Geomarketing software was central to the optimization of the sales territory structure of Dr. C. Soldan, the Em-eukal throat and cough drop manufacturer. RegioGraph played a pivotal role in helping the company restructure and optimize its sales territories.

In 1899, the pharmacist Dr. Carl Soldan founded a "medicinal pharmacy" in Nuremberg and developed the first cough drop formulation. Today this fourth-generation family-run company offers a rich variety of cough and throat drops under the brand of Em-eukal®. The brand and products of Dr. C. SOLDAN® are highly regarded in many countries, making precise sales planning essential.

In an interview with Alexander Kirsten, junior account manager at Dr. C. Soldan, we learned how the company used RegioGraph to optimize its sales territories:

How does Em-eukal reach customers?
We're working with seven channels of distribution, from specialty stores such as individual pharmacies and pharmacy wholesalers to drugstores, petrol stations, exporters and contract manufacturers. As a full-range supplier of confectionary, we regard pharmacies as our most important channel of distribution in the direct business segment. We manage these with our own external sales force and orchestrate distribution via pharmacy wholesellers.

What prompted the need to plan new sales territories?
First, we performed an extensive analysis of all relevant sales figures. We particularly looked at the market potential for confectionary in pharmacies, subdivided into the cough drop, fruit gum and dextrose product segments. We discovered that we were not fully exploiting the available potential, particularly in Eastern Germany. We also examined the maximum capacity of our sales territories. This led to the realization that even though there was significant untapped potential in our 20 territories, all of our sales force members were working at more than 100 percent capacity!

This made it clear that we had to create additional sales territories and staff them with new sales force members. With the help of various scenarios created in RegioGraph, we determined that the optimal number of sale territories given the market conditions was 22.

How did you proceed with this information?
After we illustrated all essential address data in RegioGraph - pharmacy addresses, target addresses and home addresses of sales force members and regional sales heads, we imported our turnover figures and some data we calculated on potential for confectionary in pharmacies.

RegioGraph brought flex-ibility to the optimization, which made it possible to integrate internal company data as well as socio-demographic points of reference into the planning process. We determined that a completely new territory structure was necessary due to a lack of balance with regard to size, number of customers, turnover potential and driving times. RegioGraph automatically created a new structure that was balanced according to the criteria we entered. Next, we simply fine-tuned the results...

What challenges did you face as part of this process?
It was very important to us not to disrupt long-standing customer-representative relationships. We therefore made sure that at least two-thirds of the customer-representative assignments for each territory remained unchanged. We also wanted a comparable amount of driving time for each external sales force member. Using RegioGraph, we created nearly identical drive-time radii, which made the new divisions fair and balanced.

Are there any peculiarities in your sales operations?
The sale of cough and throat drops undergoes significant seasonal fluctuations - we have the highest turnover among the classic products during flu season. However, we strive to make our products available throughout the year and would like to establish the Em-eukal brand as the "year-round cough drop". RegioGraph played a valuable role in restructuring our sales territories accordingly.

How would you sum up working with RegioGraph?
RegioGraph is an ideal sales territory planning tool in both direct sales and sales territory restructuring in the food trade. Reorganizing direct sales according to the principle of fully exploiting available potential was a milestone in our planning process. RegioGraph is a must-have for sales planning and management in middle-market and corporate businesses!

Contact

Alexander Kirsten
Junior key account manager
Dr. C. Soldan
alexander.kirsten(at)soldan.com
More information at www.soldan.com