Pros: The most important advantage of this solution is ensuring transparency in the company's cooperation with its partners. Chatbot usage decreases the possibility of fraudulent activity. End-Seller can control how many goods and by whom were received.

Conclusion

Multifunctional sales tracking system is a component of a successful business. Software developed for this purpose can solve a wide range of a company's issues. It should be clear in usage and provide as much information as possible. But first of all, the application must be relevant for every certain company. Thanks to the capabilities of the XME fast-code platform, a business can create new solutions for tracking sales quickly and qualitatively.