Journey Plan in the Retail Distribution Business
Journey Plan in the Retail Distribution Business
By : Dwi Supriyanto
There are several other names for Journey plans that are commonly found in Retail Distribution Businesses in Indonesia, including: Fix Journey Plan, Permanent Journey Plan, Route Engineering, Sales Route.
There are several other names for Journey plans that are commonly found in Retail Distribution Businesses in Indonesia, including: Fix Journey Plan, Permanent Journey Plan, Route Engineering, Sales Route.
Goals Journey Plan
Goals Journey Plan
The goals of the Journey Plan are:
- Customers / outlets know the arrival schedule of our Sales Team by heart, by memorizing the Customer’s arrival of our Sales Team, then:
- So that customers can plan purchases by considering the remaining stock, whether it is sufficient or not until our Sales Team visits in the next period.
- The Sales Team can provide Order recommendations based on remaining stock and previous order volume from that customer.
- The order taking process as well as the Collection process, in general the Term of Payment (TOP) is made based on the visit cycle.
- The effectiveness of delivering goods, with the Journey Plan which has been arranged in a cluster, the delivery process the next day will also be clustered, but if the visit is outside the Journey Plan then there is a big possibility that the delivery will not be clustered and the impact will be that delivery costs will become more expensive.
- Avoid out of stock at customers, by routinely visiting outlets, the potential for out of stock at customers will be low, because our Sales Team routinely monitors remaining stock at customers.
- Establishing a good relationship between the Sales Team and Customers, by establishing this good relationship, it will be easier for Customers to accept and spend time with our Sales Team explaining ongoing promotional programs and contracts.
- Monitor the development of competitors in customers, such as ongoing promotions, benefits that customers get from competitors and the development of competitors’ sales in these customers.
What problems generally occur?
What problems generally occur?
Problems that the author often encounters in the Retail Distribution Business in Indonesia include:
- The Journey Plan is not implemented for the reason of looking for turnover, but in reality this is not the case, looking for turnover is just an excuse for the Sales Team not to visit customers according to the Journey Plan, because by advancing visits to customers who are believed to be ordering soon, the impact is:
- The next visit to the outlet, if carried out according to the Journey Plan, will most likely not be ordered, because the time span is short from the previous visit (extra call).
- There is a possibility that delivery costs will increase because delivery process is not clustered.
- The Sales Team hangs out in one place so there is not enough time to visit customers according to the Journey Plan.
- Whatever time the visit is finished, the customer will return to the office in the afternoon before home time, so that they are considered to have visited all the Journey Plans or are deemed to have insufficient time to visit.
What's the solution
What's the solution
In the current digital era, it is time for Distribution Companies to implement applications that support Distribution activities, especially for monitoring and controlling the Sales Team in the field.
The SADIX SAS (Sales Automation System) application is a system that supports Retail Distribution Companies to monitor and improve the Retail Distribution Business.
Several steps that need to be taken when implementing the SADIX SAS application include:
- Re-registering outlets requires customer coordinates and customer photos for validation. With this step we will know how many active customers we currently have.
- Supervisors must carry out daily control over the realization of the Journey Plan.
- Every day the supervisor must ask the Sales Team if there are outlets that are not visited, such as: what is the reason, and what obstacles are being experienced.
- The reasons from the Sales Team must be cross checked with the data in the application, such as hours at the outlet and salesman travel tracking, from this comparison it will be known whether the reasons given by the Sales Team are reasonable or not.
- If there is an incentive for customer visits, then prioritize incentives that visit customers according to the Journey Plan rather than orders that are outside the Journey Plan, the aim is to form a habit for the Sales Team to follow the Route on the Journey Plan.
- Monitor customers who have not been visited for more than 2 visit periods. If there are customers who meet these criteria, immediately deactivate the customer.
- Check the average visit duration at the outlet, if it is below average then it is possible that the Sales Team at the Customer did not carry out the steps of call at the Customer correctly.
- Recalculate the ratio of the Sales Team to the number of active customers, and check whether the minimum number of customers per Sales Team is met. If it is less then the Sales Team is targeted to look for new customers until the minimum number is met.