PSF Ilham Ali New
PSF Ilham Ali New
PSF Ilham Ali New
A. Project Title: Investigation into Sales Force Automation and Mobile Usability for the Development of Mobile Based Application
for Fonterra Brands.
10 Company overview
Fonterra sells and distributes to a large retailer base in Sri Lanka within 109 territories via 79 consignment agent’s distribution
network serviced through 123 Sales Representatives. As stated by Abegunawardane (2010) on average, 1 Sales Representative will
call on 47 Customers /Retailers per day, achieving on average 40 productive calls.
25 years have passed by since Fonterra brands first made entry to the Sri Lankan market. This land mark achievement of completing
25 years in Sri Lanka as the leader in dairy. From 80 MT in 1983 to over 23000 MT in 2009, Anchor has grown to be an icon in the
market. From 2400 accounts serviced in 1984, today the distribution and geographical coverage Anchor is available over 75000
Outlets Island wide.
Fonterra Brands Lanka has a strong commitment to our country. They employ more than 600 workers in the factory and also dealing
with 3,000 local dairy farmers to help the farmers and development of the local dairy farming in Sri Lanka.
When Fonterra started as a joint venture between the Jones Overseas limited, a subsidiary of the maharaja organization and New
Zealand dairy board, at that time anchor share was only 5% where competitors enjoyed a commanding position of over 80% market
share. Currently in Fonterra Brands dominates the growing up milk category owning 54% of Sri Lankan market share.
Competitors include nespray, mailiban, highland, lakspary and milgro in the powdered milk industry.
Delight consumer through dairy products that are nutritious, innovative and taste great.
1.3 Behaviours
Abegunawardane, M. Evaluating the current business process of Fonterra brands. [Interview] Fonterra with B.I.Ali. 08th October 2010
2.0 Value Chain Analysis for Fonterra
Handling receiving raw materials is an important activity for the company in order to produce their product to the market smoothly.
Therefore the company should pay much attention on these activities, because of that they have built a system to integrate with
suppliers to communicate their operations.
2.1.2 Operations
• Converting fresh milk into milk powder with the use of new technology and using advance machines.
• Quality assurance and testing of products.
Operation is the core part of the all processes of the company. Fonterra’s interest in providing attention on milk powder quality and
opening advance manufacturing units with latest technology shows the company is stable, and its long term benefits are secure.
Today Fonterra Brands are available in over 75,000 Outlets Island wide.
2.1.2 Sales and Marketing (the identification of customer needs and the generation of sales)
The key areas being analyzed in this project will be from this section because the project is mainly focused on sales. The sales channel
is handled using a push strategy. Marketing new products is also done at the point of when sales are conducted. The products are
promoted at this stage giving them clear guidelines on how beneficial products are and how they compare with similar products.
The organization has introduced their products to the customer through the following means;
• Advertising campaigns
• Promotions for end-users (Eg: Rathi Kiri Sarai Sarusarai 2008, Newdale Pressure Hunt 2009, Go while 2009 and Cleopatra
2010, these are the promotions from Fonterra for end-users.)
• Promotion campaign for agents and sales representatives (Eg: Smile of victory 2009, Blue star2010)
• Market research: Information systems would be able to analyze the market research of the company.
Because of the perfect strategy of sales and marketing Anchor dominates the growing up milk category with over 54% market share
and has became the leading product in the market today.
2.1 Secondary Activities
2.2.1 HR Management
Fonterra believes that developing skills of the employees is a vital strength for the company. the following have been implemented in
terms of HR, within the organization;
For the first time in Sri Lanka, Fonterra introduced the FFS technology. FFS is a Form-Fill-Seal machine that will do bagging, filling,
sealing and encoding which are all completed within the same process. Furthermore, the powder plant implements machinery using
advanced technology which claims to create a critical hygienic area to protect produc6t quality. Fonterra invests in research and
development to introduce new products to Sri Lanka using the latest technology to mainly gain competitive advantage. Anlene UHT,
Anmum Lacta and Anmum Essential were all results of research carried out by the development teams.
