Delta salespeople more effective with faster access to customer info

Delta Airlines is arming its salespeople with up-to-date customer information to make them more effective sellers, and make its sales processes completely customer-centric.

Information about Delta's corporate and travel agency accounts will be stored on the front end in a Baan FrontOffice system. Delta salespeople will then slice and dice the customer information, looking for trends and preferences, using an OLAP package from Barfield, Cauthen and Associates.

The new system will cut the average time spent analyzing customer information from as much as four hours to a few minutes, according to Delta CIO Charles Feld.

With that extra time salespeople can plan sales strategies, improve efficiencies, "and most importantly, spend more time meeting customer needs," he said.

The phased implementation of the system is scheduled to be completed by September