In many distribution companies the day runs the same way: the rep takes the order by phone or on paper, copies it into Excel in the evening, and the next morning someone keys it into the accounting software all over again. Along the way a price is typed wrong, a line item is forgotten, and the manager only finds out what happened in the field at the end of the week.
Field sales software (SFA, Sales Force Automation) collapses that chain into a single source of data. But the products on the market look very much alike; you see the difference in the field, not in the demo. While building BernSFA, our field sales platform, and rolling it out in different industries, we gathered the questions that turned out to be the most useful.
1. What happens when there is no internet?
This is the first question and the most important one. In industrial estates, warehouse basements and out-of-town areas the connection drops all the time. If the app shows a loading icon at that moment, the rep goes back to paper.
The question to ask is not "does it have an offline mode?" but "do orders, customer cards and field forms work completely without internet?" A good app keeps its data in a local database on the phone, syncs in the background once the connection is back, and shows the rep a plain status such as "3 orders waiting to be sent".
2. How does it talk to your ERP?
In Turkey, field sales usually sits on top of Logo, Mikro, Netsis or SAP. Questions to ask:
- Is the integration two-way? Stock, price lists, customer account balances and campaigns should flow from the ERP to the app; orders and collections should flow from the app to the ERP.
- Which data is refreshed, and how often? A common and sensible setup sends orders the moment they are taken and moves bulk data, like stock levels and prices, at fixed intervals.
- Can the same order land twice? When the connection drops halfway through, an order that is sent again must not create a duplicate record in the ERP. Be sure to ask how this is prevented.
- What happens when the ERP is down? During maintenance or an outage, orders must not be lost; they should wait in line and go through once the ERP is back up.
3. Does it follow your discount and approval rules?
This is where off-the-shelf packages struggle most. Prices per customer account, tiered discounts, campaign rules, manager approval above a certain amount... The software should apply these rules the way you actually work. Otherwise reps work the rules out in their heads, and the mistakes surface in accounting once again.
In the demo, hand over one of your own real discount scenarios and ask to see how the system calculates it.
4. How many taps does it take a rep to enter an order?
A field screen is not an office screen. The rep has a catalogue or a carton in one hand, the sun is on the display, and the customer is waiting. Things to look at:
- Are the main buttons within reach of the thumb?
- Can the figures be read in direct sunlight?
- Can an order be started quickly from the products the customer bought last time?
- Is the discount applied automatically, or does the rep have to work it out?
The best test is to give the demo phone to one of your reps and watch them enter a real order.
5. How are visits tracked?
Route and visit tracking is the backbone of field management, but the method matters. Continuous location tracking drains the battery quickly and can create a trust problem with staff. A location-verified visit check-in (the rep taps "start visit" while standing at the customer, and the system confirms the location) is usually both fairer and more efficient.
6. Does it support van sales?
For van sales reps and crews who sell straight from the vehicle, orders on their own are not enough: they also need vehicle stock, dispatch and returns, invoices issued on the spot, and the end-of-day close. Without these modules the team ends up working in two separate systems again.
7. How flexible are the field forms?
The field work that isn't selling is worth as much as the order: surveys, shelf and price checks, notes on competitors, photos and signatures. It matters that you can change these forms yourself without raising a request with the software company, or that the company can adapt them quickly.
8. What does the manager see, and when?
Much of the value of field sales software shows up in the manager's dashboard. Performance by rep, region and product, progress against targets, the day's visit status and orders should all be visible live. When reports wait for the end of the week, so do the problems.
9. Where does the data live?
Under KVKK, Turkey's personal data law, customer names and addresses, account balances and signatures all count as personal data. Questions to ask:
- Is the data kept on your own server, in a cloud you choose, or on the software company's shared infrastructure?
- Is there a model for roles and permissions? Does each rep see only their own customers?
- How are activity logs and backups handled?
- What happens if a phone is lost?
10. How does the rollout work?
Moving the whole field team onto a new system on the same day is risky. A healthy process usually goes like this: discovery (how you sell, who does what, your discount and approval rules, how the ERP is set up), a clickable prototype of the screens reps will use, a pilot with a single region or team, and then a wider rollout together with training. The pilot means that mistakes reach one region, not the whole team.
In short
When you choose field sales software, look less at the screens shown in the demo and more at the answers to these questions: does it work without internet, does it talk to your ERP reliably, does it follow your rules, and is it genuinely fast in the field?
We built BernSFA around these questions. At one customer, visit productivity rose 32%, order entry errors fell to zero, orders started arriving at head office the moment they were taken, and changes to the location logic reduced battery consumption by 45%.
Planning a project like this?
Plan it in 10 steps