Direct store delivery (DSD) is an important process that creates, stores, and delivers a range of products to retailers barring the inclusion of 3rd party service providers or an intermediate organization. DSD has been a popular mechanism of operation by multiple organizations and is considered a beneficial process to garner maximum profitability.
Sales Force Automation (SFA) solution has been an instrumental software solution that automates field force activities, manages order taking to invoicing, handles deals and promotions, supports van sales automation, sales route management, and surveys, offering a variety of BI analytics and reports/dashboards. An SFA solution has been instrumental in accelerating the growth of many industry segments, FMCG being primarily one of them.
An ideal and efficient mobile sales force automation solution is the right key to handle the functionalities of Direct store delivery, to its best. As one of the key features of the SFA solution, it manages, monitors, and executes the direct store delivery operations to the best.
It is interesting to see how a field force automation solution can accelerate the entire direct store delivery process. Before we go into the details of it, let us have a glance at how DSD operates and what are the key features of any SFA solution. This will lead further into a detailed understanding of how DSD can be optimized with this solution.
What Is Direct Store Delivery (DSD)?
DSD helps by offering warehousing, routing, accounting, and other attributes that consolidate procedures across the supply chain. It is a specialized type of distribution strategy and inventory management, one wherein goods are directly sent to stores by the manufacturer available in that location. As a fine replacement to centralized distribution, its main goal is to eliminate the ‘middle level’ and fasten the reach of products to customers by a large margin.
It helps retailers to lower their operating expenses by bypassing the retailer’s distribution unit. What happens is that the products directly move from the supplier to the retail store, saving big time on cost and timelines.
Key Benefits Of Adapting To A Direct Store Delivery Process
- Receiving goods more quickly and efficiently
- Needs lesser resources to perform tasks
- Direct warehouse management system operations
- Reduces intervention and increases more direct contact with the client
- Increase in sales and decrease in shortage of goods
- Cost-effectiveness and saving on time spent in storage and shipping
- Opportune and precise goods’ market performance\Faster and accurate delivery of goods
For a direct store delivery process to function best, the solution that is implemented must facilitate organizations for distribution, selling, and deliver products with the help of their task force and vehicle fleet. The solution must have route management as one of the primary features that can handle driver management and other task force members. It must assist end-users in the generation of invoices, orders, and payment management.
Key Challenges That The DSD Faces, That Can Be Handled By SFA Solution
- Restricted viewability into the productivity of field force
- Supervise usefulness of business promotion implementation
- Accessibility of precise and timely actionable sales information
- Real-time view of inventory at different levels
Sales Force Automation – The Magic Wand
For any sales focussed organization, the main aim is to enhance the sales force’s touch time and reduce their time and efforts in planning sales schedules. That is where an ideal mobile sales force automation solution comes into the picture. It helps the field force by lessening the sales planning timing by half, offers a perfect route plan, showcases key features through various reports/metrics/dashboards, gives the latest promotion details, and more.
With the whole world sticking to mobile devices, today’s SFA solution is also mobile-driven and hence reachable to almost all, far and wide. With ease of use and easy to learn, the mobile-based SFA solution is easily adaptable by the entire field force. This field force software is the best way to manage teams and it helps organizations increase their order value, reaching a faster go-to-market time.
Some Of The Key Features Of The Solution Are:
- Direct / Van / Mobile Sales
- Order taking to Invoicing
- Pre-sales
- Route planning / Beat planning
- Summary Reports / Dashboard
- Lead Management
- Survey / Feedback
- Bluetooth printer integration
- Mobile Invoicing
- Deals / Promotions
There are certain attributes that are a must to have – the solution must be flexible enough to fit in any industry zone. There must be enough back-office connectivity through different mechanisms with easy integration with hardware devices and email software. It must seamlessly support third-party integration with other legacy systems without which the entire cycle of operations would not be complete.
How Effective Sales Force Automation Software Helps In DSD?
Effective Route Accounting And Management
An ideal SFA solution offers the best of route planning and management, integrating all important functionalities. It simplifies all the direct store delivery workflows including packaging, routing, vehicle configuration, and route settlement. It monitors the progress of routes, completion of sales visits, retail execution details, managing shelf inventory, and more.
Features in this solution improvise the implementation of daily routes with different ways of product delivery. It offers the best possible routes consisting of all delivery areas, thereby saving on the delivery time and effectiveness.
Mobility Of Services
With the help of mobile devices and popular operating systems loaded on it, it is easy to implement the mobile feature of the SFA solution. This helps in easily implementing the DSD features like calculating prices, printing labels, and invoices with Bluetooth printers, entering and processing orders, etc. Even offline management of orders can be done which, later, can be clubbed and processed to the online repository.
Strong Support To Pre-Sales
Implementing SFA for direct store delivery processes helps a lot in handling, monitoring, and managing pre-sales activities. Various parameters that are important to measure can be handled well with the help of this solution, through pre-defined algorithms.
Managing Proper Inventory Levels
The SFA solution help in managing and maintaining relevant inventory levels, so that the entire delivery process goes undisturbed and fast. It helps in getting clear information about the products available, in-demand and those which are not available, but are needed.
Comprehensive Administration Of DSD Functions
With sales force automation solution, it becomes easy and complete for the field force for effective planning, execution, tracking, and delivering of products, in the stipulated time, at the exact location, following the perfect route created through route management feature.
Real-Time Vehicle Tracking Based On Route Map
Through the route maps finalized, the sales force can find out the total distance that is traveled and the business achieved at each destination. It also includes modern features such as geo-fencing and online tracking of vehicles.
Online, Secure Payment Mechanism
When there is so much of spread out delivery of products and that too on a direct basis, there will be payment requirements that can cater to online and safe payments. This solution can safely track payments and ensure all payments go the right way.
Seamless Third-Party Integration
The FFA solution ensures a secure and seamless third-party integration with any involved software systems, that are a part of the integrated direct store delivery process. This saves on time, efforts, and money, thereby making the most of the available information from all systems involved.
Wrapping It Up
An ideal sales force automation solution is the apt-key to manage and monitor a widespread sales force, be it any industry segment, and geography. Direct store delivery, which is an especially important arm of any industry dealing with FMCG, retailing etc., gets a great push by implementing a Mobile SFA solution.
Van sales automation is one enriched feature of this solution that embeds direct store delivery as its inherent capability. Worthy is the watch when we witness the magic wand of SFA hover over the DSD competence and accelerate its successful run!
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