For many years, Polontex S.A. has been involved in large-scale commercial activities. Therefore, it needed to implement a system that would make the work of sales teams in the field easier and improve customer relationships. Before the deployment of MobileSale, sales representatives did not have fast and permanent access to the product database, which was a major difficulty. The company planned to activate a new distribution channel, and so create an appropriate sales department unit responsible for completing customer orders in the field. Furthermore, the company wanted to realize the totally new “customer approach strategy”, focusing on direct contact with the customers.
Polontex S.A. commissioned Consafe Logistics to design and deploy a system for automating and facilitating the work of sales representatives. “Polontex S.A. did not use any mobile sales systems before. Nevertheless, it provided a very good holistic specification for ERP integration. Therefore, Consafe Logistics experts successfully used it and tailored it to the new needs of the customer,” explains Szymon Paciorek, Consafe Logistics Expert responsible for MobileSale deployment.
MobileSale deployment
The deployment process began with presenting the characteristics of the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system deployed at Polontex and discussing the data exchange format with the Consafe Logistics employees. Next, it was possible to schedule further stages of the project.
The first step included all the required modifications to the specification provided by Polontex, so that it would meet the requirements ensuing from the customer plans. Next the first release of MobileSale was deployed and launched on PDAs purchased for sales representatives working in the field. The next step included integrity tests of the new system. The test results indicated essential problems related to the integrity and data exchange between individual system components – on numerous occasions, critical exchange file errors resulted in a deadlock of the new mobile sales system. On the basis of these results several patches were installed and further tests were carried out. As a result, the difficulties described were gradually eliminated.
During the deployment process, Consafe Logistics came across a technical problem related to the Internet connection. So far, Polontex S.A. has been accessing the Internet via the Era GSM service, but during the application’s deployment the Internet connection was interrupted very often. The problem was eliminated by modifying the network connection settings.
After the deployment of MobileSale, Polontex S.A. employees underwent a series of training courses related to using the application and operating mobile devices.
Benefits
Despite the high level of complexity and the amount of time necessary to deploy the solution, Consafe Logistics managed to overcome the encountered obstacles and succeeded in completing the commissioned project. At present, there are occasional problems with the database connection synchronization, which is related to the high complexity of the deployment project. The incompatibilities are gradually eliminated by the Consafe Logistics support team (in collaboration with the customer’s IT department).
Deploying MobileSale has significantly streamlined and facilitated the work of Polontex S.A. sales representatives working in the field. The use of PDAs allows them to stay in touch with the company all the time. The mobile devices are able to send messages to the central office, therefore the sales representatives do not have to call the main office each time they want to make an enquiry. The sales person can also monitor the inventory. As a result, he/she has access to the real-time updates of information about product prices and availability (this function eliminates such errors as selling goods that are unavailable).
Moreover, the system records data related to the orders placed by the customer in the past, their status of completion and payments. Each time a sales person places an order, it is sent to the company’s central office. On the basis of this information, the central office quickly prepares documents necessary to finalize the transaction.
The choice of MobileSale allowed Polontex to put into practice the plans related to the “customer approach strategy”. As a result, the satisfaction level of Polontex customers increased significantly.