Maximizing Growth And Efficiency With Kloudbeat
Customer Profile
The customer is the agricultural division of a leading industrial conglomerate which specializes in engineering products and solutions with annual revenue of over INR. 2000 crore plus. Their business operates across India and has an extensive product portfolio which includes diesel engines and pump sets. The unit’s current distribution network comprises of a sales team of around 300 people and over 200 dealers spread nationwide. The company also has a huge service setup with 400 service points.
Business Challenges & Requirements
In a market flooded with unorganized players, having the right visibility and availability at the retailer level is essential to achieve strong revenue performance. Poor retail presence can result in revenue losses and impaired customer trust, leading to a competitor gaining an advantage. The customer’s field force was depending on manual data collection of orders and stocks during retailer visits. This slow and labourintensive process resulted to multiple issues like:
- Lack of up-to-date information on inventory levels and orders, inadequate coverage of sales territory and inefficient replenishment cycles.
- Inadequate Sales tracking beyond primary sales leading to poor understanding of product level demand and customer buying patterns.
- Inaccurate sales forecasting and production planning led to inventory pileup at distributor level and missed sales opportunities from insufficient product stocking.
Given the ineffective process, dealers typically ordered once a month which locked up their capital causing them to favour only high turnover products and limiting exposure of the rest of the product range.
Why Kloudq?
The customer was looking for a solution that would enhance visibility through the distributional chain and improve the governance of the sales team. One of the important parameters of selecting a partner was to choose someone who thoroughly understood the domain as well as had the indepth technological knowledge and the relevant experience & expertise to add tangible value to the customer’s business. Kloudq was chosen as the preferred partner and Kloudbeat was an ideal fit thanks to its robust and comprehensive framework. Kloudbeat uniquely uses the principles of the proven scientific methodology “Theory of Constraints” or TOC, and ensures a streamlined process flow that addresses all possible bottlenecks in their entirety.
The Solution
As a powerful end-to-end enterprise solution, Kloudbeat plays a vital role in transforming secondary sales processes into an integrated ecosystem, providing a granular visibility at the dealer and retailer level. A mobile device-based app coupled with a backend web platform, Kloudbeat enables automated and accurate real time data capture at every stage, and offers a consolidated view of the entire distribution channel for a product at any point in time. The solution was rolled out by Kloudq across the customer’s sales function and distribution network over a six months period after customizing it for the customer’s specific business needs. As it works on a SaaS-model, capital investment needs for its adoption proved to be minimal. Key Features of the solution:
- Automated beat planning and highly improved field insights
- Real-time capture of secondary stocks and orders
- Offline & Online functionality of the app
- Auto-replenishment of dealer stocks based on consumption
- 360-degree seamless integration of ERP system at the customer's end, Tally systems installed at dealers’ field force offices and on-ground mobile apps with the sales force
- Intelligent insights for fast and informed decision-making
Automated Process Overview
Business Benefits
With Kloudbeat, the customer was able to get a detailed view and visibility into secondary sales of each product – order tracking and inventory – by outlet per salesman providing never before seen insights. When aggregated, the data offered a bird’s eye view of the entire channel enabling a focused and strategic decision making.
- Transformation of sales from "Push" to "Pull" model After adopting Kloudbeat, fixed norms for each product have been established which triggers automatic replenishment on consumption thus avoiding stock build-ups. This improved stocking has helped increase sales revenues and unlocked working capital.
- Improved Sales Productivity As a result of automated beat planning, digital product catalogues, GPS tracking and real time data capturing, efficiency and effectiveness of the field force has radically enhanced.
- Improved Product Stocking Not only has overall market penetration jumped for the company, the range of products being sold has also seen a significant increase.
- Single View of Distribution Channel Performance The product ensured 3600 engagement of the sales ecosystem involving field force, dealers, retailers and operations, enabling all partners to be on the same page. Decision-making is now based on real-time analytics and accurate data.
Customer Speak
As a traditional company, we needed to transform our sales from “PUSH” to "PULL" model for a sustained and profitable growth.
Kloudbeat was easy to use and adopt by the field salesforce and also our distributors; it helped increase the reach and range of our products.
Our entire ecosystem and distributors’ ecosystem has been seamlessly integrated on a single platform and function as one well lubricated engine. As a result, there’s a substantial increase in stock availability, reduction in receivables, optimized inventory and improved sales productivity”
– Agri BU Head
Business Impact
The deployment of Kloudbeat has dramatically improved the revenue for the customer as a result of increased reach, optimized product visibility and minimal stock outages. With better sales efficiency and better utilization of working capital, profitability has seen a significant jump:
- 50% Increase in availability of components at Central Warehouse on daily basis
- 51% Reduction in Inventory
- 65% Reduction in Debtors
- 9.0% Increase in Gross Contribution
- 377 basis point increase in Gross Contribution/Sales ratio