Client | National Finance Brokerage Firm

Project: Streamline Sales System

Working with a national Brokerage Firm, wanted to gain greater insights into their ‘actual’ organisational operations, specifically within their Sales Team.

Background

A National financial brokerage firm (The Firm) wanted to gain greater insights into their ‘actual’ organisational operations, specifically within their Sales Team. While the Sales Team consistently met the set targets, The Firm was preparing to become a publicly listed company and to scale and expand its service delivery. Increased efficiency in the end-to-end sales process was essential in ensuring the upcoming changes to sales targets and delivery were in place before the planned changes.

The Firm met its client’s sales needs through an agile workforce consisting of independent sales consultants (the Sales Team).

Each team member operated in the structure of independent:

  • portfolios
  • processes
  • communications, and
  • systems.

While the independence of each team member allowed for the autonomous responsiveness needed by the clients, The Firm needed to find more gain.

In short, The Firm wanted us to identify and implement operational solutions to increase its capacity to receive and execute sales through improved operational expenditures, specifically through:

  • decreased sales processing times, and
  • reduced manual efforts by optimising system use (automations where possible).

Information Collected and Analysis

The Sales Team were responsible for:

  • their portfolios
  • the needs of the portfolios, with
  • few mandatory reporting points in their process.

This meant that each team member used their discretion in achieving the target output. As an example, we introduce John and how he had adapted within the Sales Team and the process he followed to successfully meet his sales targets:

John’s process is a sound example as many parts overlap with the other team members, with small nuances accommodating individual preferences (e.g., paper records, spreadsheets, sparse notes).

The consistency across the team highlighted:

  • there was no need to tackle and transform the entire process, but instead
  • more gain was going to be achieved through targeting and tweaking specific parts of the process.

With the focus on systems better supporting The Sales Team, time and energy outputs were initially identified through:

  • blindspots
  • manual data entry, and
  • physical data handling and storage.

From the initial review, we understood:

  • A reliance on the team members to manage the sales in isolation and negotiate access to shared resources.
  • Lack of end-to-end visibility for management, and other relevant team members,
  • Inadvertently adding to the duplication of efforts and lent itself to accidental errors and omissions.

Diving a little deeper and building out additional information in these three areas, we found small procedural and system changes that would achieve the targeted efficiencies.

Below is a sample of the identified risks and suggested solutions, which were later implemented.

Title Risks Solution
Blind Spots Limited and ad-hoc real-time access to: New Sales Requests, Sales Requests Statuses, Informed by inconsistent Client Information collection and storage, Reporting relied on receipt of weekly emails Centralised system for access to monitor status and manage required support allocation, Centralised Sales processing to enable a streamlined and collaborative approach, Introduced scheduled and as required run reporting prepared from the data now available with the central system, capturing as at and historical data sets
Manual Data Collection/Entry Inconsistent Sales Request formats received and recorded (via phone/email/paper) resulting in: Clients being requested for the same information more than once, Incomplete information to support the sales process, Manual entry of the same information across multiple systems increases the risk of manual entry errors, Access to real-time sales information dependent on planning and supplying sufficient support to meet changing demands Streamlined process utilising technology to introduce a consistent approach to the management of each sale, Reduction of the reliance on manual entry with the introduction of a central connected solution, Sales status, team utilisation and completed deals report drawing real-time data from the central system providing key data sets to inform operational and management decisions.

Tech Stack

  • Custom-build industry specific database management solution
  • RDP Connection to local server
  • Office 365 (Email, Applications)
  • Adobe PDF
  • PBX phone system

Results

Two major outcomes were successful in the implementation of Solutions:

  • First, the business-as-usual experience of little to no interruption with changes being applied in small staged steps.
  • Second, with each implementation, time was gained by team members and managers through the new efficiencies, which supported the sustainability of the system transformation.

Client experience was improved through the increase in internal operation optimisation across three direct and indirect touchpoints:

The Team Manager:

  • Access to real-time improved client responsiveness through continuity of service and improved resource utilisation.
  • Time was gained and accuracy was increased through reports pulling data directly from the sales system.

Sales Consultants:

  • Reduced reporting needs and administration increased time and efforts to continue to improve elements of the sales process.
  • Responsiveness to the clients needs enhanced by way of team access to necessary data, reduced requests for information from the clients, and minimisation of duplicate data input.

The Firm:

  • Sales continued to increase in volume and frequency due to the reduced efficiencies gained.
  • Forecasting and resourcing were better supported through the increased confidence and timeliness of the data in ready-to-use formats

The improved operations and output supported the confidence and decision to transition to a publicly listed company and expand service delivery.

Partners

Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We celebrate the stories, culture and traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders of all communities who also work and live on this land.