Customers embrace new sales effectiveness paradigm with SAP Sales OnDemand solution

Global customers such as 3M and Optimal Solutions are seeing the results of a new sales-effectiveness approach with a cloud solution from SAP AG. Since the launch of the SAP Sales OnDemand solution in mid-2011, a growing number of companies have embraced the new rules of selling to today's savvy and socially connected buyer by empowering their salespeople to eliminate distractions, collaborate in real time and spend more time selling.

 
Customers' buying processes and expectations have radically changed in recent years, and companies are putting more thought into how best to harness the volumes of information available to their salespeople. They also want to enable them to know more about their customers, share that insight more easily and repeat best practices in a scalable way. As an easy-to-use, cloud-based application, SAP Sales OnDemand was designed from the ground up to address the needs and real working styles of today's sales professionals. Customers are taking notice and increasingly implementing the solution, often in a hybrid approach with their existing on-premise applications from SAP.
 
3M, the $27 billion global technology giant and SAP customer, recently went live on SAP Sales OnDemand with a pilot project involving 25 users.
 
"We wanted a system that our salespeople would actually want to use, not something they are forced to use," said John Kieffer, director, Business Transformation, 3M. "SAP Sales OnDemand gives us a friendly interface that lets our sales teams collaborate easily, as they are used to doing on social media sites like Facebook. Ultimately this collaboration and contextual insight, integrated with our on-premise CRM, will shorten our sales cycles, which will ultimately help 3M's bottom line."
 
Optimal Solutions, a 900-employee professional services firm based in Irving, Texas, recently selected SAP Sales OnDemand to empower its sales team and expects to go live this month.
 
"Our sales organisation is extremely fast-paced and performance driven," said Sam Sliman, president, Optimal Solutions. "Salespeople want more control of and insight into the sales process, and ultimately they want to close more deals faster. SAP Sales OnDemand will help them get there, providing intuitive, real-time collaboration and the reporting and analytical tools they need to get their jobs done, all instantly available via their mobile devices, of course."