The sales force was spending much more time within the company premises instead of getting more intimate with their customers. How to increase the “time sales force were face-to-face with customers?” was the concern of the board of directors. The sales force indicated top ten reasons that made it necessary for them to spend time in the office instead of the field. A survey was helpful in validating their line of reasoning.

How the data connect

One idea was to equip them with laptops and get them to stay connected with the headquarters. It was not only far too expensive a proposition, but also carried the danger of theft of laptops or damages to them while sales force travelled over long distances on their two wheelers.

Another idea was to enable them by wireless. All they had to do was to beam up their updates and queries using their mobile phones that had wireless capability. The report of field time saved by this effort (see pie diagram) justified the decision to tap into the mobile wireless technology than go in for laptops. While real time online data exchange was a welcome relief, how can the directors be sure of data integrity? How can they be sure that the data entered were always accurate?

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