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A dynamic company such as Samsung requires a dynamic route planner! Call frequencies are now in firm control thanks to portatour®.
Severin Bolliger
Data Analyst, Sellout Marketing
Samsung Electronics is the largest manufacturer of televisions and cell phones in the world and employs 286,000 people.
In Switzerland, Samsung Electronics cooperates with the company X-Tool Services Schweiz AG in order to employ a field sales force to foster relationships with retail partners, train their sales staff, observe the competition, and ensure the optimal presentation of Samsung products at the point of sale (POS). This is essential for the end customer to get to know Samsung products prior to purchase.
Before portatour®, the field sales representatives had sole responsibility for route planning within their pool of trade partners. However, the call scheduling did not meet the strategic objectives and was often suboptimal. Personally favored customers were visited frequently, while others were left out. Planning was carried out in Excel. Changes due to new market events or to postponements at short notice required tedious manual adaptations. Reporting was available, but did not allow work to be controlled efficiently.
All too often we were flying blind. The planning and the results were suboptimal.
Severin Bolliger, Data Analyst, Sellout Marketing
portatour® calculates optimized and efficient routes automatically according to the required call intervals, replacing tiresome manual planning in Excel by the field sales representatives.
Samsung can now respond quickly and flexibly to changed situations and objectives. If a new trade partner is added or a new product is to be promoted, it is incorporated immediately into the call planning.
The number of calls per month or per quarter is entered as an objective, evaluated, and also achieved owing to optimized planning. Warnings that a visit to a shop is overdue are sent transparently to the sales director and the field sales representative. This control mechanism continuously improves ways of working. Trade partners are visited much more regularly than before.
We are now able to handle the dynamics at Samsung. The shop landscape is constantly changing and our product cycles are short. We can enter our newest insights and strategies into portatour® straight away and take account of them in route planning.
The daily situation at the points of sale can be monitored through the call reports entered in portatour® on the smart phone. Samsung can adapt the report input forms according to their requirements. The reports also provide important data for calculating the variable commissions of the field sales force.
For organizing the field sales force, Samsung cooperates with the company X-Tool Services (Schweiz) AG, who also handled the implementation of portatour®. After a brief trial period, the product was soon taken up by all the field sales representatives.
Another aspect of portatour® that we really liked was the rapid support. You receive a quick and helpful reply.
The new way of working met with a certain reluctance among some of the employees initially, but this was soon overcome by using portatour® routinely.
The intuitive user interface made it easy for us to get portatour® up and running. Now we have gained firm control of our call frequencies. We definitely recommend portatour® as an optimal planning tool!
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