Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) is a competitive market to be in, and one where sales personnel need to be working as efficiently as possible. When one Global FMCG company wanted to better service their existing customers and increase their sales numbers, they contacted Market Motion to help them analyse and improve their sales routes to better balance workloads and improve market execution.
The Challenge
The global company had identified that its sales resource was not being optimally deployed. Their sales numbers were flat, and it was clear that personnel were struggling to execute sales and merchandising initiatives instore.
Sales territories for 68 sales personnel vehicles were being manually created, resulting in inefficiencies and uneven distribution of workload. This meant that sales resources were not being optimally deployed to focus on the areas of highest sales opportunities.
The imbalance in daily journey plan schedules was impacting personnel and resulted in them not have the time to prospect for new business.
The Solution
Working with key stakeholders within the FMCG company, Market Motion performed a detailed analysis of the existing sales territory coverage, as well as daily and weekly workloads of the sales representatives.
The workload was then evaluated alongside a population analysis that took into account demographic and seasonal movements, as well as expected customer engagement levels and channel and segment trends.
Using this analysis, Market Motion recommended the use of Omnitracs Territory Planner® to better manage sales territory and journey plans. They also worked with key stakeholders to establish a new optimal ‘go to market’ blueprint which included details on frequency of sales visits to metropolitan and regional locations, detailed planning analysis of travel time, distance, breaks to improve safety and service times. Allowances were made for regular meetings and business prospecting times.
The Results
As a result of the analysis and implementation of software, work capacity has been freed up to allow for the equivalent time of eight extra sales personnel – providing time for new business prospecting and improved market execution.
Using Omnitracs Territory Planner® the company has realigned the national field sales team to better service higher population areas and key channels and markets.
Market Motion analysis has provided the sales team with an improved understanding of the cost to serve and the effective use of time within the sales territory. This has improved customer engagement and instore performance.
Additional strategic improvements have also been identified for action in the future.
