Early stages of Digitization and Mobility Adaptation

Digitalization and mobility adoption in FMCG companies happened a decade ago through Sales force Automation. This was ably steered by large multinational like Unilever, etc who always believed and used technology as a competitive advantage.

The early stages of SFA and digitisation were just about transition from paper based to paperless selling process which involved automating the field force and distributor sales through hand held devices also known as PDA’s. The data, even though not real time, definitely brought in visibility and valuable information on workforce productivity, physical distribution and tracking of displays.

Integration of mobility in the business architecture

According to a recent report published by IAMAI and KPMG, the Smartphone adoption is rapidly expanding in India as number of mobile internet users in India will double from an existing 159 million mark by 2017. Resonating with the government’s Digital India initiative, India’s internet penetration is likely to reach 50% by 2018 from a mere 26% in 2015.

On the other hand, the FMCG industry is estimated to grow phenomenally at the rate of 14% in 2015-2025 as compared to 12% in the last decade. Factors like, household income, nuclear household set-up, removal of entry barriers and with 100 million youth entering the workforce will account for the growth in the industry. The key determinant of all will be automation at this stage which will optimize opportunities for marketers and would help them in building focus on acquiring larger customer base and expanding geographies by implementing mobility. In addition, enabling the sales force with automation tools is the need of the hour to increase operational efficiency and achieve larger objectives.

Some real business cases where Analytics is re-defining the Sales and Distribution game are:

• Route Optimisation: (Static RO & Dynamic RO) Using Geo Codes of retail stores and organisation business requirements, the solution can propose the route clusters and the suggested coverage sequence. Leading organisations have experienced time and distance saving up to 47% which results into 15% of distribution cost

• Order Recommendation: As earlier mentioned, Amazon and Netflix are benefiting by using such algorithms to improve their consumer engagement and sales per transaction. On similar lines, using machine learning and algorithms, FMCG companies can sell more to every retail store - more SKUs and more value. Initial results done by leading FMCG organisations are showing great promise and it will only grow in coming times.

SFA – Helping businesses create a competitive business edge.

In order to expand to larger geographies simultaneously inculcating efficiency in businesses, Companies are increasingly embracing mobility in the operational workflow

Some of the key benefits of mobile internet applications to enhance operational efficiency are:

Consistently track workflow

New mobile technology advancements aid in effectively managing sales force even on the go. Managers can adequately spend time with their sales teams across multiple locations without limiting to an indoor workspace through SFAs. It has far reaching benefits for an organization in terms of efficiency, cost reliance, timeliness and customer satisfaction.

Increased productivity

Marketers often have to determine additional solutions required by salesforce to simplify manual data collection in sale-cycle process. This affects productivity, shifts center from focusing on core issues and slows down effective business time. In order to minimize these drawbacks in the traditional retail model, sales enablement tools are adopted. These include mobile SFA’s that provide meaningful insights, feedback and inventory led issues real-time. This allows marketers to pinpoint actual issues and establish a control mechanism. Thus, events like tracking an activity from lead to close, monitor campaigns and provide relevant information to sales teams is key.

Creating knowledge document

It is important that salesmen in a traditional set-up must be equipped with adequate training to deliver better performance. Regularly upgrading them through training sessions and recording interactions on the mobile platform helps build a comprehensive mobile-ready knowledge document. Further, this can be used for reference and research purposes in the business.

The other reasons that support SFA in businesses include increased cost efficiency, time saving, competitive edge and revenue enhancement.

Conclusion

The lightning advancement in mobility has therefore a created vast commercial opportunities for marketers which has help them to attract new customers, augment revenue and improve customer service. While all segments are growing independently, we await to see if the several pillars of the economic environment collaborate to bridge the current demand – supply network gap.

Paramdeep Singh
CEO of Field Assist, a flagship SaaS platform