In today's highly-volatile economy, companies are focused on increasing operational flexibility, improving insight-driven marketing, and leveraging online channels. Sales/marketing functions have an imperative to maximize market and mind share while controlling cost of sales. The services function has the objective to drive additional customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing a consistent experience across interaction channels.

To improve the customer value life cycle, sales, marketing, and services teams must answer key strategic questions, such as: How effective is the sales team in acquiring and cultivating profitable customer relationships? How much do trade promotions impact the top line and bottom line?

Study Scope

Business performance benchmarking for customer value life cycle has been leveraged by over 200 companies, and includes the following studies:

• Customer contact center
• Sales effectiveness
• Trade promotions management (TPM)

Example Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Customer Contact Center	Sales Effectiveness	Trade Promotions Management
Interactions per day per agent Cost per interaction Average call handle time Abandonment rate	Customer churn rate Sales forecast accuracy Percent of qualified leads closed annually	Percent of productive trade promotions spend Out-of-stock percentage Deduction balance as a percent of revenue

Example Insight

Effectiveness of TPM systems: How effective are processes and systems at tracking the return on investment of trade promotions? (1 = Not at all, 5 = Very effective)

Participation

Participation in benchmarking is free of charge. Register now to participate in benchmarking and for more information. If you have general questions regarding SAP benchmarking program initiatives, contact us at benchmarking@sap.com.