Improving transparency and control for sales and distribution

Client: The client is an FMCG SME in the packaged food business. It has its production unit in Biratnagar and corporate office in Kathmandu.

Since its beginnings in 2011, they have around 14 products that are distributed across 7 provinces as packaged food. These include potato chips, salty biscuits, wafers, etc.

The company’s operating model leverages contract workers for its sales and distribution activities. Currently, they have approximately 45 contract workers who function as field agents for the distribution of products. They are administered by the sales and distribution officers in the Kathmandu office. The contract workers are allocated specific areas within the designated provinces.

The client is facing challenges in monitoring, tracking, coordinating, and mobilization of field staff. They want to improve their sales and distribution to enhance the productivity of sales staff and increase sales revenue. Additionally, workers also have a poor sense of accountability for their job duties, which makes tracking of distribution tasks difficult.

Another challenge is managing consistent messaging across all field staff. This is important for change communication and campaign management.

Poor visibility of sales and distribution channels for newly released campaigns leaves no room for control and change. The ability to change running campaigns on the ground-based based on market response is a distant dream for the corporate planners.

First Avocado helped the FMCG Sales and distribution via 4 pronged approach:
1. Establishing a performance metric that is directly linked to the compensation for field staff – to establish accountability at work
2. A mobile-based app that tracks every activity in the unit of 30 minutes that is controlled as per weekly planning – Any change to the formal plan will trigger notification to either the Area head or corporate office.
3. Sales and Distribution process that includes formal planning, communication, and mobilization field. Data tracking is pre-defined to ensure minimal documentation by field staff to ensure consistency and relevance of data – ensuring robust communication mechanism between field and office staff with appropriate control mechanisms.
4. Leveraging First AvocaDO’s proprietary Gumboot Research for all change communication activities.

Improved tracking and communication mechanism have paved the way for improved planning, decision making, and campaign management. It also captures the regional differences to facilitate team structuring, goal setting, and mobilization of field staff based on seasonal fluctuations and market needs.

A well-designed performance metric, and longitudinal coaching & product training via First Avocado’s Gumboot Research have helped in driving professionalism, grit, and accountability on the ground. An audit mechanism for ensuring process compliance by random sampling of field visits is also established.
First AvocaDO managed this change in 2 phases.

 

 

 

Phase one constituted the implementation of the solution across Province 3 and 4. The rest of the province was implemented In Phase 2. Each phase was deployed within a period of 2 months.

First AvocaDO is now in the discussion of integrating campaign management into the existing sales and distribution process. The focus Is on strengthening knowledge management and team learning practices from the market via various distribution channels and touch-points for product development.