Design, build, and run “intuitive” deal desk operations

Implementing frictionless, digitally augmented, and data-driven deal desk operations can drive operational excellence and increased value across the sales lifecycle.

Just as a rally driver relies on a navigator to get them from A to B so they can stay focused on the speed and agility needed to win the race, so the sales function needs an “intuitive deal desk” to optimize deal value while mitigating risk.

But what – you might ask – is a “deal desk”? And how can it be made “intuitive”?

A deal desk is a cross-functional team that analyzes, tracks, converts to quotes, reviews, and approves sales opportunities in real time, so they can focus more on speed to sales. This supports the strategic revenue and profitability goals of the sales strategy and provides rigor and structure to the tactical and dynamic realities of negotiation, approvals, and handling non-standard attributes of supporting a deal across the sales lifecycle.

However, a deal desk operation frequently comes up against a range of challenges that include:

• Insufficient, inaccurate, and inconsistent data
• Lack of insights into sales drivers
• Lack of visibility into pricing analytics
• Outdated sales technology.

These challenges often result in inefficient and non-intuitive deal desk operations.

In turn, this can lead to unnecessary time and effort spent dealing with day-to-day tactical issues and losing sight of strategic levers such as win-rate drivers, improving margins, and stopping revenue leakage.

Leverage intelligent, frictionless deal desk operations

What’s needed is a smart, seamless deal desk operations model that can be tailored to the culture, practices, and needs of the individual organization – and that empowers the people who use it.

At Capgemini, we recommend implementing a “Deal Life Cycle Cockpit” (Figure 1) that leverages three key elements:

• Deal input – information on the deal helps establish accountability across the deal sales lifecycle.
• Deal optimization – a deal review interface that automates analysis, expands configuration capabilities, and helps to make sense of optimization recommendations and how they are adopted by sales personnel.
• Deal review – integrating recommendations (from data science and pricing analytics) on key deal optimization techniques support business outcomes and, in turn, the bottom-line.

Technology eliminates process drag and improves how internal and external users experience it. This not only delivers hard gains (ROI, revenue gains and incremental margin), but also qualitative benefits such as improved CSAT/NPS that translates to stickiness, repurchase, loyalty, and “mindshare.” The integration of rich data and extended sales and pricing analytics delivers incremental business gains.

Accelerating deal approval and win rates

Capgemini partners with our clients to reimagine their deal desk operations model – integrating, streamlining, and optimizing sales touchpoints across the lead-to-order lifecycle through leveraging our tested process, data, technology, and outcome-driven approach.

Enriching our clients’ digital sales strategy with data-driven insights and operational excellence across the sales function has led to some truly transformative business outcomes, including:

• 20–40% decrease in deal approval turnaround time
• 3–5% increase in win rates
• 20–30% increase in customer satisfaction
• 35–45% reduction in costs, and
• 15–25% reduction in escalations.

To prevent you from crashing into a ditch and getting covered in mud, intuitive deal desk operations help you drive operational excellence and increased value across your organization’s sales lifecycle.

To learn how Capgemini’s Empowered Sales Operations solution can help you in unleashing competitive advantage from your deal desk operations for increased sales and user experience, contact: deepak.bhootra@capgemini.com.