Festo, a supplier of pneumatic and electrical automation technology, uses RegioGraph to evaluate numerous external sales force variables: The company uses the RegioGraph add-on "VarioPlan" to create and optimize sales areas while preserving existing relationships with key customers.

As one of world's leading suppliers of pneumatic and electrical automation technologies, Festo AG offers more than 28,000 products as well as customer-tailored solutions and ready-for-installation automated systems. These many offerings along with its reputed customer service make Festo very popular. Festo's head office is located in the town of Esslingen-Berkheim in southern Germany. From this location, the activities of more than 140 external sales force members in 13 sales areas across Germany are evaluated and optimized.

Excellent customer service is a top priority for the company. This entails offering customers long-term, reliable contact with a trusted sales representative, while, at the same time, ensuring that the company remains flexible amidst the many changes of a dynamic market. Festo uses the RegioGraph add-on VarioPlan in order to adhere to both of these company principles. VarioPlan makes it possible to differentiate between "standard" and "special" customers in order to ensure that the latter are not affected by sales territory restructurings. The affects of any planned changes can be illustrated on the maps in real time. This is true not just for the experienced RegioGraph user, but also for regional sales heads who, during a visit to the head office, wish to have a quick glimpse at the current sales territory planning activities.

VarioPlan was developed by Zim-Tec, a long-standing business partner of GfK GeoMarketing that specializes in providing client-centered programming solutions for RegioGraph. Zim-Tec developed the add-on based on its recognition of the fact that many companies – such as Festo – have unique needs and goals concerning the organization and optimization of customer-sales representative assignments. There's the typical case of a sales representative being assigned to a specific region. Another possibility is for a sales force member to be assigned key account customers who are spread out over various sales territories. Finally, some combination of these two types is sometimes necessary. In these cases, a sales representative has an assigned territory, but also specific key customers located in other areas (who remain assigned to the representative in question for the purpose of maintaining continuity or due to the representative's specialty knowledge of a certain product area). VarioPlan makes it possible to balance these sometimes competing aims in the area of customer-sales representative assignments and optimizations.

It's very easy to make adjustments to the status of existing customer assignments by using VarioPlan in conjunction with RegioGraph. A status window provides an overview of the currently highlighted objects on the map. The sums of the numerical columns in the associated RegioGraph table are listed next to the number of highlighted objects. This makes it possible to immediately identify the impact of any changes on key statistics, such as turnover or the frequency with which a sales force member can visit a given customer.

Harald Glaser, head of Festo's external sales force management for Germany, regards VarioPlan and RegioGraph as an indispensable combination: "The overview visualization feature and immediate representation of the effect of any changes on things like turnover and visitation frequency make VarioPlan an incredibly powerful planning tool. Thanks to VarioPlan and RegioGraph, we can carry out detailed analyses of our sales structures, react quickly to any changes and maintain our high customer service standards." 

For more information on VarioPlan and Zim-Tec's programming services, visit www.gfk-geomarketing.com/varioplan.