sales force automation is the process by which all day to day transactions and events in the sales department are automated. It includes the automation of all the activities like daily reports of invidual sales executives, order tracking, sharing information among all sales executives,inventory control and monitoring, sales forecast, etc.This will be very helpful for organisations that are geographically spread across the length and breadth of a country or even across different countries.A centralized control is easily possible when the sales activities are automated as access to data becomes easier and quicker.

If you have a well defined sales process, automating it becomes very productive as it can help avoiding unnecessary delay in getting each process done manually.For instance, if a sales executive located in a remote place sends a proposal to be approved by his sales manager by post or courier it will take atleast 3 to 4 days to get it done.This can be avoided if the salesman uses a system and an appropriate software which could alert the manager immediately when a request has been sent to him.The manager can reply to it immediately and the whole activity can be completed in minutes.
There are a numerous instances like this where unnecessary delays could be avoided and help the sales people close the orders immedaitely.It can also help you track the employees performace in a more organised way.

Lotus Notes can be a very useful platform on which these softwares can be built.It can help you develop an application exactly in the way you want instead of purchasing a conventional Sales Fore Automation software which may not suit your requirement.