Getting Ready to Power Into The Future

Ashish Ohlyan, the VP Sales of Cholayil knew that to retain market leadership for Ayurvedic personal care products, he would have to incorporate a transparent and accountability-led sales culture from the ground up. 

“From a growth standpoint, I was looking for a technology solution that could support Cholayil’s vision as well as their Sales strategy. My first priority was to automate all on-field sales operations to track primary sales and distributor inventory, and then get a 24/7 line of sight on what my sales team was doing in the field. But that solution also needed to  resolve my existing challenges.”

An existing solution that was counter-productive

“Traditionally, my team would record all orders received from retailers in their respective diaries. At one point, we even adopted a sales automation tool but unfortunately, it was rudimentary and very glitchy – outlets would disappear in the app or the system would capture the wrong geolocation etc. So the actual workflows of capturing orders, retailer feedback, competition tracking etc. were still getting done manually. 

As a result, we could neither improve on our revenue potential nor could we access data on primary orders, which left us shorthanded in terms of forecasting demand and replenishing stocks.”

On-Ground Visibility was a challenge

When Ashish would sit for reviews with his team, they were under-prepared because they had no visibility on what was happening in the market. “My mid-managers were not confident about whether their SOs were covering all outlets in their beat every day, or how many outlets were giving orders. Because data was collated from multiple spreadsheets and formats, the reports would take more than a day to make. 

This was seriously impacting the speed at which we were able to respond to customer demand or take initiatives based on market patterns. All the strategies that I had carefully planned with my team were going for a toss!”