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( votes)Hi, come meet Tim. Tim is the Accounting wizard at the Family owned business, Zenith Tech. While settling the accounts for the month he was flabbergasted by some astonishing expenses. One of them was the amount spent on fuel by the company’s field reps. Post the untoward global situation of two years, Tim had attended several workshops on being ready for such a situation if occurs again in the future. He had learned the art of sustainability in this quest and had been imbibing it in all aspects of his work life to offer extra support to his employer. These astonishing numbers were a hindrance to his vision of sustainability. Tim took his list of concerns to a Sales Consultant friend after having a chat with his manager.
They met over coffee along with Tim’s Manager and the company Sales Head. The Sales Head highlighted multiple problems that could be considered an obstacle to sustenance in the long run.
- He mentioned, “My reps often get lost in their route and have to backtrack to reach the client location. This often wastes a lot of time and cuts into the meeting time. They end up paying a lot of tolls or taking unnecessary highways as they do not know the shortest routes.
- My reps do not have a strict scheduling policy. They turn in the office, check where they are required, and then proceed. As a result, we often miss out on prioritizing our client requirements or are unable to accommodate ad hoc requests. This ultimately affects our relationship with the client and the overall field productivity!
- The cost of gasoline is $3.5/ gallon today and it has been increasing with each passing day. With the gas wasted on finding routes and backtracking, our final expenses go haywire.
We cannot continue with this working model when we can see it is eating into our productivity and progress. We would appreciate any suggestions you would have for our ordeal”, he concluded.
The Consultant noted down all the specific complaints and nodded understandingly. After pondering over the issue for a few minutes, she said, “I will get into the details of this crux after reviewing all the documents once we are on board. However, at first glance, and as Tim’s friend, I would suggest you need Maplytics. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes, I have seen it being used by a few of my friends in similar positions. Isn’t it the preferred app of the Microsoft AppSource for geo-mapping?”, replied the Sales Head. The Consultant nodded affirmatively and continued, “many of our clients use it as it is an all-inclusive, cost-effective package that harnesses the power of Location Intelligence. It integrates maps with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and puts to use the geographical factors from client data for business growth. Maplytics has several unique features that help in visualizing data over maps, searching clients around a specific area, scheduling appointments in advance with the clients, tracking field reps in real time, and much more. Of all these, the one that would help your organization and Tim’s issue the most would be ‘Route Optimization’”. The consultant turned her laptop and started presenting the technical working of the feature to all the attendees.
“You mentioned that a meeting scheduler is not in place at your organization. Here, check out this case study”, she said handing out a printed case study. “This is a Case Study of one of my clients who use Maplytics regularly. This case explains how she has used it efficiently for Auto-Scheduling. Your Field Reps can have a pre-planned schedule to act upon so you all could start up by being organized and informed. Now that the schedule is in place, let us take a day’s schedule for your rep. Once the appointment locations for the day have been marked, an optimized route with the shortest travel distance avoiding highways, tolls, and traffic can be plotted by selecting the options.
The travel route can be live or pre-scheduled if required.
This route can be saved with a name for future reference or to be used at a convenient time.
The route also comes with turn-by-turn navigation directions and links to the same. These links have the proper driving directions and can be printed as well as mailed.
The navigation links can then be shared with the field reps, managers, or even the clients expecting them for uber convenience. This added along with the feature of real-time tracking helps to know the whereabouts of the reps to address ad hoc requests.
If a new waypoint is added to accommodate the impromptu query, the travel directions can also be changed and the navigation directions get auto-updated for the field rep.
The route, if, saved already could be updated or deleted completely.
Thus, if you see, the above procedure can be done for multiple clients for multiple days by the Manager responsible and the reps can view it all on the Dynamics 365 Mobile app conveniently. The directions can be redirected to Google Maps and Waze App easily”, the consultant concluded.
“This could be a potential solution for us. Proper, optimized directions would save our time, expense, client relationship, et al, and help us sustain with ease”, agreed, the Sales Head and Tim’s Manager.
The Consultant suggested the Team write to Maplytics at crm@inogic.com for their mapping queries, a free trial of 15 days, or a personalized demo within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM / Dataverse. To learn more about Maplytics, she asked them to visit their Website or the Microsoft AppSource. For further details, she mentioned they could hop on Maplytics’ Blogs, Client Testimonials, and Video Library and left saying,
Until then,ytics.com/customer-success-stories
Grow Sustainably!
The post How Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM helps build a sustainable travel outlook for your business! appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.
