Role of the Pre-sales Function: Sales Support or Customer Advocacy?

  Over the last decade Pre-sales as a business function has grown immensely and still evolving within the organizations. Typically ‘Pre-sales’ function has been defined as a role that supports the sales force and there by helps an organization with the technical knowhow to achieve it’s the revenue target. Though a ‘support function’, it’s probably one that works most closely with the ‘line function’ that is sales, to which it’s expected to aid and seamlessly execute the sales plan. Wiki defines pre-sales as “The task of a presales person starts from the initial contact phase and often ends once the customer is acquired i.e. sale is made.” A typical job description of pre-sales would be replete with the terms such as: ‘technical acumen’, ’communicate’, ‘persuasive’, ‘Proof-of-concept’ etc.  A close look at the terms will reflect that responsibilities of a pre-sales role are still around the so called ‘skill’ which doesn’t gear up to the greater managerial responsibility. With increasing and rapid complexity of technical development coupled with the increasing competitive pressure organizations are slowly recognizing importance of collaborating and empowering its pre-sales force, and not merely treating as a resource.
 

In my personal experience, following are the broad pointers how organizations (as well as pre-sales itself as function) best leverage the potential of technical knowledge: 

§  From technical pitch to true consulting : No more feature-function battle, advocate issues that impact clients’ business, especially  the application, adoption and dissemination of technology

§  From tactical to strategic : Pre-sales are indeed the ears and eyes for the market who has the opportunity of interacting of both IT and business side of the client’s team

§  From short term gain to long term vision: From point sale approach to enterprise engagement. Pre-sales folks enjoy a high degree to customer’s confidence thus making it easier to carry a mission within the client’s organization wearing a ‘consultant’ hat. If properly aligned with with the customer’s 

§  From effectiveness to success : widening the scope – beyond year on year target achievement to becoming partner of customer’s success

End note: How do you judge success of a pre-sales function? What mandate does management give to this important bunch of people, often perceived as ‘technology savvy and intellectual pool’ of the organization?  Do the pre-sales folks make themselves accountable not only to the parent organization but to the end customer? How does pre-sales collaborate with the sales colleagues and in fact treat them as internal customers?

The vision of the IT organizations, irrespective of the offerings and size, is firmly set on the target of being client’s partner in long term success rather than remaining a transaction based vendor. This can only be realized by allowing the client touch points like pre-sales to advocate and espouse client’s long term benefit widening the present day short-term sales realization. 

Promoting Your Blog

Promoting Your Blog

Empowering the Power Sector with Analytics

This summer while you and I enjoy an uninterrupted power supply in our homes and offices and take it for granted, we hardly realize the amount of planning that goes behind the scene! A quick refresher to the country’s power distribution wouldn’t be out of context.

Since the year 1998, Govt. of India through a slew of acts and regulations has emphasized on ‘rationalization of electricity tariff’, promotion of ‘efficient’ policies and establishment of regulatory bodies like Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) etc. Its direct offshoot the Availability Based Tariff (ABT) framework promotes responsible and efficient power usage by both Distribution companies (Discoms) and Power Generation Companies (Gencos), aptly facilitated by Dispatch Centers (SLDC and RLDC). In essence, ABT mechanism ‘incentives’ and ‘dis-incentives’ market participants against deviations in the committed demand and supplies. Without going into detail, ABT breaks-up electricity charges under: Capacity charges (fixed), Energy charges (variable) and Unscheduled Interchange charges (UI). To optimize the UI charge, drawl schedules has to be managed in 15 minute blocks (24 x 4 = 96 blocks per day). So a Discom which draws more than the schedule causing the grid frequency to deviate would be subjected to heavy penalty. On the other hand, drawing less than actual demand means forced power-cut resulting into lesser revenue, customer dissatisfaction and even socio-political scrutiny.

Now return to our story: this summer while we will cool-off imagine someone is entrusted to forecast how much power you and me would consume in every 15 minutes block. Add to that the complexity millions of consumers with different electricity consumption patterns. There are households, institutional users like offices, hotels, services like municipality (remember the street light!) and obviously manufacturing units. Challenge is accurately forecasting their pattern every single day with just the help of excel spread sheet! To top it all, for financial survival Discoms are expected forecast it with more than 90 % accuracy. :( WOW! That’s an effort!

Here comes the most unusual savior…. Business Analytics, well, forecasting technology to be specific. In the parlance of power distribution it’s known as Short Term Load Forecasting (STLF) solution. It incorporates historical demand pattern for last couple of years and takes into consideration relevant influencing factors like weather parameters like temperature, rainfall, wind speed, humidity etc. as well as macro-economic events like festival, holiday, and natural calamities. As we have seen, these factors are very local in nature and heavily dependent on the peculiarity of the consumer base.

You would probably say ‘Thanks for the good news ..but what exactly stops us using the solution and ensure an uninterrupted and efficient supply of power this summer?’ Well, all we need is the mindset and adaptability towards a scientific approach to resolve India’s scare power resource. Personal experience of interacting with the stakeholders proves beyond doubt that the systems, the relevant data and are in place which can be leveraged with the appropriate usage of business analytics solution. The execution capability of the tool is proven. Thanks to a couple of early adopters, who are successfully managing the complex power demand scheduling that not only bring top line and bottom line growth but address the larger question of responsible and efficient usage. Several developed countries with special mention of the Nordic ones are using it efficiently. Many of the Asian economies, proudly led by handful of Indian distribution companies are using it successfully hitting accuracy zone as high as 98%. Every 15 minutes, every day!! WOW that’s heck of a solution!

The moot point here - power of analytics is not only restricted to the subject matter of corporate discussion it actually touches lives - yours and mine. It directs us towards the better utilization of scare resources. Now that’s what we call proper use of power (pun intended!) albeit with the help of analytics.

Post Note: Surely behind the surface a very sophisticated statistical algorithm is at work but true to the character of this blog let’s leave the technicalities to the experts. Oops……..did I take my name?! :)