From Functional to Integrated - A Commercial Excellence Perspective

Over the past few months, I have been reading extensively about Commercial Excellence in its various forms. For some it simply means a focus on sales force effectiveness, implementing a CRM approach or a structured, focussed way of managing pricing and margins. For others it touches these and other functional areas, and as with many things in business, it depends on your current situation and ambition, to determine what the real focus areas should be.

Booz & Co (now Strategy&) describe Commercial excellence as “… a state in which companies have such a clear understanding of different customers needs and profitability that they are able to achieve top and bottom line improvements without necessarily changing products or adding customers”.

Accenture focus on Customer Centricity in their approach to commercial excellence which they define as “... serving customers across the entire value chain with a clear understanding of the value exchange between buyer and seller.” (Link to article).

While I agree with the sentiments of both, I can’t help feel that there is a better, more holistic approach possible; one that doesn’t just focus on functional ‘Best Practice’, that at worst, reinforces existing silos or, at best, creates ‘Islands of Excellence’. For that reason, I firmly believe that to improve your commercial performance, you need to move from functional to integrated.

Striving for functional excellence alone in Margin Management, Sales Force Automation, Assortment Management or Demand Planning will bring improvements, but misses the opportunity to bring all the various functions together, achieving significant improvements that are sustainable over the long term.

Having spent many years working on various aspects of commercial excellence, using training from Booz and others, I can speak on this from first hand experience; what I have learnt over the years is that to be truly excellent, commercial information flows and activities must be integrated.

Integration should be the real long-term goal, not functional excellence, as this is the key to sustainable commercial excellence. Working towards an optimum, connected series of processes drives out the different versions of the truth (each function creating their own data set) inherent in any business, enabling you to achieve one single version of the truth and one single vision for the business.

Just imagine that your sales team is selling the correct value proposition at optimum margins, planning and reporting in a CRM system, which feeds the short and medium term business planning process!! Sales, Finance & Marketing in harmony and driving the business forward.

Coupled with the positive cultural shift that happens through the change and education process, this new approach will enable your business to be truly integrated and therefore truly commercially excellent.

About the author:

Barry Edney is highly experienced in the international B2B environment and has championed the design and led the implementation of CRM, Margin Management, Key Account Management, Integrated Business Planning processes and organizations on an international scale. He has also made mistakes and learned from them!!

Barry is co-founder of Integrated Commercial Excellence (ICE)™

ICE™ works with businesses to achieve improved results and greater predictability through better integration of key commercial activities. LinkedIn Profile

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘Like' button or the 'Share' button. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions so feel free to add a comment on this post or submit a question via Twitter @IntCommExc. You can also contact me directly at barry.edney@intcommexc.com

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