Sales

“Call Collect has had a hugely beneficial impact on our business and we are absolutely delighted with the overall increase in our productivity and reduction of our cost base”
                               Tom Davis, General Manager, Contract People Limited.

The Company
Since the early 1990’s Contact People have recruited hundreds of talented people and managed numerous sales projects for many of Ireland’s leading brand name companies. As one of Ireland’s leading Sales agencies, Contract People have provided staff and managed numerous projects on behalf of a portfolio of Blue Chip client companies in the FMCG, Drinks, Food Service, Telecommunications, Hardware and Cosmetics Industry.

The Challenge
Contract People manage hundreds of staff on behalf of organisations such as Masterfoods, Pepsi Co, Danone and Grants. Their job is to collect sales and marketing information from multiple locations across the country. Collecting data on paper based forms is problematic as not only can forms be completed with errors, these forms must also be collected and manually inputted into a database. This process proved to be a time consuming and costly affair. Overcoming the paper trail was only part of the story. Contract People required a system with which they could easily change and create new data collection forms. This would free them from getting involved in costly bespoke software development each time they wished to add new data collection forms to their system.

The Solution
The solution of choice for Contract People was Call Collect. Field sales staff could now collect field data electronically on their handheld computers and transmit it directly to head office using the public GPRS/3G network. Due to the off line mode of Call Collect this solution proved robust and reliable even in remote areas. Since Call Collect was designed with ease of use as a founding principle the administration of Call Collect was managed by a non-technical member of the head office staff. This reduced the burden on a typically busy IT department. The Call Collect administrator simply creates data collection e-forms and assigns them to field sales staff, complete up to date call schedules are then downloaded to the handheld computers. When field sales staff arrived at a new call they have available to them variety of information relating to that location such as contact details, sales history, call history and current promotions. Once call data has been uploaded to head office sales data may be examined in real time, this automation also meant that office staff no longer need to go through the laborious task of data inputting.

The Benefits

• Sales data may be reviewed and processed in real time.
• Stock levels and availability may be automatically deployed to field sales staff.
• Data inputting is no longer required at head office saving a vast amount of man hours.
• Field sales staff operate at a higher efficiency level due to their visibility of enhanced customer information including sales history.
• The complete suite of system activity reports in Call Collect means Contract People have complete visibility of the activities of their field sales staff.
• Field staff productivity is increased as they no longer need to call into the office; this means more calls achieved on a daily basis.
• Call Collect’s automated e-form error checking greatly increases the correctness and completeness of data collected in the field.
• Training requirements are minimised due to the simple to use software interface.
• Data collection e-forms may be created easily and quickly. This means no expensive bespoke development costs when new data needs to be collected.