The company has identified IT involvement to be operation critical. Therefore integration of systems and stepping into ERP
(Enterprise resource planning) solutions have been identified as additional support to increase the productivity of the company.
2.2.2 Procurement
• Gather information and feedbacks given by consumers, employees and consignment agents related to procurement activities
• For an effective production they will upgrade new machinery with new technology.
The proposed value chain activities in order to achieve the above mentioned objectives
• Inbound Logistics – It will be efficient and accurate for preparation and planning of costing.
• Operations - Production will be efficient, therefore it will, help to increase the production. And also tracking the order is not
an issue anymore.
• Outbound Logistics – retrieving information is not an issue anymore because the system will have an effective inventory
system.
• Marketing and sales- This will improve widely the quality of the service provided.
3.1 Highlighted Value Additions
From the proposed system it will mainly improve Marketing and sales as shown above. It will cut down the costs such as paper,
storage and etc. Basically this system will improve the value chain activities and also improve the efficiency and accuracy of the sales
force.
Brief description of the BIT system objectives.
C.
(i.e. How is the BIT system going to add value? Efficiency, customer lock in, extension of business services?)
The sales representatives send out e-mail orders to the head office when stocks are needed to be filled. The order is then approved and
the goods are delivered to the respective agent. The agent then supplies the items to the sales representatives to distribute and deliver
to the shops in a particular route of the city. The routes vary depending on popularity of product, development of city and many other
factors. Depending on the factors the representatives are to visit the routes once in 14 days, once in 10 days and once in 7 days. They
must each have a working time of 22 days per month. Each agent owns 2 delivery trucks which will be sent to each route with a sales
representative.
From there onwards the sales representative plays a huge role in the distribution and sales process. When the sales representative visits
a shop to conduct sales he must manually bill the products. There are 3 carbon copies in each bill-for the agent, sales representative
and the customer. At the end of the day the sales rep; finishes his duty and has to recheck the bills to correct the errors that might have
occurred.
A record must be maintained for all the shops that purchased the goods. To fulfil this purpose and to track loyalty of customers to
better improve CRM, a “master card” is used. With information of each shop visited within that route.
The sales reps; must maintain a daily call sheet which records the daily summary of the sales.
This call sheet is then sent to the head office via postal mail. It takes an estimated time of 3 days for the office to receive it. Once the
head office receives the sales summary for the particular route, it is then entered to their systems manually.
20 Key problems identified in current manual process
• The sales reps; face a higher work load because they have to bill each shop , then check for errors in all the bills, make the
sales summary and fill in the master cards.
• High amount of manual documents are being used. E.g. each bill contains 3 copies-for the agent, sales rep and the customer .
Therefore storage is a sizeable issue in this process due to the bills being produced and used.
• The sales representative has to place the order via email for stock re-ordering. This process can be effectively reduced if the
main head office also has a concurrent mechanism to identify the stock levels under each agent.
• On average manually a sales representative can only visit 7 shops per hour. This delay occurs due to the time waste in the
billing process.
• In the traditional process, the manual work is more. The head office must manually enter each routes sales amount in to the
system. This can result in human errors and inefficient use of time.
• Currently the summaries are being sent through postal mail. This can cause late decision making on behalf of the company.
E.g.: If a sales summary sheet is sent out on the 30th of this month, the company will receive it on the 3rd of the next month.
As stated by Liyanage(2010)The distribution management application was implemented in early 2008 to facilitate the consignment
agent’s activities. The secondary sales invoicing process at retailer end was not in scope for the implementation and continues to be a
manual process administered by the sales representatives using manual invoicing local support partner resulting in the following
issues.
• As a result of the disconnect between the current system and manual sales invoicing process, the sales representatives cannot make
use of the system to provide them the required information at the point of sale and therefore perceive the system to be a non value
adding activity resulting in a lack of user initiative to ensure the system is updated on a timely and accurate manner.
• The inevitable data entry errors caused by the volume of manual transactions generated by the 123 sales representatives which
exceeds approx 1.4 million sales transactions a month which need to be keyed in to system by the 94 agents computer operators.
