More than 600,000 active outlets exist in the country, and the company directly services 30,000 of them. The client wants to establish a program where at least 400,000 new outlets are put into direct sales and service over 3 years.
An effective route to market design
Increased outlet penetration increases sales, market share, and market control over the long term.
Every local market has uniqueness, which drives the need to design various sales, marketing, and delivery service systems to maximize service levels at the lowest possible cost proposition.
Control over direct sales to customers and consumers creates competitive advantages through better control at the point of purchase. This includes controlling delivery service levels, service frequencies, service quality, and product availability. Furthermore, better control over brand product introductions, stronger customer relations, cash-flow streams, and stronger sales mix control and order picking and packaging quality, to name a few.
Planning distribution services is a dynamic task to undertake. The process considers multiple factors requiring the right balance between service levels and costs. A well-designed distribution system creates competitive advantages by balancing perceived value-added services and justifiable costs.
A master plan guided the process
All significant cost and service factors must be addressed and planned for when designing and developing the most effective sales and delivery service systems. One must consider constraints, barriers, and external operating factors such as infrastructure, distances, traffic, road networks, product characteristics, flexibility, regulations, restrictions, and geography, for example.
Effective and efficient delivery solutions must be designed and developed in complex and costly service areas. This means developing practical distribution methods that overcome high costs due to servicing these areas or outlets. Constraints and bottlenecks could be associated with adapting to specific service requests from customers to overcome traffic congestion. This could be to comply with city time restrictions, for example. The constraints must be spotted, and a practical resolution must be assigned to overcome excessive delivery and service costs. Lowering distribution costs might require adding new distribution centers, cross-docks, fast flows, swap bodies, night delivery services, or servicing the largest customers directly from the production plant.
All firm orders generated by sales must be delivered to customers or consumers within a pre-set timeframe and guidelines. In a pre-selling system, two separate universes of service systems correlate or mirror each other: “the sales route system” and the “delivery route system.” What the sales routes and delivery route system have in common is the “call day.” In other words, what sales are selling today must be delivered tomorrow, that is, if the lead time from order to delivery is 24 hours. Thus, planning the “call day” is the core of designing and developing the optimal route planning structure. Moreover, the basic rule in a pre-sales route planning system is to optimize the distribution route system and transform the call day back to mirror the daily sales routing system. In that case, the sales and distribution routes are routed as two separate, optimized systems – aiming to optimize the distribution system as the core planning target.
Modules and Content:
- Infrastructure plan
- Market and service assessments
- Sales and service systems design
- Organizational structure design
- Rerouting sales and distribution and route balancing
- Kick-off and contingency planning
- Training and coaching are essential to designing and developing the most effective and efficient route to market sales and service systems.
It is an ongoing process
The company operates on a 3-year penetration plan, controlling and managing sales, costs, capital investments, and hiring. The client operates a Master Plan where each salesperson is assigned new outlets they must put into service according to preset guidelines and standards. Sales are up simultaneously as new outlets are put into service. The plan aims to balance the selling costs of newly opened outlets in service with additional revenue.