Ernst Rüsch GmbH (ERÜ) is a manufacturer of skirting boards, which it sells in home improvement stores. ERÜ has been using RegioGraph for years for sales controlling and currently for the integration of new locations resulting from a merging of home improvement store chains.

Companies that manage to get their products stocked by the large home improvement stores can celebrate a significant milestone in their efforts to acquire more customers. The mid-sized company ERÜ from the southern German town of Weil am Rhein has achieved renown thanks to its patented skirting board fixing system.

It requires ongoing customer care and market optimization in order to achieve, sustain and further enhance this position. In addition to paying close attention to consumer demand, it's essential to optimize the workflow at the company's various sales locations. This involves preparing products for shipment on a precise schedule, presenting them in the most favorable way possible and creating convincing marketing material. A mere seven-member sales team performs all of these tasks for ERÜ, Germany-wide. Only by working extremely efficiently can this workload be handled by such a small team. One of many methods employed by the team is the efficient organization of regular visits to sales locations in order to minimize driving time. Additionally, sales territories are viewed as distinctive regions, each with a unique purchasing power situation and consumer preferences.

The company has been using RegioGraph for almost 10 years to achieve this impressive level of success and efficiency. RegioGraph has played a central role in geographically analyzing and evaluating the current market position as well as developing strategies for further market optimization.

In addition to these ongoing evaluative and planning tasks, ERÜ was faced with the challenge of organizing around 100 additional sales locations as a result of the merging of two home improvement store chains. In short, the company had to adjust its sales structure within a short span of time – a major challenge considering the many important factors that had to be taken into account. Also, the distribution of the new home improvement store locations as well as regional purchasing power and associated turnover expectations differed significantly from region to region.

RegioGraph allowed the company to quickly and successfully address this challenge, despite its complexity. This was achieved in the following steps:

1. In importing the additional locations, it soon became clear that there were branch locations that required attention, particularly in Westphalia and the southern regions of the new federal states. This demonstrated the need to adjust the sales territory sizes.
2. Existing home improvement store locations, their associated turnover and product-specific purchasing power for interior fittings were all taken into account. Data was prepared and summed at the level of postcodes, providing a source of reference for each sales territory, facilitating their subsequent evaluation and planning.
3. As no turnover data was available for the new locations, the number of home improvement stores in each territory was the primary planning criterion used for optimizing the sales territories. Additional factors taken into account include the purchasing power, territory size and accessibility.

All of the steps necessary to complete these tasks are easy to carry out with RegioGraph. "RegioGraph's immense advantage is its transparency and ability to trace every implemented change for the benefit of all involved," says Norbert Rüsch, head of ERÜ's commercial division.

An enthusiastic RegioGraph user, Rüsch explains why this geomarket-ing solution works so well for him: "Preconditions for the successful implementation of geomarkeing into our sales planning include compatibility with all existing IT resources, up-to-date digital maps and naturally a software interface that doesn't require prior knowledge. These qualities are essential for a mid-sized company in which sales territory planning is carried out by employees who are also responsible for a wide range of other daily tasks. RegioGraph has been and continues to be the perfect solution for us – so much so that sales territory planning without geomarketing has become inconceivable!"