Current system is installed at 79 remote agent locations. The data available at these locations are unique to the consignment agent’s.
The applications installed at the consignment agent’s locations are maintained by Fonterra appointed software / hardware service
providers. This model leads to following issues;
• The basic architecture of the solution necessitates substantial manual intervention & validation to ensure software patches are
installed at all 79 locations which incur additional cost for software roll-out and maintenance.
10 Objectives
• The proposed solution should increase the number of visits made by the sales representatives manually to 15 shops per hour.
This could increase the efficiency by 44% for each day, providing new products with more time to be promoted.
• Storage issues could be drastically reduced due to the electronic synchronization and storing of bills.
• Increase security of corporate data resulting in risk of data being accesses by unauthorized personnel will be minimized.
• Avoid delays in receiving and sending data between sales representatives and administration of the main office. This could
increase 70-80% of the company’s efficiency.
• Reduce wastage of additional costs causing the company to save time and other valuable assets. The proposed solution should
provide about 40% improvement in terms of wastage.
• Improve service levels to the field force by minimizing application down time
• Provide timely and accurate information for decision making for Sales and Marketing
Brief description of the investigation required in the project.
D.
(i.e. software packages, access to information/expertise, user involvement etc.)
According to the research based on various facts finding technique it is most suitable to apply the following design methods for this
primary investigation.
1.1 Interviews
To identify the critical factors and the current process, interviews will be held as a main fact finding method. The interview will
provide a basic understanding of internal affairs take place within the company and its employees. The summary of the interviews will
help in further chapters of the documentation.
The interviewer must plan in advance the type of questions before meeting the respective persons, and also have to make an
appointment choosing a suitable place and time which will be comfortable for the respondent. Most of the interviews carried out with
the top level managers and sales representatives of the company. This method helps gaps the areas of misunderstandings and helps to
discuss about future problems.
Questionnaire can be use to obtain information about wide range of topics. This technique selected since it consists of series of
questions framed together in logical manner, and also this is a method very useful for attaining information from people in different
other areas. The questionnaire can be mailed or post to people by post therefore this is the cheapest source fact finding. The
questionnaire is given for 10 retail shops Island wide. (Colombo, Badulla, Bandarawela, Balangoda, Awissawela, Galle, Matara,
Kandy, Rathnapura, Kurunegala)
Therefore properly papered questionnaire handover to above mention retail shop owners to find out the current problems they are
facing and what kind of solution that they would require. The feedback of the questionnaire will be used for design and development
of the system.
Document review helps to identify how the current system is supposed to work. It will help to identify the exact degree of the problem
domain. Document reviewing can be spilt in to two categories; internal and external.
• Internal
• Reports from the current system
• Procedure manuals
• Forms used within the company
• Annual reports
• Organizational charts
• External
• The competitors systems
• Packaged software
Even though the documents are difficult to obtain due to confidential reasons company has provided them in order to complete the
research. Therefore a review would be done on the physical documents that are use by the company. The observation technique was
not selected because the processes are mainly distributing goods throughout the country, therefore it can be impractical with the time
constrains of the project.
Liyanege, C. Distribution management application of Fonterra brands. [Interview] Fonterra with B.I.Ali. 14th October 2010
Rajakaruna, H. Current business process of Fonterra brands. [Interview] Fonterra with B.I.Ali. 14th October 2010
Abegunawardane, M. Evaluating the current Distribution Management System of Fonterra brands. [Interview] Fonterra with B.I.Ali. 08th
October 2010
Bandara, M. Current business process of Fonterra brands. [Interview] Fonterra with B.I.Ali. 14th October 2010
McLaughlin , Dr. Bill , 2006. Types of interviews. TYPES OF INTERVIEWS Fundamentals of Research CSS 506 ,Volume 1, Pages3.
10 Methodology justification
After the analysis of the spiral model, RUP model and Scrum methodology, development will be most suitable using the Rational
Unified Process (RUP). When critically analyzing the above capabilities, given below are the conclusions expected;
• SFA (Sales Force Automation) is a project involving a number of technical and software risks. The development methodology
must be able to manage this.
