In conversation with Mr. Indra Jha (Asso. Manager ERP, Anmol Industries)

This is a first-of-its-kind interview conducted by FieldAssist with one of its esteemed customers – Anmol Industries (Previously Anmol Biscuits). We sincerely thank Mr. Indra Jha, Asso. Manager ERP, Anmol Industries who has been extremely kind to has agreed to share his experiences of working with FieldAssist.

It gives us pleasure to share the excerpts from the session in this blog.

Dear Sir,

Thanks for taking time out to patiently respond to our questions pertaining to your experience of working with FieldAssist.

1. What is the total field force strength of Anmol Industries?

Indra:  Nearly 400 field force including ASMs and RSMs

2. What were the business challenges that prompted you to consider a Sales Force Automation solution for Anmol?

Indra:  Well, there multiple challenges in the structure that needed prompt attention. Some of them being:

• To save the quality time of our field force to focus on sales instead of making manual reports (DSR report, as per field report the average time consumed is 1.5 hrs daily).
• To help our field force to increase and maintain the sales in their respective beats.
  Making it a discipline to timely attend the market.
• To know about the exact reach of our products.
• To intimate about business decision to our last mile business associates.
• Fulfill the HR requirement related to their attendance, leave time salary release, etc.

3. What were the factors that convinced you to sign up with FieldAssist?

Indra:  We chose FieldAssist as our SFA solution partner on the basis of the following factors:

• FieldAssist team is purely focused on SFA solution and they are talking about SFA only.
• We were purely considering a SAAS module for the SFA solution
• The entire FA team is very committed and transparent
• FieldAssist Team is not working as a typical software company rather they are open to listening to their customers and constantly striving to deliver the best results.
• Having a good vision and roadmap of their product.

4. Please tell us about your experience when FieldAssist was installed in Anmol industries.

Indra: Major points

• All the hurdles that we faced during our journey were jointly resolved by both teams to provide a timely solution to the sales process. Just imagine 400 people working daily and hitting the data into the server. Thus, it is very difficult for the business to take even one day of downtime. Ever since implementation, we never faced any unmanaged downtime till now although took 2 or 3 planned downtime only which are normally on weekly offs or holiday to limit the minimum business hours.
• When FieldAssist was introduced in the beginning, we faced a lot of challenges like the keyboard not working, the internet not available and other issues. The present situation is such that my sales team can’t imagine getting into the market without the FA app.
• Before FieldAssist was introduced, there were information gaps such as the whereabouts of the team. It was a very difficult question for ASMs / RSMs to know about the team status. Hence the entire team was called in the morning and a minimum of 1 hrs was spent to know the exact status of the team. After FieldAssist my RSM/ASM can easily get their team status with a single click. We can simply say that FieldAssist has saved our time as well as fulfilled the gaps.
• Before FieldAssist when we conducted the sales meeting, we didn’t have enough data, or the accuracy of data was very low. Post-FieldAssist, we have most of the data that has enabled us to conduct sales meet on the basis of FA data only. Earlier, our sales team would enter the meetings with huge bundles of paper. After FieldAssist all the data is real-time and we successfully conduct paperless meetings.

5. How did you find our product training sessions?

Indra: During the training session, we not only received FieldAssist product training but also gathered a lot of insight about the ongoing market sales trend.

6. Was there any resistance from your sales team to adopt the new technology? How did you handle them?

Indra: In our organization, it was a clear instruction from the management that we have to implement FieldAssist in our sales process. In beginning, we faced some hurdles but both the team gave a lot of confidence to users and demonstrated patience to train the users. However, there were only process-related challenges that were internal. This was informed to the respective users and we took disciplinary action against them.

7. Post-training, how did your sales team cope up with the new technology? Did you get the requisite support needed to manage your activities on the application?

Indra: Yes it’s very important, to run any solution for the long term we must have well managed back support team who can run the entire show after implementation. We received the requisite support but in this area, the FieldAssist team needs to work upon and improve it.

8. It is over a year now that we’ve successfully partnered with you. Please share some business insights that you find have significantly surged owing to FieldAssist application usage.

Indra: After implementation of FieldAssist some important observations that were noticed are:

• Market Penetration
• Getting immediate responses to any business announcement from the market
• Now we can easily reach our last mile customers (retailers)
• Specific activities can be easily managed beat wise and responses can be measured

Watch How Anmol Biscuits Transforms its Sales and Distribution Through Tech Adoption