AVM and portatour^®

About AVM

AVM is one of the leading manufacturers of broadband connection and smart home products in Europe. The FRITZ! products are characterized by their user-friendliness and offer fast internet access, simple networking, convenient telephony and versatile smart home functions. With the regular updates of the FRITZ! OS software, all products are kept up to date and offer maximum security. The company was founded in Berlin in 1986 and has been continuously focusing on innovative in-house developments ever since. In 2023, AVM achieved a turnover of 580 million euros with 890 employees. AVM relies on route planning and territory planning from portatour^® for its field sales force.

Why automated route planning?

Planning appointments has become increasingly demanding for the sales force. Scheduling a large number of customers using Google route planning is time-consuming and does not always reflect the optimal routing. The complexity increases when appointments are canceled or contact persons are not on site. Rescheduling these customers without making inefficient detours is difficult. This approach not only proved to be outdated, but also time-consuming. Another factor for AVM were those customers that fell through the cracks in conventional planning and were then not visited for a long time. A solution was therefore sought to make route planning more efficient, save time and ensure the best possible service frequency for all customers. They also wanted to avoid rallies in future.

Without portatour^®, a lot of time has to be invested in aggregating all customers, taking into account the frequency of visits and then allocating this to the regions. And then the result is far from being at an acceptable level.

Erik Kuschke, Channel Sales Manager

Territory planning scores points in several ways

AVM was undergoing a major reorganization in which territories were merged and several sales teams with large regions were turned into one large team with smaller regions. Among other things, the company faced the challenge of filtering out the right territories for the individual employees according to certain criteria. As one of the first users of portatour^® Territory Optimization, AVM used the tool with great interest due to this restructuring and was able to create a completely new sales territory structure with little effort and a high time saving and optimize it as desired. Among other things, it was discovered that field reps were experiencing very high workload. Thanks to the territory planning of portatour^®, the workload could be distributed evenly across the sales territories. It was a great relief for AVM to be able to see, at the touch of a button, how busy each sales territory was.

Being able to control the workload of individual employees in such detail during territory planning and then knowing that I still have free resources here that I can use for other tasks is a very valuable function.

Erik Kuschke, Channel Sales Manager

From training to use

The implementation process was simple and after a short time, AVM was ready to send the first field reps with portatour^® on their way. The colleagues responded very positively to the changeover to portatour^® Route Planner and quickly got to grips with the program. The application is seen as an immense relief, from which everyone benefits. The idea that our own tour could be rescheduled by the software in the middle of a trip was of course something new that we had to get used to. However, the immense increase in efficiency, the elimination of hours of route planning and the certainty of no longer forgetting customers convinced the entire team in no time at all. In addition to all these things, the sales management also had an additional feeling of security. The processes became more transparent and the weekly planning of all colleagues can be viewed at any time. For the colleagues in the field, on the other hand, a situation has been created that saves them a lot of time, which they can now spend with their customers. And the office days are now also used for other important activities. portatour^® is equally well received by all colleagues of different generations.

We recently hired two new colleagues. They were trained in portatour^® within a very short time. Today, they are already using portatour^® in the same way as all other colleagues.

Erik Kuschke, Channel Sales Manager