Opti­mis­ing Sales Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty: Lessons Learned from a Suc­cess­ful Imple­men­ta­tion Project

INTRODUCTION

The manufacturer-to-retailer B2B mar­ket for FMCG prod­ucts is dynam­ic and sub­ject to con­stant change. Man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors need to con­tin­u­al­ly adapt to evolv­ing mar­ket dynam­ics, con­sumer pref­er­ences, and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments to stay competitive.

These sup­ply chains have been under pres­sure from COVID-19 and tech­nol­o­gy dis­rup­tions. As such, man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers need to stay updat­ed with the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments and invest in dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties to stay com­pet­i­tive in the evolv­ing FMCG landscape.

THE CHALLENGE

After 30 years of oper­a­tions, our Client is the biggest dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in Indone­sia. Sup­port­ing over 500,000 direct cov­er­age out­lets with capa­bil­i­ty reach­ing through­out the coun­try, the com­pa­ny faces fierce com­pe­ti­tion in the Indone­sian FMCG mar­ket. This has pro­vid­ed addi­tion­al impe­tus to improve and grow, and to cap­i­talise on the grow­ing econ­o­my through bet­ter sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion process­es and management.

The Client engaged Renoir to col­lab­o­rate in enhanc­ing their ways of work­ing to grow their sales vol­umes through bet­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion man­age­ment, process­es, con­trol and imple­men­ta­tion of best practices.

ANALYSIS

Renoir’s  ini­tial analy­sis high­light­ed some key action­able opportunities:

1. Route man­age­ment (includ­ing out­let classification)
2. Vehi­cle stock demand planning
3. Sales­force productivity
4. Sales call effectiveness
5. Mer­chan­dis­ing effectiveness
6. Field pro­mo­tion effectiveness

Fol­low­ing the analy­sis, the Client engaged Renoir in the imple­men­ta­tion project. The main objec­tive of the project was to increase sales vol­umes by improv­ing sales pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effectiveness.

The objec­tive was to be achieved through the opti­mi­sa­tion of sales routes and the improve­ment of contact-to-customer con­ver­sion rates, util­is­ing best-in-class man­age­ment and sales tools, such as dash­boards and data-driven reviews.

PROJECT APPROACH

A Man­age­ment Action Team (MAT) was set up con­sist­ing of com­pa­ny staff and was respon­si­ble for installing new sys­tems, review­ing the progress and report­ing to the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee on a reg­u­lar basis. MAT meet­ings were designed to solve issues and road­blocks, ensur­ing the project would run smooth­ly with­in the busi­ness environment.

In addi­tion, staff were assigned full time to cre­ate a Task Force. Task Force mem­bers were trained in change man­age­ment tech­niques, par­tic­i­pat­ed in all phas­es of the project and under­took the roll out of changes through­out Indonesia.

The dura­tion of the project was fifty weeks. The first eight weeks fol­lowed Renoir’s pro­pri­etary Focus Process, dur­ing which per­for­mance improve­ment solu­tions were designed and devel­oped and build­ing on the oppor­tu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied dur­ing the ini­tial analy­sis. The process includ­ed obser­va­tion­al stud­ies, process and con­trol process map­ping, brown paper stud­ies and brain­storm­ing ses­sions and close­ly involved the MAT, senior man­agers and key stakeholders.

IMPLEMENTATION

Imple­men­ta­tion cen­tred around improv­ing per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing through struc­tured and stan­dard­ised meet­ings, report­ing, plan­ning and sales vis­it con­tent. The goal to deploy these man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments was to increase sales super­vi­sors per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing capa­bil­i­ties, which in turn would dri­ve the increase in revenue.

The main man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments installed dur­ing the imple­men­ta­tion phase included:

1. Out­let Segmentation
2. KPI Per­for­mance Dashboard
3. Vis­it Effec­tive­ness Dashboard
4. Stan­dard­ised Meet­ing Agen­das and Reports
5. Month­ly Cat­a­logues to Pro­mote Upselling/Cross-selling

The imple­men­ta­tion process for the project involved installing and train­ing at each branch, with ongo­ing coach­ing and sup­port pro­vid­ed by the Task Force. Joint vis­its were con­duct­ed by super­vi­sors to review and cor­rect inef­fec­tive routes and vis­its, and sales pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was mon­i­tored through a dash­board and reports.

Updates were pro­vid­ed to the MAT and Steer­ing Com­mit­tee to guide focus on KPIs for vol­ume increase. The imple­men­ta­tion cov­ered 30 branch­es in mul­ti­ple phas­es, with fine-tuning and roll-out of man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments nation­wide. The Task Force grew from 8 to 16 mem­bers dur­ing the imple­men­ta­tion phases.

KEY RESULTS

Work­ing with the Client, Renoir achieved the fol­low­ing results at the end of the project: