Picture a wholesale textile company. A customer calls, asks for a price, says ‘let me think about it’ and hangs up. The sales rep scribbles something in a notebook, but that notebook stays in a bag. Two weeks later the customer calls back. Nobody remembers what price was quoted or which product was discussed. The customer goes to a competitor. This scene plays out in many businesses every single day. When the economy tightens, every customer, every conversation, every quote becomes far more valuable. A single lost sale is no longer a small matter.
Navision is a business software package — an integrated system that brings all departments of a company into one program — and its sales module addresses this problem directly. From the moment a customer first makes contact to the moment an invoice is issued, every step is recorded. At the quote stage, which product was offered at which price goes into the program. If the customer agrees, that quote converts to a sales order with a single action. Once the order is confirmed, the goods issue and invoice remain within the same chain. No information is lost between steps, no stage is skipped.
The biggest benefit of this chain is that it removes the burden of memory from the sales rep. Who asked what, what was quoted, when does a follow-up need to happen — all of it sits in the program. In the morning, the screen opens and the day’s pending quotes appear in a list. The excuse ‘I forgot to call the customer back’ disappears. This structure matters even more in businesses with more than one sales rep. When someone goes on leave or leaves the company, the customer information stays in the program, not in that person’s head.
The customer-level sales history is another strong point. What a customer bought last year, which products they prefer, their average order size — all of this can be queried from the program. When a customer calls, the rep can look at the screen and say ‘Last time you took this product — are you looking for something similar again?’ That small detail makes the customer feel recognised. A customer who feels recognised buys more easily.
Navision also brings discipline to pricing. During difficult periods, sales reps sometimes offer unauthorised discounts to keep a customer. In Navision, separate price lists can be defined for each customer group. The maximum discount a rep can apply is set in advance. If a rep tries to go beyond that limit, the program either issues a warning or asks for a manager approval. This way the company keeps customer satisfaction intact while keeping margins under control. In a shrinking market, losing margin is just as dangerous as losing turnover.
Getting the program installed and running is not straightforward. Setting up a system like Navision requires working with an authorised reseller. The installation process can take several weeks — transferring existing company data into the program, training users, and breaking old habits all take time. Sales reps often push back at first: ‘Why should I enter it into the program? I already know my customers.’ Until that resistance is overcome, the system delivers no benefit. Without a firm commitment from management, this kind of transition stalls halfway. The program also depends entirely on data being entered completely and consistently; half-finished records make reports meaningless.
For an SME owner considering Navision, the key question is straightforward: how many quotes is my sales team tracking right now, and how many are being forgotten? If the answer is unclear, lost sales are already happening. Managing the quote-order-invoice chain with paper and phone calls seems workable when business is busy. But when demand falls and every customer counts, that approach breaks down. Navision moves this chain into a program and makes the sales process trackable. Before making a decision, requesting a demonstration through an authorised reseller and checking how well it fits your own workflow is the most sensible first step.
This article was originally written in Turkish by Gökhan MERCANOĞLU on February 19, 2001 and has been automatically translated into English and other languages using machine translation.