Mobile Communication. Create Connect Continue

Transcription

1 Mobile Communication Y Create Connect Continue

2 Mobile CommunicationYWhitePaper Mobile Communication Making informed decisions at the point of activity Whether you are in the fast moving consumer goods industry or a business that sells and delivers products to regular customers on a recurring basis, the pressure to perform has never been greater. On any given day, you may have many delivery drivers, field service technicians or route sales representatives on the road making deliveries, providing service or selling to your customers. If your organization relies on a mobile workforce for direct store delivery route accounting or field service, the ability to collect and use real-time information provides a strategic advantage over your competitors. And whatever your needs may be, search for flexible solutions to achieve your goals. Sophisticated wireless mobility for speed and effectiveness Equipping your mobile workforce with an intuitive, feature-rich wireless handheld computing solution can offer enhanced on-site access to customer records, product details and ordering information for your field teams. They will benefit from the ability to get the real-time information they need, when they need it. These systems allow mobile workers to produce and print invoices at the customer site, download technical diagrams, request on-line help and perform other timecritical activities, resulting in improved customer services. Marketing, sales or operations management can analyze delivery processes, monitor order entry and minute marketing offers with ease and efficiency throughout the business day whenever the analysis is most useful. Powerful wireless capabilities enable your workforce to gather and communicate all of this mission-critical information in real time, from the road or the customer s site. Some of the immediate benefits include: Reduced bottlenecks in driver queues at the start and end of the day Fewer account errors Speedy, efficient end-of-day settlements Easy to read, accurate invoices with all last-minute adjustments Up-to-minute truck inventories Built-in direct exchange/uniform communications standard interface enables the electronic exchange of information at retailer s receiving station BUDDYKLUIN March 2004 Page 2 of 6

3 CommunicationYY Mobile WhitePaper Speed and effectiveness are the keys to unlocking improving return on investment (ROI) in your direct store delivery, route accounting and field service processes. When a mobile worker saves enough time to make an extra stop to another account or sell more products to an existing account, your company gains strategic advantage over competitors. Just one additional stop per for each driver or sales representative could add up to several hundred additional sales opportunities per year each worker in the field. Field sales automation Field sales automation that sell from vehicles, manage store merchandising or work a call route will directly benefit from automating the field sales function. Many organizations can benefit from such systems, including fast moving consumer goods companies, product distributors and independent businesses. The requirements of effective field sales include servicing and maintaining an established customer base, delivering to customers on a routine basis, managing direct van sales, delivering products to retail stores and managing point of sale. What processes can you automate? Routine functions such as order placement, vehicle routing, customer identification, route and load planning, sales management, inventory management, stocking, invoice printing, cash collection and reconciliation. In addition, increased efficiency in the field translates to better production forecasting, planning and increased profitability. Management applications include: Client management Pre-sales / order entry Point of sale management Merchandising Market research Receiving measurable results Automated processes reduce the time it takes to service the customer and increase control of cash and inventory. In addition to improving customer satisfaction, some of the measurable cost benefits include: Data-entry labor and equipment savings Reduced paper management costs Faster, more accurate invoice generation Distributor billing Mailing, postage and courier savings Phone cost savings Error reduction / resolution savings Shrinkage reduction Out of date item reduction increased marketing and sales opportunities BUDDYKLUIN March 2004 Page 3 of 6

4 Mobile CommunicationYWhitePaper Field sales the business challenge Companies always face price competition, and margins and profits are eternally under pressure. Businesses take extreme measures to manage capital, inventory and other expenses through standard operating procedures and information analysis. Field sales errors in delivery, price, marketing promotions or unauthorized product substitution can combine to raise your operating costs and erode your profit margin. Why not manage field sales operations with the same attention to process and detail as your other business operations? You can do this in real time with the information and detail collected through new technologies. There are different solutions available in the market from different technology providers to help you to control field sales costs and processes and manage them like any other process. Mobile field sales force automation solutions enable managers to achieve this goal. Field service automation Organizations that send service technicians or other personnel to the customer site need to empower this mobile workforce with efficiency tools. Whether the work is installation, inspection, maintenance, repair, asset management or meter reading, placing computing power and decision-making capability in hands of your field service technicians creates efficiency in your organization. The availability of mission-critical information at the point of activity can deliver immediate benefits like: Real-time field workforce management Job dispatching / route planning Job prioritization and diagnosis Downloadable technical diagrams On-site inventory information Job reporting Immediate emergencies management Improved customer satisfaction Field service the business challenge Businesses, government and other organizations must continually improve productivity, increase operational efficiency and raise their overall effectiveness to remain viable and competitive. Efficient customer service is a mission critical business objective that contributes directly to the bottom line. You can achieve your goals with applications and improvements like these: Eliminating the need for the field employees to make daily visits to service headquarters to collect paper job instructions, while simultaneously increasing employee accountability and creating electronic audit trails Distributing an entire work day schedule or dynamically updating Accessing previous work history while at a customer site Recording job receipts and invoices for the customer on site BUDDYKLUIN March 2004 Page 4 of 6

5 Mobile CommunicationYWhitePaper Accurate information enables your management team to analyze calls, plan more effective work force operation and recognize any repair pattern or repetitive faults. Failure rates can be established and any continuous problems examined in detail. Increased field productivity and improved customer service When empowered with wireless mobile field service tools, employees are no longer passive. They can now push or pull work through your system. Job detail can be relayed back to headquarters moments after the work is done. Service calls can be pre-scheduled for immediate or same-day action. Service calls can be the transmission of information, whether initiated by the employee in the field or from headquarters to the employee. This two-way exchange enables the real-time dispatch or re-routing of the closest employee, automatic routing, dispatch from last-known location, or pre-scheduled and manual routing. Additional features of an automated field service system: Show the list of jobs and customers Display job priority Enable on-site problem diagnosis Store and display technical diagrams Perform test functions Check spare parts availability / inventory Store or send job reports to headquarters Receive / send messages to / from headquarters Map shortest route information Highlight special offers on service contracts A major advantage of a real-time system is the ability to give a specific arrival tame commitment to the customer. This can help to reduce one of the most frequent customer complaints in the field service industry: the customer waiting all day problem. When you can more accurately predict the arrival time of your field force through automated systems, you can offer customers a smaller arrival window and improve your customer satisfaction ratings. BUDDYKLUIN March 2004 Page 5 of 6

6 CommunicationYY Mobile WhitePaper For more information please contact: Buddy R. Kluin Atalanta 140 NL-3892 EJ Zeewolde The Netherlands Phone Website BUDDYKLUIN March 2004 Page 6 of 6