A Show of Force

Sales force automation (SFA) offers the ability to boost sales and promotional efforts for CG companies by connecting sales teams to vital customer data at their headquarters. SFA also streamlines non-sales tasks --such as the collection of store inventory and display information--which helps sales people better manage clients and prospects. By using SFA as a communication tool between management and the field, CG companies are now able to generate more accurate forecasting so that supply can be made to match demand more precisely.

Image Is Everything

Kodak, the worldwide photo imaging products brand, is expanding an SFA pilot project in its consumer imaging division that originally launched in its sales office in France. Consumer imaging products represents 65 percent of Kodak's sales in the sales region, which also includes Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands.

Sales staffers file reports on store information including shelf position, store inventories and the status of promotional agreements. Before implementing SFA in the region, Kodak managed these communications between sales staff in the field and headquarters through the antiquated methods of e-mail and ground mail.

In September 2001, Kodak implemented an SFA solution developed by MEI in order to simplify reporting for its sales staff, and use a single medium of communication for sending data from the field to headquarters. Kodak currently is expanding its use of the tool to other nations in Europe, and its European regional division is communicating with its counterpart in North America about the success of the system.

Sales staffers use their laptop computers to dial into the system at least once and sometimes twice a day to update their information and report back to headquarters, according to Philippe Braud, SFA project manager for Kodak's Consumer Imaging division. The solution responds with information pertinent to each sales visit and sets immediate tasks for sales staff to complete based on the priorities set by headquarters.

The changeover coincided with a reorganization of Kodak's regional sales force due to retail consolidation. The moment was ripe for the switch, Braud said.

"It was an opportunity for us to change our way of working and change our way of monitoring activity and business," says Braud. "It came quite naturally because the tool is made for the CG industry."

SFA technology gives Kodak up-to-date information that helps it evaluate the effectiveness of promotional agreements with retailers and deals with distributors, who make up 80 percent of the company's business in the region. The technology also helps in evaluating field sales staffers who can't be evaluated based on volume alone because product is also passing through distributors.

Run of the Mill

For many CG companies, the greatest appeal of SFA technology is the convenience it adds to the sales person's job. Millstone Coffee, a Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble subsidiary, has been using an SFA solution by Sybase-owned iAnywhere Solutions for three years. For some eight years prior, Millstone had used the Telxon PTC-860 handheld device. The devices started breaking down frequently, forcing sales associates to hand-write reports, says Dave Ziegler, IT manager for Millstone. Furthermore, connecting to headquarters for updates typically took 10 minutes to 20 minutes.

Millstone chose iAnywhere's SFA solution running on Palm Symbol 1700 handheld devices to replace the old system. In addition to being sturdier and more reliable, the Palm devices have a built-in barcode scanner, whereas the Telxon handhelds utilized an exterior scanning-wand attachment.

"We have mutilated barcodes," says Ziegler. "The 1700 picks all of them up."

Supply Meets Demand

The overall goal of SFA is to make the supply chain nimble enough to meet demand fluctuations, says Jonathan Copulsky, partner at Deloitte Consulting. At CG companies, the supply-chain side, which seeks to keep production at smooth and constant levels, tends to conflict with the sales side, which runs promotions to cause different demand "spikes." SFA has the potential of helping CG companies focus on both supply and sales, reconcile the differences between the two and ensure that the right amount of product is available at the right time and also at the right store, says Copulsky.

Copulsky says that while available SFA technology is up to the task of achieving these goals, implementation at most companies that use the technology often is not. CG companies tend to fail to realign their internal sales processes to go along with the new technology, and they also fail to gain an understanding of the cost of serving their customers -- knowledge they need to implement an SFA system that meets their needs.

Another challenge is integrating these changes into the sales force. "They will look for loopholes to use their normal processes," says Copulsky.

Ziegler says Millstone defeated this challenge through intense training. Sales people were clearly skeptical of switching from their familiar DOS operating system to the Palm OS, but Millstone provided each sales person at least eight hours of training on the new device and physically took the old system away from them.

"We saw an almost immediate drop in support calls," Ziegler says. "The technical change was managed very well through training."