Phani Tej Adidam of the University of Nebraska, Omaha, USA, addressed the students of GITAM School of Business, GITAM University, here on Wednesday on the topic ” CX and Sales Force Automation”. He explained how Sales Force Automation (SFA) is not only used by sales personnel, but also by all. SFA describes a firm’s efforts to optimise or streamline its sales processes for greater benefit throughout its value chain.
He said that SFA has evolved over time from a simple database Marketing Strategy, consisting of phone numbers and mail contacts in the 1980s, to the use of Statistical Data Analysis Tools, especially regression analysis in the 1990s. He said that Thomas Siebel created the first Customer Relationship Management package in 1993 which combined Data Base, Contact Management and Data Analysis.
The 2010s saw the use of social media and mobile communication moving from server-based to cloud-based applications. What is new in the 2020s is Social Network Analysis(SNA) and personalised experiences via sentiment analysis, he added.