Sales are a vital aspect of every company. If there are no sales, there is no profit and the company is bound to die. But on the other hand, if the expansion of sales activities is not managed properly, trouble is soon to come. For more than a decade, effective sales management is helped by sales force automation software.

Sales force automation software belongs to the business class of software. It is similar to contact relationship management (CRM) software but unlike CRM, it focuses first on the sales process and then on managing sales contacts.

Basically, sales force automation deals with activities like accepting and processing orders from customers, managing inventory, tracking performance of people and sales campaigns, analyzing past market trends to make a forecast for the future, management of promotions and campaigns, etc.

There are hundreds of ready-made sales force automation software programs on the market and there are offers for companies of any size - from huge multinational corporations to middle-sized enterprises to the small shop on the corner. Also, there are solutions targeted for specific branches - consumer goods, technical sales, financial services, real estate, etc.

Not that this abundance makes choosing sales force automation easy. It is true for all types of business software that there is hardly a universal solution that fits every single company. Sometimes it turns out that it is easier to write a software solution from scratch, then to adapt a commercial product to the needs of a particular company.

Because of this, custom development of sales force automation solutions has become more and more popular. Custom solutions allow one to add new features, like access from the Web or from mobile devices, or to integrate the sales force automation module with the company database or ERP system.