Sales managers need information from a marketing information system to monitor product performance, plan sales force activities, and make pricing decisions. A marketing information system gathers, analyzes, and distributes pertinent data to marketing decision makers to improve planning, implementation, and control. It provides information on sales, revenues, costs, and growth for specific products, product lines, and brands. Channel systems support sales and distribution operations while supply chain management systems provide end-to-end visibility across the entire supply chain.

2.  For monitoring the efficiency and
effectiveness of the distribution of their
products and services, sales managers need
information to plan and monitor the sales force
 Management needs information on the
performance of specific products, product lines,
or brands
 Price, revenue, cost and growth information
can be used for pricing decisions, for evaluating
the performance of current products, and for
predicting the performance of future products

3. • A marketing information system as a
continuing and interacting structure of
people, equipment and procedures to
gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and
distribute pertinent, timely and accurate
information for use by marketing decision
makers to improve their marketing
planning, implementation, and control

5. • Systems which support the operations of the
sales and distribution channel are known as
channel systems
• An all encompassing information system
which helps informate the supply chain from the
customer side to the supplier side is a supply
chain management (SCM) system

6. • The traditional supply chain establishes long term
relationships with vendors, distributors and retailers,
with multiple inventory sites, long lead-times and fixed
margins
• A traditional supply chain has limited visibility into
true customer demand, and as a result, it is plagued with
buffer inventories, which managers build up as
protection against uncertainties and risks in the supply
chain

7.  Keep Goods Moving
- provides you visibility to inventory levels at your suppliers, and
visibility to inventory in-transit to you – as well as how long it takes to
get there and why
 Managing Supplier Performance
- SCM quantitatively tracks the performance of your suppliers – who
delivers on-time, who delivers partially, who has the best invoice
accuracy – so that you can identify the best trading partners and give
them the majority of your business
 Measuring
Channel Effectiveness
- keep track of your customers’ buying habits across increasingly more
complex channel mixes
 Providing Customer Service
- SCM can help assemble the information needed, across your supply
chain, to answer the seemingly simple question, “Where is my order?”
and explain a delay or provide an alternative option, such as shipping a
partial order or finding an alternate source for a back-ordered item
 Managing
through
co-ordination
and
uncertainity
dynamic scheduling of sales and

10.  Plan
- activities in this stage include training, demand forecasting, call
targeting, and devising the channel strategy
 Pre-sale
-activities in this stage are lead management, generating proposals,
product planning, pricing and customer query handling
- main aim is to contact prospective customers and target sales
efforts to maximize results
 Sell Activities
- customer co-ordination, presentation tools, order entry, call
management, promotion management, etc.
 Post-sale
Activities
- order status, billing, installation, warranty, etc.
 Relationship
- a very important step it involves, networking with customers,
analysis of customer requirements and problems, generating
reports, etc.
 Review
Business
-review, product development, creating recognition, analyzing
competition etc.

11. • Sales
support
systems
are
applications that facilitate the interface
between the sales force and the
corporation in the support of the
customer

12. e-mail
Forms
Dynamic information sharing
Reports distribution and analysis
Multimedia
Sales reporting