Synopsis: The three groups of people you need on your side to make automation a success, and how to win them over.

By Jay Larsen
Sr. Software Designer

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You have good people in the field, delivery drivers, route sales reps, maybe even field service personnel.  You need those people to maximize their effort and service your customer efficiently, but something keeps getting in your way.  Chances are your mobile processes are holding you back, limiting your ability to track data in the field.  If your mobile workers and their support staff are always saying things like, “No, the white copy goes to accounting, and the customer gets the yellow copy” or “I don’t know when the driver will arrive.” then you probably need a better way of doing things.

You recognize the benefits of a mobile route automation solution: fewer errors, less time spent on site, increased sales visits, increased sales volume, more accurate data and real time data visibility; but others in your organization may not. You have a vision of efficient mobile processes.  You are ready to reap the benefits of route automation.  You are ready to grow your bottom line, but how do you translate your vision into reality?  Getting everyone in your organization to adopt your vision can be a difficult journey, and there are pitfalls and dangers lurking around every corner. In this series of articles I want to shine a light on those dangers and offer suggestions that will help you get from where you are today, to where you want to be: efficient and profitable.

Selling the dream
First off, you can not do this all by yourself even if you are the CEO, and chances are you’re not.  For your project to succeed, you will need the cooperation and assistance of a wide range of people inside your organization. To start, you will need the sanction and support of upper management—in fact, without strong support from C-level management your project is unlikely to get started.  You’ll also need buy-in and support from the heads of each department effected by the new system—these people can easily derail your project with a constant stream of criticism and territorial roadblocks, so getting middle management on board is critical. Finally, you’ll need input from key end users who can give you their perspective—they possess a ground-level perspective of the mundane details of your current process and experience that management often just doesn’t have.

Ideally each of these groups needs to understand the benefits of the new system from their own standpoint.  It’s no good telling them how you or another department will benefit—they simply won’t care.  You’re best shot at enthusiastic acceptance comes when you can explain how they will benefit, and why it is worth the expense and effort to adopt the new system. Here are some tips for dealing with each group.

Show me the ROI
C-Level executives, especially CEOs and CFOs, are going to demand a demonstrable return on investment or ROI. Fortunately when considering a route automation solution, ROI is relatively easy to demonstrate. This is particularly true if you currently run your routes manually on paper. But a healthy ROI can also be realize if you are replacing old mobile technology and integrating separate data systems.

Your route automation ROI manifests in the form of increased efficiencies, decreased manual input, decreased errors, increased sales opportunities, shorter data cycles and better data visibility. For example, a prominent luxury watch manufacturer recently switched from their paper process to a handheld computer system. The company executives were ready to change because of the large number of orders from the field that were consistently coming in too late to fulfill and ship in a timely manner.

Each of the company’s sales reps visited an average of nine jewelers per day, manually creating each order, handwriting every item code on a paper order form.  At the end of the day, they faxed the orders to the fulfillment center where a clerk had to decipher the faxes and manually keyed the orders into the fulfillment center’s data system. The orders routinely missed the 4 pm deadline, and were forced to wait an extra day for fulfillment and shipping. This also added an extra day to the billing process, delaying payments.

Errors crept in at every step of this process: sales reps transposed digits in the item codes, garbled faxes were unclear, and order entry clerks misread sloppy handwriting and smudged faxes. It often took two to three days to verify and clean up an order before it could be sent to the fulfillment system.

Once an order was in the system, there was no way for the sales rep to check the status of the order, or to see if items had been delayed or cancelled. They also had no view of the inventory on hand, and thus had no way to know if items were immediately available or would be back-ordered.

All of this delay and lack of communication translated into a customer service nightmare. Once upper management was shown the magnitude of the problem, they signed onto the concept of a new automated solution which would shorten order to payment cycles. Executive support made the project much easier to sell to the department heads.

This is My Department, and Nobody Tells Me How to Run It.
Department heads each have their own little kingdom to defend, and they are naturally more concerned with their own goals than yours. You’ll need to identify which players you need to win over, the goals that are important to them, and how the new solution can help them meet their goals.

Don’t immediately break out a PowerPoint that lists all the ways automation will make their lives better. Why? Because you don’t know what is important to them—yet. What you need to do is engage in active listening. Take your prospect out to lunch. Ask them leading questions to discover what troubles them most about the current field force processes.

You’re looking for pain points. Taking a lesson from our watch manufacturer, the V.P. of Sales had several irritations: his team was complaining that order fulfillment took too long, and they didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t tell a customer when the order could be expected.  Further, the sales reps had no easy way to look at historical sales figures while at the customer site. The sales manager was also under pressure to push the sales force to visit one extra customer per day.

The fulfillment manager complained of receiving incorrect or unclear orders from the field. His staff would spend hours and hours trying to contact the sales people to verify the orders. It often took 2 or 3 days to get an uncertain order in the system.

Bringing these two key players on board involved listening to their concerns, and then showing them how a new system would solve their problems using language the managers could understand.  This kind of communication is nothing new for a good sales person, and that’s what you’ve got to be if you want to gather support for your automation plan. 

The Real Scoop
Finally, you need information from the end users. They are the ones who will have to live with the system you choose. They are also the experts who know how your current process actually works (and sometimes doesn’t work.) Taking the time to get this crucial boots-on-the-ground input will ensure your new solution helps everyone in the field do their jobs better, without becoming an albatross around their necks.

In the case of the watch maker’s sales force, they had their own complaints: writing the orders by hand took too long. They couldn’t give answers to the customer about product availability or order fulfillment.  Their printed catalogs were often out of date, and the pricing wrong.  The same could be said for their customer lists.  Each rep had hundreds of customers to visit, and keeping the customer list updated, or even keeping it all in one place, was a chore.

The sales force knew they wanted something better, but they didn’t want to get saddled with big bulky handhelds and printers. They wanted something that would easily fit in a pocket, or on the belt.

By asking a couple of their sales reps to join the project team, and provide their perspective, the project team gained valuable insight into the current process. Seeing their experience and suggestions reflected in the requirements of the new system gave the sales force a sense of ownership in the project, and the feeling that their concerns had been heard. It also helped the project team build a good set of requirements for their RFP. 

All Aboard
So take a lesson from our watch manufacturer: You’ve got to sell the vision to upper management with a strong ROI. Then bring other department heads over to your side with active listening and a strong benefit statement. Finally, get the perspective of the end users to learn how your processes really work in the field. 

Once you’ve got buy in and active involvement from all of the stakeholders, it’s time to figure out what you really want and need. In my next article we’ll tackle The Big Wish List, or how to write realistic project requirements.

Jay Larsen is the Senior Software Designer at Versatile Mobile Systems. He has been designing systems for mobile workforce automation for over 8 years.