Going paperless: intervolve's distribution suite automates some of that tedious paper and pencil work

Modern Brewery Age, March 31, 2003 by Harry Schubmacher

What is the thing that beverage salespeople and their managers hate most about their jobs and are therefore the worst about procrastinating about it? I'll give you a hint: doctors and cops also hate it. The answer: paperwork. With supplier incentives and weekly price changes and goal tracking and account maintenance and POS programs, etc., today's presalesmen carry around loads of paperwork in their vans. It's a tremendous chore keeping up, and as a consequence a lot of objectives fall through the cracks. It's no different in the sales department.

A few months ago I got a cold call from a gentleman named Eric Patow at a company called Intervolve, which provides web-based sales automation tools as an add-on to beverage distributors' route accounting systems. I reluctantly took the call and prepared myself for a brief sales pitch. But then he asked if he could walk me through an online demo which would take about 30 to 45 minutes. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't have 30 to 45 minutes to waste on a product that probably doesn't work anyway. But I agreed on the basis that it's better for me to spend 30 to 45 minutes to weed out products than you. I have to say that an hour later I was very impressed. This product automates much of what is tedious at beer and beverage distributorships, and it does so in a simple and easy click-drilldown manner. What's more, it is not just a tool for upper management, but a tool for virtually everybody in the sales department. But a lot of things look good in a demo. What about in reality? I spoke with a few distrib utors who use the product and it was difficult to get anybody to say anything bad about it. With that, I thought I'd write about the system and briefly describe what it can do.

Let's go over what goes on in the typical pre-sell operation in the beverage industry. You have accounts, they need product, so you generate an order and then deliver it. Sounds simple. But that's not all, is it? Today's suppliers require so much more. You must also:

* Count facings in the cooler

* Count displays

* Track P-O-S

* Monitor for out-of-date product

* Rotate displays and shelf space

* Track competitive pricing

* Create and track objectives and incentives

* Merchandise and pull up

* Monitor out-of-stocks

* Check sales trends

* Track complaints, call-ins, hot shots

* Clean draft lines

* Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

What Intervolve has done is systematize and automate all of the paperwork of these processes that suppliers want documented, while at the same time creating a web-based tool to report the results in a graphical format. So the benefits are three-fold: reduce paperwork, increase informational slicing and dicing, and allowing a distributor to eliminate or reallocate admin resources to more productive areas (rather than data entry into spreadsheets or creating charts... Intervolve takes care of that automatically). But it doesn't stop there. Intervolve's DistributionSuite also lets you schedule "action items" in your personal calendar which can be shared with others in your group, such as presalesmen who work for a manager. It allows you to send action items to certain presalemen or drivers, and it pushes these items to their handhelds.

How It Works

Intervolve's DistributionSuite system creates an interface to your route accounting system, and on a set schedule it uploads all of your raw account-level transactions up to a separate database that can be securely accessed via the Internet using passwords. This way, you do not need to install any additional software as everything is accessed via a web browser.

Depending on the modules you order, you can then automate a number of processes and run drill-down graphical reports based on the data collected using inexpensive Palm Pilots or PocketPCs.

Day in the Life

You are an area manager. You come to work and turn on your laptop and log into Intervolve. The first thing that comes up is your "Today" screen, which shows the following:

* Open Action Items--these are work orders or messages sent to your people or reminders to yourself of things that need to be taken care of, such as fixing POS at an account or swapping out dated beer. When the item is taken care of, that person can clear the action item from his handheld or from a PC with an Internet connection.

* Recent Items--these are your most recently run reports. If you ran a report last week for a specific supplier, chances are you'll have to run it again because he lost it.

* Saved Reports--these are reports that you have saved because you run them regularly, such as sales by route to keep up with incentives or product distribution reports.

* Calendar--an interactive calendar were you can place reminders and brand/package discount ranges or vacation schedules, to share with your people.

* Announcements--company announcements such as a reminder to sign up for the 401(k) before Wednesday.

Sales Analysis

Intervolve's sales analysis module is a point-and-click browser-based utility that lets you access standard pre-set reports instantly, such as MTD and YID daily sales reports, or you can create customized reports on the fly. Once the report runs, you can see it on the page and click a button to automatically export it to an Excel spreadsheet or click on benders to resort. Run sales variances by account, by supplier, by brand, by package, as well as hundreds of other varieties of reports. But the real value is the ability to drill down. Let's say you run a sales variance report for a certain brand. If it is down, you click on the brand and it brings up the packages. Then you click to see the accounts and routes were that brand is down. It will also graph the data instantly.