Vetcare Africa (Kenya) Ltd. manufactures high-quality animal health and animal nutrition solutions. They are on the most trusted brands in Kenya who specialize in the development, research, and marketing of new products and innovative generics. They are well known amongst farmers and veterinarians in the country for their high-quality and affordable products. Their products fall into three main categories; animal feed premixes and additives, mineral supplements for ruminants, vitamin supplements for poultry.
Vetcare’s Operational Challenges
Once the products are manufactured, they are transported directly from the factory to the depots. After orders taken by sales representatives, products are delivered directly from the depots to the customers. However, large orders have to be processed and delivered from the company headquarters. Vetcare’s sales representatives move across the country marketing and retailing their products while building the company’s customer base from urban to remote areas. As a result, tracking their field activities became challenging due to the diversity of the country, the regions they visited, and the company growth; the representatives increased in number, making their tracking tedious. With their current number of representatives, it has been nearly impossible to identify them until they reported to the head office and account for their week’s activities. The managers were also completely oblivious to the route the sales reps took while visiting the current and potential customers, the number of visits they made, frequency of visits for each individual customer, and the exact time of the visits as well as the time spent with them.
Due to the lack of a functional inventory system, Vetcare Africa (Kenya) Ltd. had to keep track of their stocks manually, as well as reconciling stock issues, items sold, Vs what is left, and their collective value. Processing sales orders, monitoring the spread of their distributors, and managing depot stocks were also quite strenuous for the managers. Vetcare could not collect marketing intelligence data, which prevented them from making highly informed, and strategic business and sales decisions.
How SENRI Improved Company Operations
Inventory Management
Since the implementation of the SENRI system, Vetcare Africa (Kenya) Ltd. can now keep track of the number of each product they have available in their depots. With the Sub Inventory Function, managers can monitor their stock in their depots remotely, and monitor real-time reconciliation. This has helped them to improve communication with depots and the reconciliation of sales with the number of products available. It has also improved the efficiency of its delivery system, and product restocking once the Headquarters realize product numbers are going low in the depots.
Opportunity Management and Customer Profiling
The SENRI system has helped with customer profiling. The Transaction and Payment Management functions can be used to track customers’ purchase history, demographic, and collect behavioral data. By monitoring individual customer interactions, managers can track responses to sales and marketing campaigns. They can as well track market trends, consumer behavior, and other important information for generating a sales forecast analysis. The Product Report Function can also be used to get valuable information on their competitors (e.g prices of similar products, RRPs, and how distributors are respecting them). Using the Virtual Reality questionnaire, Vetcare can now manage their pipelines and tailor their services to suit their customers. They can as well segregate primary customers and Secondary customers and evaluate them independently.
Opportunity management has improved because SENRI has been able to show the potency and possible success rate of activities and opportunities within each pipeline.
Team Tracking & Automated Reports
With the help of the Real-Time GPS Tracking Function that can work well even in areas with poor network connectivity, sales managers know the routes their representatives take when visiting with customers and when they are on-site and, or Offsite and how far off the customer premise they are for Offsite Cases. With the Visit Report Function, the field sales representatives can communicate the important details of their visits with their managers and even collect survey data. The managers can also track the number of visits made by each sales representative and the location of the customers they sign. SENRI has simplified the onboarding of new customers and the updating of the company customer database. Though they are often in different locations, the managers get real-time reports and can give real-time feedback to their teams. These reports help to generate both long-term and short-term marketing plans. Monitoring the implementation of sales strategies has been easy with SENRI, and managers now set targets remotely with the Target Management function and monitor these targets every minute an achievement is attained by individual representatives.
Data Analysis and Team Scheduling
On the dashboard of the SENRI Web App, managers can track company sales activities (Sales Orders and Approved Sales). This makes it feasible for the team to sieve through large amounts of data in a short time. With this information at their fingertips, management can make better business and strategic decisions. Accurate sales estimates can be generated quickly and turned into quotes and proposals for potential clients. Since the employees can instantly access order information, they can track orders and send accurate delivery information to customers.
The Schedule function is used to schedule meetings with current and potential clients and the management knows where its staff will be the following day. This has helped to keep the sales team more organized and pivoted the management issue travel imprest. SENRI also helps with the tracking of customer feedback and shortening the response time to customers’ complaints and suggestions.
In conclusion, Vetcare Africa (Kenya) Ltd. has seen improvements in the productivity of its sales force and the efficiency of the inventory system. There has also been an increase in sales orders, revenue, and overall customer satisfaction.