A well equipped sales force is key to help stay ahead of competition

Sales force automation system, HandyOrder, addresses three common business pains faced by service-oriented organizations; anticipating customer demands, providing the right tools and right information at the right time for sales personnel to close an order and increasing supply chain responsiveness.

Purpose built
The developer of HandyOrder , i-Wap Systems Sdn Bhd, specifically engineered the mobile sales automation system to answer these challenges. "Many organizations, especially in the Fast Moving and Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, understand the front liners or employees that actually see and serve customers, heavily influence the organizations' revenue performance," said i-Wap Systems Sdn Bhd marketing manager Steven Loh.

Live deployment
A customized version of HandyOrder was deployed by Unilever (Malaysia) Holdings Sdn Bhd last September, effectively making Unilever Malaysia as Malaysia's first FMCG manufacturer to implement HandyOrder.

Unilever Malaysia wanted to increase its customer responsiveness and increase the efficiency of its supply chain. The deployment saw 32 of its field sales personnel equipped with General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)-enabled iPAQ pocket PCs with a customized client application version of HandyOrder. The idea was to use HandyOrder to provide access, capture and transmit orders from its sales personnel as they make their sales call on approximately 700 supermarkets and retail stores nationwide. "The feedback from the client so far, has been good", says Loh.

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HandyOrder allowed Unilever Malaysia to capture critical information at every contact point with its customers. "Their sales personnel tap in customer's order into HandyOrder, connect to Unilever Malaysia's back end system using GPRS and effect the order," he said. The degree of bureaucracy and paperwork involved has been dramatically reduced, with both the customer and sales personnel getting the satisfaction and assurance the order is being processed, even before the sales personnel leave the customer's premises.

This method is instantaneous compared to a traditional manual-driven order taking system which may take three to four days to process and fulfill. Depending on locality, HandyOrder can reduce this process to a mere 24-hours within major towns and up to two days for customers in outlying areas. "The efficiency and effectiveness brought by HandyOrder will create a ripple effect throughout any organization. For example, the sales force's performance heavily influences the inventory level, purchasing and logistics components. With HandyOrder, the organization is acutely aware of replenishment levels and need maintain an optimum inventory level," said Loh.

In Unilever Malaysia's case, HandyOrder routes the order to their supply chain management system. In this manner, it increases Unilever Malaysia's supply chain responsiveness and ability to provide a high service level.

The use of HandyOrder with its existing back-end operations also allowed Unilever Malaysia to effectively manage its inventory which has more than 300 different types of food, home and personal care products, differentiated by colour, fragrance, taste, package size and weight.

As such, one of the primary supply chain advantages which Unilever Malaysia enjoys with HandyOrder is its ability to centrally manage its stocks and in the long run, lower the investments needed to maintain its inventory, producing cost saving and reducing working capital. For example, Unilever Malaysia averaged 13 weeks worth of inventory five years ago. With HandyOrder, it has reduced this level by half, to approximately six weeks.

Apart from from Unilever Malaysia, Loh says HandyOrder has also been deployed by two additional multinational companies(MNCs).

Core functions
A typical HandyOrder installation will include 10 HandyOrder licenses, PDAs and two servers; one for i-Wap's mobile application server and the second for a relational database. "Our mobile application server extracts and contributes information to the organisation's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system based on input from HandyOrder which resides in the PDAs," he explained.

HandyOrder has six core modules, namely : -

"For example, the sales personnel maybe required to dial-in and retrieve their instructions from the head office in the morning. They can submit an electronic version of a call card and offload it to the head office at the end of a business day," he said. This process minimizes the time and necessity for sales personnel to return to the office. "The value of the sales force is when they are out making calls on customers and not in the office completing reports." Such measures allow sales force to call on more customers per day.

Demonstration
i-WAP will be featuring HandyOrder among other workforce tools and solutions at Maxis' Solutions Unplugged Conference & Showcase 2003( SUC 2003 ) this July 29 & 30 at Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Kuala Lumpur.


If your organisation seeks a similar enterprise mobility solution, please contact us at 1-800 82 1919 - we, together with our partners, will work with you to develop a solution best suited to your business needs.