With Christmas an ever-busier time of year for him, we highlight six Oracle Sales Cloud features that would really help Santa this Christmas!

Christmas is a busy time of year for most people and it is especially busy if you have a whole world of children relying on you! This blog briefly explores how Santa Claus would benefit from using Oracle Sales Cloud in the run up to Christmas.

1. Handling Christmas Lists

Most children will still send old-fashioned letters to Santa Claus detailing their requirements for Christmas morning, which (although nicely written) aren't easily manageable. Instead of continually referring back to pieces of paper, Santa could store each child’s Christmas list as an Activity with the type ‘Christmas List’.

Fig 1: Handling Christmas Lists

Santa’s Helpers can be added as team members on the Christmas List activities too, so that the relevant Christmas Lists are visible on the corresponding Helpers' Activities page. Appointments and meetings can be created from the list, which are then visible on each Helper’s calendar, ensuring that nobody misses important present-making status calls!

Fig 2: Calendar View

2. Assessing "Naughty & Nice"-ness

The ‘naughty and nice’ list plays an important role for Santa, but is a labour-intensive task. This could be streamlined using Sales Cloud’s Opportunity Assessment feature.

The Helpers would answer a set of questions for each child, resulting in a 'naughty or nice' score, with a higher score relating to a nicer child!

Fig 3: Naughty or Nice Assessment

Extremely high 'nice' scores should be rewarded, so if Santa feels a child deserves more gifts he can use the built-in Recommendations tool. The Recommendations tool would look at existing toys the child has and predict a toy the child would enjoy based on similar child preferences and gift-requesting behaviour!

3. Motivating & Compensating Santa's Helpers

It’s a given that his Helpers will be working hard in the run up to Christmas, but making use of Incentive Compensation within Sales Cloud would make it easier for Santa to track the compensation his Helpers deserve.

Santa’s Helpers could be rewarded based on their performance throughout December. The more opportunities they’re involved with, the more compensation they will receive. The Helpers would therefore be motivated to get involved with more children's Christmas Lists, and motivate them to ensure that toys are built on time!

Santa could make use of the pre-built reports to track his compensation credits and earnings.

Fig 4: Incentive Compensation Report

4. Collaborating Using Santa's Dedicated Oracle Social Network

Oracle Sales Cloud comes pre-integrated with Oracle Social Network (OSN), so his helpers can communicate about their progress and orders within Sales Cloud! Santa himself can use OSN to view conversations, as well as see the changes that are being made to the children’s lists!

Fig 5: Oracle Social Network

OSN would provide the collaborative tool that the North Pole may currently be missing!

5. Minimising Reindeer Effort & Ensuring No Child Missed Out

When Christmas Eve finally arrives, Santa can use the Oracle Sales Cloud mobile application to update his opportunities whilst sleigh-borne. One feature he may find particularly useful is the ‘Around Me’ functionality, which uses his exact location and highlights which children are nearby. He can then plan the most effective route for his sleigh to take, minimising Reindeer effort!

Fig 6: Mobile Access

He could also benefit from the ‘Offline Mode’ access, for those areas where mobile signal is poor. Using this, Santa can continue to use Sales Cloud to view which children to deliver which presents to, despite not being connected to the internet.

He can log a visit when he's down the chimney, mark the list as complete and close the opportunity once he's delivered the goods - all from the mobile app! He's always able to see if he has any children still to deliver to - meaning no disappointed children on Christmas Morning and no risk of incurring extra costs for a "special run" on Boxing Day!

6. Linking Christmas Lists, Christmas Deliveries and After-Christmas Service for Excellent CX (Child Experience)

As well as the above, using Oracle Sales Cloud Release 9 would see Santa being able to integrate with his other Oracle Cloud products out-of-the-box. For example, Oracle Service Cloud could work in co-ordination with Oracle Sales Cloud so unhappy children would be able to chat directly with Santa’s dedicated Customer Service elves to resolve issues with their Christmas gifts! The elves could check the complaint against the original Christmas List, as well as the 'naught-and-nice' assessment, to ensure the complaint is a valid one!

If, like Santa, you think your team would benefit from a Sales Force Automation product like Oracle Sales Cloud, why not contact us, or call us now on +44 203 2834315, to discuss how your organisation can benefit from using a sales automation application such as Oracle Sales Cloud.