| | June 20159CIOReviewThe sales results also highlighted the power of a workforce enabled with mobile technologyincrease sales by turning the 70 percent of time that sales agents spent in the office into time spent selling to customers and to integrate several systems into a mobile interface that could be used to interact with customers in real-time to build custom solutions. To shorten the development cycle time for the solution, IT and the Sales Acquisition team took an agile approach to create a powerful partnership between the business and IT. The sales teams provided several resources that were 100 percent dedicated to the solution development of the project to ensure IT could deliver rapid working prototypes in short iterative cycles. The partnership included `time and motion studies' and IT developers pairing with sales representatives in the office and on customer calls to ensure full understanding of how the new tools could improve productivity and the customer experience. This level of partnership was rare in previous projects, and the business partners often provided accolades regarding IT's flexibility and responsiveness to their needs.SalesLink was delivered as a mobile application utilizing iPads as a standard mobile field sales device. With SalesLink, sales representatives leverage location aware technologies to prospect for new customers based on where CenturyLink services are available. Once potential customers are identified, sales agents begin a conversation with the customer armed with the knowledge of the specific products and services (strategic product bundles) that can be offered at those locations. During the conversation, sales representatives solicit the prospect's business needs and immediately suggest solution options. In addition, sales representatives configure the chosen options to the prospect's specifications, provide price quotes and get signatures on the contract, all in real-time with the new customer.The results from SalesLink have been dramatic. The time, sales representatives are able to spend in the field has increased from 30 to 70 percent. Since January 2014, there has been an average of 24 percent increase in the sales of our higher value strategic products over our non-strategic products. This is a significant accomplishment towards achieving our Company's strategic growth targets. The initial launch significantly reduced the total process time to qualify a single prospect from around 15 minutes to less than 40 seconds. SalesLink achieves such great performance by providing a single, mobile interface that collects and interprets the information sourced within multiple systems to correctly determine the availability of multiple products and service offerings. Overall net sales continue to exceed goals as the field sales agents utilize SalesLink. Record sales volumes were reached in August and September. Sales agents in Denver utilizing the new SalesLink mobile solution achieved more than 300 percent of their targets for the month of October. Total year over year sales results through October 2014 were up 65 percent over 2013 levels. This project's success was a real "ah ha" moment for our IT organization around the effectiveness of an agile approach to product development. Through the SalesLink project, the agile methodology showed its strength at building partnership with the business, increasing the speed of delivery, and navigating unknowns. The sales results also highlighted the power of a workforce enabled with mobile technology. The telecommunications industry and CenturyLink are going through a transformation. SalesLink is a game changer for our company. It not only enabled the sales team to rapidly prospect high potential customers in advance of the initial sales engagement, it has shown us a pattern for how IT and our business partners will find future success in this increasingly competitive industry.
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