Jackel (FMCG)

Jackel is part of the Mayborn Group PLC, which is a publicly quoted business with a turnover of over 50 million pounds.

Jackel is best known for its brand, Tommee Tippee, which manufactures essential products for new parents.

The Challenge

Jackel are well known through their prominent position within the baby product market and their wide distribution in leading retailers. Although major stores, such as Mothercare and Boots, dominate their business, small pharmacies still account for a significant proportion of their revenue. The field sales team have limited impact on the multiples but can directly influence independent pharmacies. However, Jackel were not happy with the current way they were covering the independent customers and were concerned that sales people had hugely different workloads.

Jackel decided they needed specialist help to review the following:

	The imbalance of workloads across the field sales team
	Their territory structure and call schedules to produce a more efficient sales operation
	Field costs, which needed to be reduced without impacting on sales revenue

The Solution

This consultancy project involved segmenting customers and assessing the contact strategy for each segment. The number of reps required was identified, which took into account that some reps only worked a part time role. After identifying required headcount, CACI ran a number of what-if scenarios, because there were still questions about who would take on a regional management role, and hence would work only part time on the road. Also, there was a question mark over whether multiple groups would remain with field sales coverage or would be handled on a national account basis

Jackel visited CACI to take part in interactive workshops to arrive at an agreed final structure - this ensured buy-in and a sense of ownership.

The Results and Benefits

CACI identified that current territories were very imbalanced in workload - those with too little workload are being paid a full wage but only effectively working part time. Those employees with too much workload would either work far too much to be able to get around their customers (and end up leaving), or not call on all their customers, which will drive these stores to favour competitors' products.

The new structure is very balanced, much more efficient in terms of drive time and CACI even told Jackel where to recruit for a vacant patch. Each salesperson received a territory pack, which includes their territory map, account listing, postcode allocation and a breakdown of their account base, which makes them feel valued. The sales team were extremely happy with the changes and the territories were well accepted, especially those who previously had to do 'crazy levels of driving.'

As a result of CACI's analysis, Jackel's field costs were reduced by 23% with no impact on sales. Jackel were pleased with CACI's work, but call scheduling was seen as an exercise that could create obsolete results very quickly. This convinced Jackel to license CallSmart, CACI's call scheduling software, for use in-house, supported with an annual training and support package.

Jackel International comments:

“In a year's time, to embrace change in our marketplace, we will definitely repeat the exercise with CACI, because it represents excellent value for money.”

	Field Force Planning
	CallSmart