Most Consumer Goods (CG) companies, even today, have limited visibility of product off take from the retail shelves, limited understanding of how well their retail promotions are being run and managed, and typically, their sales force continue to perform their DSD and VM (vending machine) related activities in an inefficient, paper-intensive, offline mode. In turn, this relative dissociation of the retail POS from the central decision-making engines, causes inefficiencies to multiply rapidly down the supply chain (the bull-whip effect), makes the enterprise sluggish in its response to market trends, prevents objectives and metrics driven sales force performance management, and ultimately corrodes and weakens the business and its brands.

ITC Infotech’s mobile DSD solution provides a platform to translate the CG Company’s strategic plans into tactical actions at the Point of Sale (POS) and provides a feedback mechanism to the executive management for strategic and operational planning based on near real-time POS information. Our solution leverages our extensive understanding of global best practices for DSD, while at the same time allowing customization to fit each CG company’s differentiated operating preferences and technology landscape.

• Removal of errors and inefficiencies associated with manual, non-automated DSD processes
  
• Significant improvement in sales effectiveness and focus through access to retail POS-level information in near real time, as well as access to central inventory and campaign related information at the retail POS
  
• Greater control and tracking of retail promotions
  
• Reduced DSD operating costs and increase in communication effectiveness
  
• More effective inventory-based selling
  
• Increased sales force productivity
  
• Shortened billing cycles
  
• Cost reductions from returns tracking