Company Profile
Centrofoods Industries Ltd is one of the leading producers in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) in Kenya.
Its product portfolio consists of:
- Quality branded Tomato Sauce
- Chilli Sauce
- Fruit Jam
- Fruit Juice
- Vinegar
- Bottled mineral water.
The company has over 30 years reputation and takes pride in producing the best-quality products. This has enabled them to develop an extensive market and products have been well received locally in Kenya in every county and internationally within the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) Markets.
Over that period, CFI has grown consistently and become one of the region’s most vibrant and successful FMCG manufacturers. In 2017, the company was awarded the year’s Super Brand East Africa title.
The company has over 70 staff.
Operations
The company’s business operations cover both Modern Trade with a team of merchandisers and General Trade with a sales team:
- Modern Trade (MT) – The modern trade operations consist of merchandisers who stock CFI products. They manage the inventory from when it’s delivered from the company, up until when it’s picked by the consumer.
- General Trade (GT) – The general trade operations include sales reps who visit the field and talk to various outlets to stock their products. They keep a client database so that they’re able to identify stores that are not already stocking CFI products and introduce them to the company. They are also tasked with collecting feedback from various customers.
Challenges to Solve
Centrofoods Industries Ltd and their field staff experienced the following challenges before implementing the SENRI system:
- Manual order submission: The company previously lacked a central database to record customer orders in the office. The previous system was paper-based, which was highly unreliable and prone to human errors. It also led to various delays in the order taking and delivery process.
- Sales team management: CFI’s management were previously not able to track their sales team’s activities in the field and track the customer visit cycle. They had to rely on manual reporting via WhatsApp. This was hard for the management since their sales reps are spread all over the country.
- Verify field team activities: The management were unable to know where the reps were and what they were doing. They did not know when staff were working and when they were not.
- Sales team reports: CFI didn’t have a system that could auto-generate reports based on the data in the database. The staff had to prepare reports at the end of the day/week. This was highly unreliable due to the human errors.
- Feedback collection: The company did not have a way to collect and record the feedback on how their products are doing.
- Customer database: The company’s previous recording system was paper-based. They did not have an active database of their customers that would stay up-to-date whenever new customers were added to the roll.
Benefits of the SENRI system
The SENRI app has been important in the company’s growth since the management intends to fully automate it’s business processes. SENRI has impacted the CFI company in the following ways:
- Order taking: The SENRI system has a sales function that helps the field staff to take orders and track their delivery. This has helped the company achieve immediate processing of orders and fast dispatch. This function also helps in tracking delivery lead times as well.
- GPS tracking: The app’s GPS tracking makes it easier for the company’s management to locate their field staff. The real time tracking of staff eliminates the need for the sales reps to keep sending their WhatsApp location pins. Further, the management is also able to know which reps visited which customers and how much time they spent on each distributor.
- Customer mapping: The app has a GPS function that allows the sales reps to record the customers’ actual location when they join the customer database. The company is now able to tell who their customers are and locate where exactly they are based.
- Business operations: SENRI ML & AI assists the company’s system users to make decisions in the field based on data in the app’s database. The management can check what the market demands for specific periods and plan in advance to satisfy the market’s demands. The office is also now in copy of what happens in the field and is able to advise the field team in real time should the need arise.
- Plan itinerary: The schedule function in the SENRI system helps the company’s managers track how the sales reps are working towards hitting their targets. Users can now plan beforehand and the office is aware where they will go and what they will be doing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the SENRI app has been quite helpful in revolutionizing Centrofoods Industries Ltd business operations. The sales reps are now able to record customers in the database, take their orders and track the deliveries.
On the other hand, the company’s management is now able to track their reps’ activities and customer visits. Most importantly, they have been able to improve their services based on the reports and work towards achieving customer satisfaction.