An important player on the coffee market, Strauss România has chosen HERMES SFA – the solution from Transart for sales and merchandising force automation. Even form the first month in use, HERMES became the basic system used by sales and trade-marketing teams, significantly supporting the activity on field.
“These days one cannot gain performance without management and control systems. Hermes is an application dedicated to the sales force aligned tot the needs of Strauss România, application which became the most important work tool of our representatives both for traditional market and for modern commerce. For Strauss Romania, equipping sales force with performance systems, simple and useful it is a priority and one of the motivational, control and performance increase methods.” said Mr. Marius Melesteu, General Manager, Strauss Romania.
The internal team, appointed by Strauss România to coordinate the selection and the SFA system implementation process, has analyzed multiple offers and alternatives. The HERMES system reccomended by Transart was chosen mainly because of the wide spectrum of functionalities provided and because of it’s high acceptance on the Romanian market.
”We chose the Transart solution mainly because of the high coverage of our needs and requirements. Practically HERMES was the only application which satisfied all our requirements. What also mattered were the many refrences and HERMES implementations to multinational companies as well as the Transart flexibility to deliver the HERMES applications as a service (SaaS) – at a reasonable monthly cost, financially deductible .” said mr. Eugen Ghinea, Trade Marketing & Sales Support Manager, Strauss Romania
A first extremely wise decision, which made the system to be quickly adopted by users, was to introduce a system of performance rewards for the company’s representatives (TLD – Top Locations Developer), using a set of performance indicators calculated directly in HERMES. A simple conditioning, „those who do not enter their activities and operations in HERMES, automatically lose their monthly bonus!”, determined an increased interest on the part of representatives for correct use of the system
„We have now a management tool and a tool for detailed monitoring of the activities on field carried out by our representatives. This allows us to control the fact that sales strategy, trade-marketing actions and decisions made at superior levels (management level), elements that were modeled as processes during the HERMES system implementation, are transmitted explicit and towards inferior levels (execution level). The fact that each team member knows more exactly what has to be done with the help of HERMES system, assures us that sales and promotion strategy is implemented exactly where it matters most: on field, in sales points” has also stated Mr. Eugen Ghinea.
The spectrum of benefits gained by Strauss Romania following the implementation of HERMES is much wider. Here are some of the benefits:
• A unitary and easy to use system, available to the enitre team, a system that inludes all regarding commercial policy, prices, promotions for the main sales channels;
• Automated pre-sales activity for field-representatives, including orders being delivered by Strauss distributors; the ordering is now automated until the level of quantities proposal based on the order history;
• The possibility to pick stocks for their own products;
• Market information gathering using trade-marketing questionaries on mobile terminals: selling price and presence of own products and competition products;
• Significantly improved control of the activity carried out by the company’s representatives on field;
• Monitoring the promotion activities execution at selling points (trade-marketing) and promotional materioals used: POSM-uri, secondary placements, etc.
• Information gathered on field are synchronized at the end of each visit and centralized on the server, so an extended set of reports with recent data are available for the management teams (NSM, RSM, TMM) at any time of the day.
About Strauss
Strauss Romania is one of the most important local coffee producer, for over 16 years on the Romanian market. Under the label Doncafé, the company has built a broad portfolio of products to satisfy all preferences and customers’ needs: Doncafé Selected, Doncafé Elita, Doncafé Gold, Doncafé Decaffeinated, Doncafé Espresso Crema Intensa, Doncafé Espresso Gusto Raffinato and Doncafé Mixes. Doncafé product range covers all types of coffee and is a leader or occupies significant positions in all market segments, Retail or AFH (Away from Home)