Digitalwall: Corporate Website a Handful (2) Division of Labor How?

Are you placing your corporate website in the hands of the direct store, direct sales, franchise, or distributor divisions?

Generally speaking, if a corporate website serves as a platform of E-Service or E-Supply Chain, it's less likely that division of labor will emerge as a problem because it'd be crystal clear which department should be in charge. However, if the website has it hand dipped in Internet sales directed at the consumers at large (a.k.a. E-Sales), many gray areas will emerge to blur the dividing lines of responsibilities among different departments.

Overall, the four main sales channels an enterprise resorts to are direct stores, direct sales, franchise, and distributors. Of course there are such anomalies as cross-industry joint promotions, among others, but they remain but varieties of the major channels.

The concepts of these major sales channels are rather easy to grasp. Direct stores are "direct" in that the company manages their stores "directly." Direct sales is "direct" in that the company sends its own sales staff right up to the doorsteps of its clients to sell products "directly" to them.

Franchising composes of a franchisor who supplies training, goods, a branded logo, a business model and a franchisee who gets all of the above for a price and gets to get his business up and running right off the bat. Lastly, the strictly-defined distribution means a manufacturer finding a number of reliable distributors (agents, dealerships) or one main general distributor and having them or it take care of the channel management and product marketing for the manufacturer, who then only needs to worry about making the product and shipping the product en masse.

Among the aforementioned modes of channels, some enterprises entrust its own direct sales wing with the management of its eCommerce website as it'd be the conclusion if one followed the natural course of division of labor within a corporation. After all, the direct sales unit is meant to deal with consumers directly, with no extra dealers' participation involved in the process. This seemingly innocent thought, however, puts the direct sales unit in a jam.

The thing is that most direct sales staffers run around paying clients visits on a daily basis. Sales via Internet, too, requires direct dealings with consumers, but it differs in that Internet sales staff waits in the office for clients to place orders via the Internet, and the hassles don't stop until they go through with the packaging/mailing of the ordered goods, not to mention the potential demand for refund or product exchange.

In the end, the direct sales staff might be prompted to ask, " why not have the customer service department handle it?" They have a point, since the customer service unit usually has a bigger staff. Also, the customer service unit is in the perfect position to fix any problem customers might have during and after the transaction. Packaging and mailing, too, can be handled with ease by customer service unit as it is blessed with an abundance of staffers who, one way or the other, will stay in all day.

It makes perfect sense, at least at first glance, but it falls short of answering one very important question: How do we go about evaluating? Are we really going to have the responsibility of "sales target" charged to a customer service division? Wouldn't that turn a customer service unit into a sales one in essence?

I am not suggesting it's a crime to give the customer service unit the additional responsibility of sales. However, there is a very real chance that the service staff, which we trust should be very skilled in handling complaints, will fumble a lot with the new responsibility. Therefore, the customer service unit will probably need to enlist some able hands who know how to sell things on the Internet.

Likewise, if people still think that selling is the sole responsibility of the sales department and not in the least the job of a customer service unit, then the sales department will have to add those who will stay in the office, handling such matters as taking orders, answering complaints via e-mail or telephone and the delivery/return/exchange of goods sold.

A better way of going about this would be to have the sales division handle work right up to the point where the orders are placed so that it can be held accountable for the sales stats and have customer service division handle work that comes afterwards so that the service staff will be doing basically the same job.

There are also people who think that Internet sales resemble stores a lot, and since in the real world, most direct store staff work in the store, its makes sense to have people manage an eCommerce website full-time.

So far, have you noticed that none of the internal staff, be they from the direct sales department or the customer service department, fit the new job descriptions to a T? Some companies have, and they think it simpler to start a new department independent of whatever department they already have. This Internet sales wing will orbit parallel to other units and run its own affairs, as it will have command of its very own sales and service staff. The beauty of this design is that, the credit (and the blame) will have only one way to go.

Let's give the tiff over who should handle the Internet sales a rest now and go back to the equally, if not more, relevant issue of pricing. As of now, consumers assume, with self-endowed legitimacy, that products sold on the Internet should come in prices lower than in stores around the corner, which poses a problem.

The problem is that, "does the unit in charge of Internet sales also have the mandate to manage product offering and pricing?"

The answer could vary from company to company, as some put the decision of product mix and pricing in the hands of its sales unit, and others don't. In either case, coordination of product offering and pricing among different sales channels should be conducted with the greatest care to avoid inconsistency.

For whichever unit given the pricing responsibility, Internet sales will pose a new challenge, as the unit will have to deal with consumers directly in a very real way as it will have to respond to consumer needs with the shortest time lag possible.

Tolerance for a struggling product mix on the Net is one short week tops. To boot, maneuvering of greater flexibility and time efficiency regarding newsletter delivery and other matters must be ensured in order to prod purchases, as life cycles of products will be shorter on the Net than in any other types of sales channels. And to accomplish this, synchronizing of work between Internet sales unit and marketing/management unit must be seamless.

In the next article, we will delve into discussion of how a corporate website should conduct strategic alliance. (
2003/10/05 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )