Sales Force Automation for Hemas India - a FMCG Company

Hemas Holdings is a diversified conglomerate located in Sri Lanka, with a focus on five key sectors – FMCG, Healthcare, Transportation, and Leisure. As part of their expansion plans in South Asia, they wanted to get a foothold in the highly competitive FMCG space of India. The strategy was quite clear – first build a strong sales and distribution network in two states for fair care segment and then grow further. In order to successfully execute their plans, they were looking for a stable and customizable Sales Force Automation solution which will help in improving sales team’s productivity and will provide them a clear visibility in terms of expansion and volume sales. The end objective was to measure and track the following:

• Scouting for new outlets and adding them in their database
• Creating beats and PJP for the SRs (Sales Representatives)
• Real time order capture and retailer stock visibility
• Tracking payment collected from retail outlets
• Tracking market visits of SOs (Sales Officers) and ASMs (Area Sales Managers)
• Visibility of distributor stock basis new stock in and depletion

Approach:

The benefits of a completely config driven system was best realized by the client during the implementation. Within a week of the signing the contract, the system was live and the sales team were sitting in a room to undergo training od Assistive SFA App. Some of the key steps taken to meet client’s end objective are as follows:

• Beat mapping (750+ beats across 100 towns) and PJP planning for the SRs were done basis the data shared by client
• All the master data such as distributor, product etc. were uploaded and mapped as per requirement
• Different mobile app workflows were configured for SRs, SOs and ASMs basis their responsibilities when out for a market visit
• Exhaustive trainings were conducted to ensure no hiccups post launch
• An interactive dashboard was created to show all relevant summarized information including daily productive calls, order summary, time spent in market, daily average calls, SKU wise current stock at distributor points
• Regular progress report in terms of system usage was shared with client and SRs were called on a regular basis to drive the adoption

Outcome

Successful implementation of Assistive SFA yielded significant results for the company within two months of going live. The key highlights are as follows:

• Close to 55,000 new outlets were added within first four weeks of the system going live
• Daily planning of 70 SRs across 750 beats ensured a much more disciplined and productive sales force on the field
• Real-time visibility of order volume helped in deciding future growth plans
• Visibility about distributor stock helped in deciding primary order to be placed
• With planned market visit and activity reporting through app for SOs and ASMs, relationship with retailers and distributors were improved significantly
• Overall impact was a successful entry in the Indian market opening up the possibility of future expansion and bigger success in this market