• As the sales representatives will be using the hand held devices for their billing and record keeping facilities the reliability of
the instrument is a critical factor.
• A methodology must be used and tested before being implemented for such a vast extent of detail and data.
• For the developer to be sophisticated in that method is in fact a threat. To implement the project it will require high profiled
software developers. RUP avoids these aspects, providing independence to a certain extent.
• Mainly, when Appling a known theory to a company’s core business function will require the customers trust. This can be
achieved by progress visibilities in RUP
Thus, in conclusion RUP has been selected as the most suitable methodology for this project.
10 Hardware and Software Requirements
• Languages: C, C++, C#, VB.Net, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, ASP.net, XML, XAML, LINQ
• Operating System platform: Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows 2000, Windows
XP or Windows 7 or later
• Simple and Easy Source Code Editor
• GUI and RAD Tools include Win Forms, ASP Forms Designer, XAML visual designer, Database Schema Manager.
• Testing/ Maintenance tools have slightly improved
Considering the above comparison between Visual Studio and NetBeans, Visual Studio was finalized for the project development that
includes ASP.NET. ASP.Net has been proposed as the main development tools due to mobile app development, since Visual Studio
has mobile development capabilities for PDA devices it is suites for this development.
10 Justifications of Selected DBMS
According to various comparisons done on the pros and cons of MS Access and SQL Server, SQL Express was selected for the
proposed system. The reasons for the selection have been listed below;
Therefore SQL Server 2005 was selected as the development tool and database system.
Cimasoni, Lorenzo , 2009. Introduction to methodologies. The use of methodologies for the development of IT projects, Issue 01,
Pages 87.
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Techniques, Issue 1, 38 Pages.
Shahid.Najam,Ovais .Ahamad and Syed Kashif,Anwar , n.d. Traditional Structured Analysis. Rational Unified Process, Issue 1, pages
11.
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http://www.ambysoft.com/downloads/managersIntroToRUP.pdf
The main research areas that this project will be focusing on will be Sales force automation, personal digital assistants and mobile
usability. Sale force automation will be researched on because it is evident that an automation process is required to better
communicate with themselves and with customers to improve the efficiency of the current ordering and distributing process. The
mobile usability and PDA areas of research will help identify a more efficient approach and will go hand-in-hand will the SFA
research being conducted.
20 Resources
Kanwal N at el, 2009. Sales Force Automation And Organization Profitability. Sales Force Automation And Organization
Profitability: The Case of Unilever And Dalda Companies, Vol 5, 365‐373.
Cascio.R at el, 2010. adoption of sales force automation technologies. The impact of management commitment alignment on
salespersons' adoption of sales force automation technologies: An empirical investigation, Vol 1, 1088-1094.
Eun Park.J at el, 2009. How does sales force automation influence relationship quality and performance?.How does sales force
automation influence relationship quality and performance? The mediating roles of learning and selling behaviors, Vol 1, 1128-1136.
Honeycutt Jr.D at el, 2005. Impediments to sales force automation. Impediments to sales force automation, Vol1 , 1-9.
Koivula.L, 2006. Sales Force Automation. Sales Force Automation Systems - Critical Success Factors in Implementation and
Operation, Vol 1, 1-74.
Buttle.F at el, 2006. Sales force automation. Sales force automation: review, critique, research agenda, Volume 8 Issue 4, p.g 1-19
Gohmann.S at el, 2005. perceived information accuracy and user satisfaction. Salesforce automation, perceived information accuracy
and user satisfaction, Volume 20 · Number 1 , p.g 23–32.
Barker.R.M. et al., 2008. User acceptance of technology. Why is my sales force automation system failing, Vol 1, p.g 233-240.
Bush. A.J. et al, 2005. sales force automation outcomes. Understanding sales force automation outcomes: A managerial perspective,
Vol 34, 369–377.
Wright.G et al, 2008. Analysis of factors underpinning the sophistication of deployed systems. Sales force automation systems: An
analysis of factors underpinning the sophistication of deployed systems in the UK financial services industry, issue 37 , 992–1004.
