SALES Vs OPERATION

More often than not, Sales and operations are in conflict leveling allegations at each other. Sales alleging that operations do not understand client level issues and urgencies, and operations alleging Sales does not follow the processes laid.

At the heart of the conflict, lies inadequate understanding of each others Role.

Operations is a shared resource. They operate from a underlying approach of

a)serving maximum number of customers in minimum possible time across sales geographies/divisions/regions etc. (within the current capacities).

b) And acting as gatekeepers, guardians of Regulations, Risk etc objectives as laid by business.

Local Sales team (teams/regions/Divisons etc) on the other hand operates in servicing its minimum number of customers (to the company as a whole) in minimum time

To overcome the potential conflicts, SLAs are signed between heads of these department.

But market realities and business objectives dictate that some customers are treated more important than others, hence these SLAs have to be bent.

So Local Sales starts pressurizing ops to bend the rules. What is one exception to local sales team , turn by turn adds to several exceptions to Ops team. For them exceptions become normal routine. Secondly Local sales have their own fires to douse. Hence for them the urgency is paramount although from overall business objectives they may not be of the same importance. Hence pressurize Ops

So Ops find it difficult to judge the genuine from the Non – Genuine exception, hence they react back. Along the way the genuine cases are put with roadblocks.

This leads to Local sales stating that Ops do not understand client issues. Ops in turn states that processes are no longer followed.

The spiral is complete. Is there a way out. Defining Exceptions as laid by Senior Mangement helps. But at the end of the day, a friendly talk with Ops helps understand each other better than any rules laid.