PCC Energie is a successful and ambitious company in the energy supply market. To better serve its customers, the company needed to outfit its sales division with 26 external sales force members. The allocation of sales territories was carried out with the help of RegioGraph. Interview with Philip Gutschke, head of strategic sales development at PCC Energie.

What distinguishes the energy branch from other more "tangible" branches, such as engineering?
The sale of electricity and gas is about the provision of commodities. This means that electricity and gas are taken for granted by consumers and that there are no differences between the products. In addition to our delivery of the product, the services we provide our customers are therefore assuming an ever greater significance. In contrast to engineering, we provide intangible products and every consumer can only use electricity from one supplier during a given contract period. Typical post-purchase scenarios or repeat purchases don't apply in our case.

And there's also a paradox in our branch: Although mid-sized companies can save a tremendous amount of money by switching energy providers, they often remain with their old providers. This isn't logical! For example, no one would pay €1.99 per minute for a mobile telephone call when there are flat-rate tariffs that work out to much lower per-minute rates.

Was there a specific challenge that served as the impetus for implementing RegioGraph in your company?
Our challenge at the beginning of the project was to implement a growth strategy for PCC Energie. The outfitting of our sales team with 26 nationally active external sales force members meant that we had to optimize our sales territory structure accordingly. The goal was to achieve the best possible accessibility for our external sales force members as well as favorable travel times. This was only possible by carrying out a sales territory analysis and restructuring with RegioGraph. Regional factors and the accessibility of potential top customers were taken into account.

Which of RegioGraph's features turned out to be of greatest significance?
The key feature for us is the ability to visualize our competitive capacity in an easily graspable way. Being able to determine our competitive capacity for 16,951 postcodes and places in Germany through the use of a colored-point visualization makes an enormous contribution to the smooth running of our daily sales operations. Now we can quickly visualize something that would otherwise only be discernible through technical analyses or an endless number of Excel spreadsheets.

This is particularly important in our case, as we provide energy via international markets and resellers. And, as a result of regional variations in power transmission fees, there is no "one size fits all" price that applies across our Germany-wide networks. This is why an easily graspable visualization of our competitive fitness is so valuable! Also, our competitive fitness can quickly change as a result of changes in market prices. RegioGraph helps us quickly pinpoint these changes. The best part is that we can use these visualizations for all aspects of our company - not just sales. These up-to-date and insightful visualizations of our changing market are also useful for the retail division and for managing energy balancing issues.

How long have you been working with RegioGraph?
We started implementing RegioGraph around one year ago. The sales territory restructuring as well as the fine-tuning process in close association with our project team at PCC Energie took place within a single work week. We found the software very easy to work with right from the beginning, and it was easy to import data. We have subsequently made great use of the software in the context of analyzing our nationwide competitive capacity. We've been carrying out these analyses for around three-fourths of a year and they have been tremendously helpful for our sales endeavors.

Which aspects of the company were involved in the project?
The project was conceived by management and then carried forward in close association with the sales management division. The retail, IT and marketing divisions were also involved. In short, this was a project implemented with company-wide support.

Do you use other data sources in addition to your own internal data?
Of course. For example, we import data on potential lead customers, network pricing, market regions, competitor information with respect to pricing, target groups and much more. The best part of all this is that the data can be easily imported and does not require a large time investment.

Your final word on working with RegioGraph?
RegioGraph is the perfect solution when it comes to generating quick, efficient and easily graspable results from region-specific data. Our external sales force now enjoys effective, well-structured sales territories. Another plus is the tremendous amount of time we've saved. We can now better manage our appointment-making procedures through our own tele-sales employees. This has resulted in more cohesive appointment schedules for our external sales force members. All of this has led to the quick acceptance of these measures among colleagues. We can now say with confidence that thanks to RegioGraph we are active in the right sales territories and pursuing the right customers.

Contact

Philip Gutschke has been head of strategic sales development at PCC Energie GmbH since April 2010. Since 2009, he has provided consultancy for strategic sales projects at PCC Energie.
philip.gutschke(at)pcc.eu  |  www.pcc-energie.de  

PCC Energie

PCC Energie GmbH is a nationwide electricity and gas supplier for commercial customers, mid-sized companies and chains. The company has a total of around 100 employees at its headquarters in Duisburg and 26 regional offices across the nation. As a subsidiary of the Spanish company Nexus Energia S.A., PCC Energie has access to Europe's most important energy markets. www.pcc-energie.de