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•Case Study: Leading Food Co

For enterprises with large field sales or service organizations, increasing field worker efficiency and productivity can dramatically enhance revenue. One of the most effective ways to realize these gains is through mobile technologies that put information at sales executives' fingertips anytime, anywhere they need it. Whether they are querying a CRM database for customer information, submitting an order request, or checking on product stock at nearby distribution centers; remote access to information lets field sales managers better meet the needs of their customers and work more efficiently.

This case study outlines the use of the Mobility XE mobile VPN by one of the largest food service distribution companies in the US. With thousands of sales managers responsible for several hundred thousand customer accounts; continuous, mobile access to their CRM and order management systems is a business imperative.

OBJECTIVE
Each of the company's field sales managers typically begins his or her morning planning their daily meeting schedule. For sales managers in the food services industry, customer and prospect visits take them to small family-run diners, hotel restaurants, corporate kitchens or other food processing businesses. The majority of their meetings end in an order being placed to restock kitchen shelves or add new food products. The sales people have a daily afternoon order cut-off to get all their orders transmitted to the corporate office for processing. From the corporate office, their orders are forwarded on to a distribution center where the products will be pulled, loaded on trucks and scheduled for delivery. For this company, as is the case for most distribution-based enterprises, their revenues are all based on the successful completion of this order entry / fulfillment process.

The company's key business objective was to enhance their mobile infrastructure by transmitting orders faster to their corporate office using available cellular data or Wi-Fi networks. Currently orders were batch uploaded at the end of each day using a dial-up remote access solution. If orders were sent real-time during the course of a customer visit, however, the order could be processed faster and also allow the sales person and customer to have a real-time view of product availability and volumes. The benefits are easy to realize, sales managers become more productive as they can process orders faster with fewer follow-ups; and customer satisfaction is increased, as they have a greater view into the order process. "The benefit to the business is feet on the street," explains the director of operations, "giving the sales managers back an hour a week would let them visit additional accounts. When you multiply that across 5,000 salespeople, you quickly see that it adds up."

Click Here To Download:
•Case Study: Leading Food Co