If you own the mid-size business and actively work in it as executive manager or lead, say marketing, – you probably know exactly what needs to be done on the daily basis to keep it running. However, in many cases this business critical knowledge exists in your head only. This means that if you would like to sell your business – it has little value without your participation. So, ahead of the selling time you should "formalize" the business – to make it work within the systems and rules, independent of people. Let's consider the parts we will need.
•Functional Diagram. Well – one may think that he doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, but we think that this is the only possible way – to start from the top level of formalization. Functional diagram should show the process of getting new customer as a prospect, the sales process up to the closing, then customer order executing. And this diagram should reflect the interaction of your departments and key employees/positions.
•Sales Control. When you want to formalize sales you are looking for the system, which allows you to distribute leads to your sales people and then have a tight monitoring of the closing rates and the quality of the closed prospects by salesperson. This system will allow you to create formal position: Sales or Marketing director, who can generate new business for the company through this Sales automation system. In our opinion – this is 60% of the formalization success.
•Order Execution. You need standard ERP to control order fulfillment. Usually such a system is implemented on one of the Accounting applications platforms. In the case of small and mid-size business, we would encourage you to map to your functional diagram, described above and clarify all your needs with the consultant, who will help you with the implementation. Order Execution automation will allow you to introduce another formal position – Controller.
•CRM/ERP market. You could find variety of the systems on the market. Here you need to stick to the quality rules. When you implement the computer system you should probably take the leaders on the market and be sure that they will stay or get additional market share in the future. In the case of mid-size business – in our opinion you should be selecting between two leaders: Microsoft Business Solutions with its ERP: Great Plains, Navision, Solomon, Microsoft CRM, and Best Software with their MAS 5000
•Microsoft Great Plains & CRM. These two systems are integrated and allow you to implement Sales Control and Order Execution, if you decide to stake on Microsoft brand.

You can always have us help you with the implementation & customization. Call us: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918.


About the Author
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida, Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com )