Automation and AI are revolutionizing how businesses get work done. By 2030, AI is estimated to contribute as much as $16 trillion to the global economy – more than the output of China and India combined, according to PwC industry research. But implementing automation and AI is easier said than done.
Many businesses simply can’t overcome the hurdles of incorporating automation and AI into their workflows. The biggest obstacles to AI adoption, for example, are difficulties estimating and demonstrating the value of AI projects, talent shortages, technical difficulties, and data-related problems, according to Gartner research.
Read: 4 Ways An Integrated GTM Strategy Drives Territory Planning
Despite the implementation obstacles associated with automation and AI, businesses cannot afford to shy away from these powerful tools – especially when it comes to sales territory planning. Effective territory planning relies on access to data from a range of different divisions across the organization, including sales, marketing, customer experience, and product development.
Moreover, all of these teams need a forum and a platform for working collaboratively to develop an optimized revenue strategy for the organization. That means teams need access to unified data sets and data analyses that enable them to identify real-time patterns and trends in customer preferences and behaviors over time. In reality, automation and AI represent the only viable way to build the infrastructure necessary to support effective territory planning.
Read: 4 Ways To Eliminate Gut-Instinct Decisions From Territory Planning
Through automation and AI, businesses can aggregate large, disparate data sets and run analytics on their data on a continuous, real-time basis, paving the way for a data-driven approach to sales territory planning. Let’s explore four strategies for effectively infusing automation and AI into territory planning:
1. Invest in Building High-Quality Data Sets
Before automation and AI can be used effectively in territory planning, businesses first need to amass high-quality data sets. High-quality data enables companies to use automation and AI to generate and serve up relevant, actionable insights about sales and revenue.
Conversely, when businesses don’t prioritize data quality, analytics and insights can be skewed and, in a worst-case scenario, lead businesses to make the wrong territory planning decisions. The first hallmark of high-quality data is that it is clean and error-free, with duplicates removed and missed values filled in. High-quality data also should be enriched with other information, such as industry trends and geographic and location data. Finally, data sets should be organized and segmented in a way that is meaningful and aligned to advance the business’s revenue goals.
2. Intentionally Collect Data That Is Not Feasible to Collect Manually
Businesses tend to gravitate to automation and AI when they have a problem that cannot be solved with manual human power. Consequently, companies are more likely to embrace automation and AI when collecting data they cannot manage and analyze manually. What this means is that businesses should be pushing themselves to collect comprehensive, in-depth, varied data sets. Not only will smarter data inform the development of smarter revenue strategy, but smarter data will also create a challenge with data management and analytics that can only be solved by investing in automation and AI.
3. Foster Collaboration and Idea Sharing Among Disparate Teams
Effective territory planning is predicated on multiple teams coming together to collaboratively develop revenue strategy – sales, marketing, customer experience, product development, and so forth. But in most businesses, these teams tend to be siloed, insular and distrustful of one another.
Read: 4 Ways to Put Your Customers at the Center of Territory Planning
An essential way to infuse automation and AI into territory planning is to bring disparate teams together to develop revenue strategy collaboratively. When previously disconnected teams begin working together, they collectively drive internal demand for automation and AI, as these tools are essential for facilitating effective collaboration.
4. Provide Customers with Personalization Only Available Through Automation and AI
Modern customers expect more from businesses than just consistent, high-quality service during the sales cycle and beyond. They also increasingly expect personalized experiences, such as customized buying suggestions based on the customer’s unique needs and priorities. While it may be possible to provide some degree of customized service through one-on-one relationships, the overall success of personalization will be highly dependent on automation and AI.
In other words, businesses need tools that can aggregate and analyze massive, disparate types of data in real time, then serve up personalized recommendations and information to customers. Thus, the simple act of prioritizing personalization can quickly lead businesses to embrace automation and AI as an essential strategy for making personalization possible.
Automation and AI can be elusive for many businesses to integrate effectively into their workflows. The road to effective territory planning, however, depends on these tools. Fortunately, companies can take numerous incremental steps to ensure they’re leaning into automation and AI instead of shying away from these tools. These steps include investing in building high-quality data sets, collecting data that is infeasible to collect and manage manually, fostering collaboration and idea sharing among disparate teams, and providing customers with personalized experiences that can only be realized with the help of automation and AI.
Fullcast understands the real-life challenges associated with infusing automation and AI into core workflows and business processes. We are experts at working through these challenges to ensure a business can fully benefit from automation and AI, including using these tools to drive informed territory planning.
To learn more about how Fullcast helps organizations optimize territory planning through automation and AI, please visit https://www.fullcast.com/product/plan-collaborate/.
