When we hire a new sales representative, portatour® helps us determine the ideal home location, maximizing efficiency in the field.
Elena Brey,
Field Sales Coordinator
Swiss Eyewear is an internationally active company based in Switzerland that sells high-quality eyewear, including sunglasses, reading glasses and optical frames. Swiss Eyewear eyewear is available in over 90 countries. With a team of over 70 employees worldwide, including 15 field reps and around 10 office staff in Switzerland, a structured and efficient customer care is essential.
Elena Brey is the contact person for portatour® and is responsible for planning and optimizing customer calls. Previously, this was done using Excel spreadsheets - a time-consuming and error-prone process. To increase efficiency and optimize route planning, Swiss Eyewear opted for portatour®.
As the company grew, the previous planning with Excel reached its limits. The amount of customers and field reps grew steadily, and manual planning was no longer efficient. This led to an increasing error rate and to customer calls sometimes being forgotten. To improve this inefficient process, Swiss Eyewear was looking for a solution that not only enabled automatic route planning, but was also flexible enough to allow for individual adjustments.
"We used to spend 2 whole days a week just on route planning," explains Elena Brey. "What's more, our field reps only had a list of customers but no optimized route. Every week, they had to take an additional 4 hours to plan their own drives."
We used to need 2 whole days a week just for route planning. Now we only need 4 hours for the entire planning.
Elena Brey, Field Sales Coordinator
The introduction of portatour® went smoothly. Elena Brey and her team already had experience with another route planning software, which made the advantages of portatour® immediately clear. "We had previously worked on another solution for over a year, but it was too complex for our requirements," explains Brey.
"The implementation of portatour®, on the other hand, was simple and efficient. Our field reps were able to quickly integrate the app into their day-to-day work." Although some employees were initially skeptical, they were quickly won over by the initial positive results. After just under three months, even the last doubters were convinced by portatour®. The support from portatour® and the question-and-answer session with all field reps helped a lot.
The introduction of portatour® was easy peasy - after a few months, even the last doubters were convinced by portatour®.
Elena Brey, Field Sales Coordinator
Before opting for portatour®, the company looked at various solutions, including AI-driven software, which, however, offered too many unnecessary functions. "We wanted a solution that not only optimized our tours, but also respected our existing territories," says Elena Brey.
"We don't need excessive automation that schedules field reps according to availability, but one that optimally plans our fixed territories. The ability to make manual adjustments is another advantage for our application purposes."
With portatour® we can flexibly schedule appointments and thus adapt the planning based on our own criteria.
Elena Brey, Field Sales Coordinator
The territory optimization of portatour® plays an important role at Swiss Eyewear, especially when it comes to new employees. "When we hire a new sales representative, portatour® helps us determine the ideal home location to maximize efficiency in the field," explains Brey.
"We also use the analysis tool to better distribute the workload and optimize customer call frequencies." Continuity is maintained: "Our customers are used to talking to the same field rep. We therefore avoid constantly reassigning territories wherever possible."
When we hire a new sales representative, portatour® helps us determine the ideal home location, maximizing efficiency in the field.
Elena Brey, Field Sales Coordinator
A key advantage of portatour® is its ease of use. "Our field reps can complete a customer call with just a few clicks. The moving of appointments or the insertion of new customers is also quick and intuitive," says Elena Brey with satisfaction.
The biggest advantages of using portatour® at Swiss Eyewear include efficient vacation replacement, fast appointments and better team transparency. The reporting has also improved significantly: "We didn't used to have any structured reporting. Now we have a digital history for every customer, including photos of displays and sales areas."
Our field reps can complete a call with just a few clicks. The moving of appointments or the insertion of new customers is also quick and intuitive.
Elena Brey, Field Sales Coordinator
Since the introduction of portatour®, Swiss Eyewear has achieved significant improvements. Instead of the previous 2 days per week, only 4 hours are needed for the entire planning, which means a time saving of 75%. Thanks to the optimized routing, each of the 15 field reps manages 1 to 3 customer calls more per day. This means a total increase of up to 45 additional appointments per day.
Instead of a static Excel lists, the team now has a dynamic and optimized route planning system with real-time adjustments, which has led to more structure and transparency: "portatour® has massively increased our efficiency. Not only do we save time, but we can also provide our customers with better support. It's exactly what we needed."
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