ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. systems have revolutionised the way businesses operate, offering integrated management of core business processes like finance, supply chain management and HR. However, before implementation gets underway, there’s a critical phase known as pre-sales. Let’s delve into what pre-sales means!
What is Pre-Sales?
Pre-sales is a set of activities that precede the “sale”, i.e. the contracting for implementation of a new system or managed service offering. It’s an integral part of the sales cycle, because ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. solutions are complex and require a significant investment of time and resources.
Pre-sales involves understanding the customer’s needs, demonstrating how the solution can meet those needs, and preparing a proposal and estimates for the customer. Because every customer takes a different approach to their procurement, the steps undertaken in pre-sales are rarely identical, even within strictly-governed public sector frameworks and tenders.
Due to the breadth and depth of functionality of tier-1, enterprise-grade systems like D365 F&O, pre-sales is usually a full-time role for one or more consultants or architects at an implementation partner, who draw on their own platform knowledge and experience, leaning on members of the delivery practice for specific area of functional, technical, or industry expertise.
The Role of Pre-Sales in ERP
The pre-sales process is crucial for several reasons:
- Understanding Customer Needs: We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. systems are not one-size-fits-all solutions. They need to be tailored to the specific needs of each business, including configuration, customisations, and integration builds. The pre-sales process allows the partner to understand:
- the customer’s requirements (of which there can be hundreds, if not thousands),
- their existing business processes (essential to confirm scope, even where the approach is “adopt not adapt”1),
- particular challenges such as lack of automation, inefficiency, resource intensity, and
- the goals of the implementation, such as target ROIReturn on Investment is a ratio of profit/savings compared to investment cost used to assess how well investments have performed., or less tangible efficiencies.
- Product Demonstration: During pre-sales, the partner will demonstrate aspects of the software to the prospective customer, often using a relatable end-to-end scenario. This allows the customer to see firsthand how the ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. system looks and feels, how it will solve specific challenges, and how it can benefit their business. With D365 F&O, it involves calling out the many unique selling points of the platform, especially how seamlessly it works with the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem.
- Proposal Preparation: Based on the understanding of the customer’s needs and the product demonstration, pre-sales will prepare a proposal. A proposal can include:
- the solution at a high-level, including scope (functional and technical), ISVsAn Independent Software Vendor is a partner that builds, deploys, and sells industry-specific solutions., integrations, customisation work, etc,
- estimates on implementation timeline, resources, and cost, worked up with delivery leads,
- high-level risks, assumptions, dependencies, and responsibilities,
- training, change management, and/or managed services components, and
- licensing estimates, to support the customer with calculating their total cost of ownership (TCO) over a defined period.
- Building Trust: The pre-sales process is also an opportunity for the partner to build trust with the potential customer. By demonstrating expertise and understanding the customer’s needs, the partner can establish a strong relationship that can lead to a successful contract, but more importantly, a successful implementation.
As you can see, there’s many facets to pre-sales. If you want to know more, I’d recommend checking out Practical Presales, a blog by Craig McGeough which is dedicated to the subject.
- The “adopt not adapt” approach for ERPEnterprise Resource Planning software is used by businesses to manage day-to-day activities. implementation is a strategy that encourages businesses to use best practice software solutions as they are, rather than customizing them to fit their internal processes. We’ll plan a future post that covers this in more detail. ↩︎