Case study
Republic Technologies maximises ROI from its field sales team
Summary
Republic Technologies is a global consumer goods company with over 100 years of manufacturing history. In the UK, its products are sold in a multitude of retail settings including newsagents, supermarkets and convenience stores, and requires a traditional field sales force. Republic Technologies wanted to improve its operations and geographic deployment in the field to ensure it had the right people in the right place to optimise sales teams’ working patterns, growth and customer service.
Company size
100
Industry
Manufacturing
Products used
Challenge
Republic Technologies had a number of vacancies in its field sales team, but did not know the best places to recruit. Nor did Republic Technologies know whether it needed to fill all these vacancies. Could it scale the team back and still achieve its target call rate?
Republic Technologies’ territories were imbalanced, with some people working far more hours than others. The team was spending too much time driving. Republic Technologies wanted to optimise the territories to ensure that each person was working the same hours and maximise the time spent with customers.
Based on the anticipated changes to the territories, Republic Technologies wanted to provide each sales person with a plan of attack to help them get around their customers in the most efficient way.
Solution
CACI worked with Republic Technologies’ field managers to address these challenges. Using CACI’s proprietary InSite software, we started with headcount analysis and employed InSite’s travel time algorithm to understand the amount of driving the field team would have to make between calls. This helped to understand exactly how many hours the current team was working and what this would look like if the headcount changed. Based on these calculations the correct team size was established, giving Republic Technologies the confidence that it had struck the right balance.
From this optimised structure, CACI used its CallSmart route optimiser to deliver a set of efficient routes for each field sales rep.
Results
CACI’s work has allowed Republic Technologies to quantify the hidden work in a sales person’s day to truly understand the correct size of their field sales team. This ensured Republic Technologies was maximising the return on investment from this team.
The territory optimisation improved the balance of work across the team and reduced the amount of time spent driving. With this enhanced efficiency, Republic Technologies was able to focus its recruitment on better defined locations, filling vacancies more effectively in more targeted areas. Another benefit of this was a reduction in fuel bills.
The routing gave each sales person a daily sequences of visits that reduced the time they spent in the car and the time they spent planning.
