Mobile sales force automation
FMCG, CPG, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare industries are the biggest segments, which is growing at fast pace. To sustain in this competitive business world, FMCG companies are leaving no stone unturned to bring profound transformation and increase their penetration in the market with the optimum use of information technology.
The major concern for these industries is managing retail space , let the customers relate themselves to the brand image, enhance customer loyalty and importantly offer rich experience to them. However, the continuous proliferation of the digital devices is the panacea for all retail space ills.
FMCG/CPG/Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare organisations increasingly need agile mobile sales force automation software equipped with information and sales tools.
Traditional sales and distribution Challenges:
- Misplaced / delayed sales orders
- Miscommunication in placing orders especially related to order quantity which leads to over or under production
- Delay in delivery timelines due to lack of information on inventories
- Information regarding products, pricing etc is not up-to-date leading to discrepancies in order bookings
- Challenges in inventory optimization and liquidation due to uninformed manual ordering
- Inappropriate customer call schedules leading to waste of time and reduced market coverage
- Lack of insight into sales activities and timely feedback
- Delayed collection and tallying with accounts, leading to increased cost of capital
FMCG, healthcare and pharma companies are equipping their field sales teams with handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets for faster relaying of sales data and information from the field to the distribution centers.
The sales agent goes on the field, notes down the order using his handheld device. The information is relayed instantaneously to the company’s central warehouse or area distribution centers, kick-starting the process of dispatch of goods to the retailer, possibly even before the sales agent has left the said store. This is quite unlike the pre-handheld device days, when the agent went back to his workstation, filled in the orders manually (mostly at the end of the day, after all his sales calls were done), which, in turn, delayed the dispatch process significantly.
Earlier, the (stock) replenishment cycle would be close to a week – seven or eight days. In the current scenario, the replenishment takes a couple of days only. With data availability across the system, the depot can replenish the stock to the retailer directly passing the distributor in extreme cases. This can further cut down the replenishment cycle time.
Besides cutting down the stock replenishment cycle, the usage of handheld devices is helping the companies make their sales calls more effective by literally putting all the available information on a particular retailer at the sales agent’s fingertips. As companies and their workforces get more comfortable with using handheld devices for basic functions like order booking and stock keeping, companies are mulling new ways to monetize the technology and the data available at hand. The smartphone device has a list of retailers, the salesperson is scheduled to visit to book order for the day. The smartphone device also records the past purchase data for each retailer. The device has color coding wherein, the outlet that has not purchased stock during the month appears as red and those that have bought appear in green.
Mobile sales force automation empowers organisational sales and distribution team to bring efficiency in their operations. It addresses the biggest challenge of streamlining the sales processes from reducing order delays to streamlining production. This results into just in time delivery, ensuring optimum inventories, allow for well-defined production runs and reduce wastages and returns especially in case of perishable items.