Rangarajan.D et al, 2005. Effect of technology on end-user. Impact of sales force automation on technology-related stress, effort, and
technology usage among salespeople, Vol 34, 345–354 347.
Buehrer.R.E et al, 2005. Sales force automation (SFA); Customer relationship management (CRM). Sales force technology usage—
reasons, barriers, and support: An exploratory investigation, Vol 34, 389–398.
Morgan.A.J et al, 2001. Increasing Acceptance of Sales Force Automation. Technology and the Sales Force, Vol 34, 463–472.
Buttle.Francis, Ang.Lawrence, Iriana.Reiny, 2006. Sales force automation. Sales force automation: review, critique, research agenda,
Volume 4, Pages 231.
Gohmann, Stephan F.; Jian Guan; Robert M. Barker and David J. Faulds. Perceptions of sales force automation: Differences between sales
force and management. Industrial Marketing Management, Volume 34, Issue 4, May 2005, Pages 337-343
Honeycutt, Earl D. Jr; Tanya Thelen; Shawn T. Thelen and Sharon K. Hodge Impediments to sales force automation. Industrial Marketing
Management, Volume 34, Issue 4, May 2005, Pages 313-322
Schillewaert, Niels; Michael J. Ahearne, Ruud T. Frambach and Rudy K. Moenaert.The adoption of information technology in the sales
force. Industrial Marketing
Brief description of the business tools used and the functionality of the system being implemented.
F. (i.e. which business tools will be used for analyzing the BIT system and why. Also what functions are you implementing in
the prototype and what functions are you leaving out.)
10 Business tools
Business tools help identify organization strategies and analyze important factors in the external and internal environments of the
company. The main tools that will help the requirements stage of this project are shown below;
1. Porters five force model will be used to identify the external environments and to better understand the competitors tit he
organization
2. PEST analysis will help to identify and understand the potential opportunities and threat from the macro environment of the
business.
3. SWOT analysis will help identify the weakness and threats to have a clearer picture of the requirements of the company.
4. A Stakeholder analysis is important to apply to an organization of this nature, due to its tall structure and diversity of power
within different management personals. Opinions of the most powerful stakeholders can help shape the project and improve
quality of the resulting output.
5. Value chain model will help understand the current process for the primary research. the project will mainly focus on the sales
and marketing aspects of the primary activities in the value chain.
Business Resource Software, Inc. (2010) Michael Porter Five Forces Model. [Online]. Available from - http://www.brs-
inc.com/porter.asp. [03.01.2011]
• The Sales Representatives should be able to enter the data (sales) into the PDA device.
• The Sales Representatives should be able to sync the data to the main server located in the head office.
• The PDA should be able to provide customer order details to the Sales Representatives
• the Sales Representative should be able to enter and update call sheet details in to the PDA
• the Management should be able to view summary reports and sheet reports on the system
• The Management should be able to view sales information at any given time
10 Inception (6 Weeks)
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 Project Overview (3 days)
1.1.2 Company Overview (2 days)
1.1.3 Company Structure (2 days)
1.1.4 Company Hierarchy (1 day)
1.2 Problem Statement (7 days)
1.2.1 Problem Overview (4 days)
1.2.2 Project Scope (3 days)
1.2.2.1Constraints (1 day)
1.2.2.2Limitation (1 day)
1.3 Project Plan (5 days)
1.3.1 Resource Allocation (3 days)
1.3.1.1Hardware resources (1 day)
1.3.1.2Software resources (1 day)
Testing
• Unit testing – The system is tested in individual component. After unit testing all the components can be integrated to the final
system.
• System Testing – Test whether the system is producing accurate result for each function.
• User acceptance testing – Verify the level of user acceptance by checking whether the system meets the specified requirements
of the user of the system.
Testing Objectives
• Identify the errors and correct them before the final product.
• Ensure the user friendliness to obtain the result as expected by the user.
• System meets the requirements of the users and produce accurate results according to the functions performed.
Software testing help. (2007). Types of software Testing. [Online] Accessed from: http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/types-of-
software-testing/. [Accessed: 14th October 2009]