Indispensable ingredient for customer satisfaction

Hard numbers serve a tasty treat for Alliant Foodservice Inc., a U.S. food service distributor, during following its successful deployment of a mobile Customer Relationship Management/ Sales Force Automation (mCRM/SFA) system.
Alliant Foodservice experienced productivity increases, higher customer satisfaction level and better quality of life for its mobile sales force. In addition, the new system also decreased errors and streamlined logistics. This helped the company gain tremendous savings as it reduced inventory spoilage, at each of its 44 sales and distribution center, by as much as US$70 million per annum.

In addition, the company also estimated each of its Territory Manager has gained at least one hour per day of selling time. This represented an approximate 15 per cent productivity gain. Feedback acquired from the majority of Alliant Foodservice Territory Managers indicated a sales increase of 2.5 to 5 per cent since the new system became available. Furthermore, the return on investment (ROI) for its new mobile system was calculated to be approximately - very short - 30 days.

These impressive results come after Alliant Foodservice's decision to switch from its previous laptop-based system to a mobile-based system. Alliant Foodservice with revenues surpassing US$6 billion per annum, sells top-quality foodstuffs and produce to hospitals, healthcare facilities, independent chefs, multi-unit restaurant operations, branded food outlets, hotels, restaurant chains and contract foodservice operators across the U.S. Alliant Foodservice is also the exclusive distributor for top brands such as Bluewater® Seafood, Esplendido™, Farmer's Basket™, Glenview Farms®, Home Taste™, House Creations™, Luzzatti®, Monogram®, Royal Select™, Temptables® and Thirster®.

Challenge

The challenge centered on the issue of delivery volume and order turnaround time: Alliant Foodservice delivers a staggering one million food crates on a daily basis to customers. A Territory Manager, part of Alliant Foodservice's mobile sales force, liases with each customer. Alliant Foodservice has 1,800 Territory Managers, each handling 30 to 80 customers.

The previous attempt to overcome these challenges saw the deployment of a laptop-based CRM/SFA system - to replace its traditional telephone and paper-based system. However, accessing customer records and placing customer orders meant each Territory Manager must make connections through a dial-up telephone connection.

Soon after this deployment, both Alliant and its 1,800 Territory Managers quickly realized the limitations of a dial-up access: they weren't offered access to a dial-up connection at customers' premises. As a result, Territory Managers were forced to batch order. They would visit a customer and only submit their orders at the end of the day. The penalty in this approach created a costly ripple effect, which Alliant Foodservice wanted to resolve. For example, failure to get all of their customer orders submitted by day's end meant some order might be accepted while others were queued. Some orders maybe rushed and not properly processed. Some orders failed to be on delivery for the next day's delivery. Such issues created additional cost and delayed the sales and fulfillment process.

Furthermore, Territory Managers were unable to query the inventory level of various products at its distribution centers. This lack of real-time inventory access forced Territory Managers to mistakenly accept orders for a product from customers even when the product is out of stock. Territory Managers are only apprised of the product's out-of-stock status when they submit the sales order at day's end.