The Company’s Go-To-Market strategy has focused on improving the width and depth of its distribution – both direct and wholesale. Strategic initiatives in sales and supply chain have ushered in efficiencies in selling and go-to-market.
PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE DISTRIBUTOR RELATIONSHIP WITH INTEGRATED SALES ROUTE OPTIMISATION (ISRO)
For long, sales route and beat design for Distributor Sales Representatives (DSRs) were made manually, leading to inefficiencies in the geographical cluster. Sometimes this could result in the same location being visited by both the weekly (those having 25 outlets per day, with each outlet being serviced once a week) and fortnightly (those having 35 outlets per day, with fortnightly service frequency) DSRs, leading to inefficiencies and higher transit time between outlets.
With ISRO this process was automated based on historical data and algorithm-based solutions, helping enhance cost-to-serve efficiencies through route optimisation.
We have successfully used geotagging and analytics for route optimisation and extended it to 26 distributors across 8 cities, which enables coverage of more outlets with lesser manpower. This efficiency in sales beats helped reduce manpower by 13%, which has been redeployed.
INFORMATION ON THE FINGERTIPS WITH TERRITORY SALES MOBILE APPLICATION
The territory sales officers and executives (TSO and TSE) at Marico play a major role in generating sales and revenue. They are constantly on the move across urban and rural markets ensuring business growth. To help them get the right information at the right time, we introduced the TSOE mobile application.
This app has a new module that generates a Permanent Journey Plan based on an algorithm that takes into consideration the performance of key sales metrics. It has all the important dashboards enabling territory sales representatives to get real-time status of the business in their areas. The app has also been integrated with the Field Force Assessment application which empowers employees to take better decisions and helps build capabilities. It has also automated the assessment process for the field force. 1,800+ urban field force were assessed via this end-to-end in-house assessment app with better control and faster turnaround time.
DRIVING RETAILER INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS
Started in Bengaluru in 2015, RETINA (Retailer Intelligence & Analytics), a recommendation engine has been deployed across 13 cities. It helps the Distributor Sales Representative to identify and focus on the next best Stock Keeping Units (SKU) by suggesting relevant Stock Keeping Units (SKU) and brands that have been on the shelf for more than 12 months at an outlet. This simplifies the job of the DSRs on each call and increases their productivity.
FAST-TRACKING THE DIGITAL MARKETPLACE WITH E-COMMERCE
Following an upward growth trajectory, the e-commerce industry has transformed the way business is done in India. Having forayed into this space in 2016, Marico has identified e-commerce as one of its key focus areas in terms of its distribution channels. With dedicated efforts to scale up, the e-commerce business has grown 4 times over in the last one year. Currently, e-commerce contributes over 1% to the Company’s domestic business. In some personal care portfolios, the contribution of e-commerce has been recorded to be as high as 33%. The Company plans to launch a range of dedicated premium products across categories, which may be digital only or digital-first only portfolios.
The Company has identified specific channel partners across beauty, food and groceries segments to help scale our e-commerce business.
The e-commerce business is expected to contribute ~2% of Marico's domestic turnover in FY19.
ENCOURAGING CROSS POLLINATION OF BEST SALES PRACTICES ACROSS DIFFERENT MARKETS
After successful integration of the automated order management system in India, we took this best practice to Bangladesh. The sales ordering process was rendered seamless with the help of Order Management, Midas Pro and General Trade Personal Device Assistants (PDAs) in the local language.
Midas Pro was designed to achieve time-effectiveness by reducing manual interventions in data management, incentives, schemes etc., thereby leading to better efficiencies such as faster claim processing and quick order-to-bill process among others.
The order management application automates and controls the primary sales process which was manual until last year leading to delayed dispatches. This transformation has ensured process-efficiency in the system along with more time bandwidth for the sales team.
The Order Management Project has been rolled out across 55 distributors of Dhaka Depot in Marico Bangladesh, enhancing operational efficiency across front-end functions and providing a competitive advantage for Marico.
