Speaker: Jay S., District Sales Manager, Second Nature Brands
Tell us about your company and why you chose OptimoRoute.
Jay S.: Hi, I'm Jay Squanda with Second Nature Brands. I'm currently located in Michigan, Detroit and I'm a customer of OptimoRoute. I'm a District Sales Manager that has a responsibility of knowing where all the streets and towns are and that seems to be a little difficult, but with OptimoRoute, I can find those streets in those little towns and know where our stores are located to be able to send the right person at the right time to get that accomplished. What happens is that our business has maybe too much turnover or maybe all businesses have too much turnover right now. And it also allows me to give the next rep their routing right, explicit, step by step, this is where you should go for the first stop and then these are the stores that maybe you go to for the next stop. I'm kind of a little bit of a hybrid user. I don't use it every day to tell the reps where to go. But I do tell like one rep at a time that this would be your routing for the the month and then I would pick the next rep for them to go for the month. It seems to work real well for us. The other thing that really helps me is combining when somebody is off sick or the person has now quit and I need to send some of my existing reps into a territory where they're not able to get to or don't know how to get to it. I can hand them that sheet and it really lets me print it out, hand it to him, then highlight, this should be the first store and this should be the last store. In today's competitive market, if my product, if it's not on the shelf, when a customer is there looking for it's a missed sale. So if we have missed a sale, we're euchred. So it helps us gain those sales. If I could spend even more time in OptimoRoute and learn how to use it with all the bells and whistles that it has it even do me better. But sometimes it seems like in today's world, I found that what works for me and I'm able to use it to its full potential that I can find.
How did you manage route planning before OptimoRoute?
Jay S.: It? Didn't have a way. We had a list of stores and an Excel file that we used highlighter markers to pick which stores we needed to make sure we covered. And with multiple reps that could be quite difficult.
How has OptimoRoute helped your business?
Jay S.: The question is how has OptimoRoute helped your business - time savings, fuel savings, driver efficiency, customer satisfaction? Absolutely. All those. And especially when I send a vacation relief person into a route and the time that it saves that they can say this is the first stop, this is the second, third, forth and so on is a big time savings. Some of our reps say that customers like to steal their time, time is so precious so we make sure that we use every second.
How easy is OptimoRoute to use?
Jay S.: Real easy. And the times that I have got stuck, it seemed it was very easy to get help from somebody on the phone to guide me through how to get something else done. I certainly don't use this program like the big dogs do, but as a little dog, I can get out of it what I need.
