The introduction of high-speed, low-cost
wireless communications coupled with
consumer expectations of around-the-clock
service has driven a rise in frozen food
manufacturers’ mobility solutions.
Typically, the frozen food business benefits
from mobility infrastructure providers are
presented in these terms: increased employee
productivity; improved responsiveness to
customers, business partners, and peers;
improved workgroup collaboration, and
enhanced employee satisfaction and
retention.
While these are laudable goals, they are
also very hard to quantify in terms of
financial return on investment (ROI)
calculations. The benefits are too vague to
gauge the success of any project, let alone
a mobility frozen foods project. Instead,
mobility objectives that are geared toward a
single cost benefit can be readily baselined
and improvements via the mobile solution
easily identified.
Business functions that lend themselves to a
clean baseline and clear benefits include:
·
Sales: Account representatives and business
development managers can access debtor
information, place new orders and query back
orders without contacting the office. If
this project includes capturing sales
orders, the payback should be realized
within 12 months.
·
Delivery: Scheduling deliveries leads to
greater resource utilization but the payback
depends on the type of deliveries being
undertaken. The main payback in this type of
project is in the tracking of deliveries for
route optimization, rather than necessarily
rerouting during the point-to-point delivery
timetable.
·
Field Service: Scheduling jobs and the
capturing of completed jobs is significantly
enhanced, leading to greater resource
utilization. The payback on this type of
mobility project should be realized within
the first 12 months.
·
Timesheets: Electronic timesheet entry
improves billing cycles and re-keying
errors. The payback on this type of mobility
project should be realized within the first
six months.
Home Run Inn Pizza’s Journey
Illinois-based Home Run Inn Pizza started
their frozen food Direct Store Delivery
program about three years ago. According to
CFO, Steve Larek, “We had a staggering
challenge on our hands: select a system, put
it in place and teach people to use it.
Sounds like a normal transition, but ours
had to happen in a start-up mode, in less
than six months with new employees,
unfamiliar equipment, and a staff to develop
and implement this who also had their normal
duties to perform at the same time. The
first vehicles rolled out a week early. That
made a huge statement to our new team and
made an equally grand impact on the
marketplace. We haven’t slowed since.”
One highly successful mobility model that
has been put to good effect with frozen food
companies like Home Run Inn uses Microsoft
Windows Terminal Services (WTS) to drive
Pocket PC devices. They use IT
architectures to provide mobile services to
staff. This infrastructure works well in
areas with consistent mobile service
coverage (such as cities and metropolitan
locations) as it requires continual access
to the WTS server.
Typically, a digital modem is used to answer
wireless modem phone calls so that modem
pickup time and data transfer rates are
rapid. No information is retained on the
PDA device and secured protocols can be
deployed to reduce eavesdropping where the
cost of this is deemed appropriate. To
further increase security, call line
identification can be utilized to force a
dial-back to the originating mobile phone so
only authorized users can access the system.
This method was developed using PRONTO-Xi
which offers the significant advantage of
data input verification. This ensures that
screen design, testing and training remains
within the paradigm of frozen food
manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning
expertise.
Larek notes that specific functionalities
were achieved by using the Eden Prairie,
Minn.-based Velocity Group Inc. technology.
“The system provided a thorough approach to
“field POS,” rendered the invoice at the
grocer’s back door, updated inventory on the
truck, and posted accounts receivable—all
performed in real time.”
Larek admitted the process had its glitches.
“Our IT guys had a hard time finding proper
cables to hook up the hand-held terminals to
the Nextel phones to gain internet access.
We finally found someone to build them
specifically for us. Connectivity is another
challenge. Though we’re with Nextel, there
are still dead zones where no signal can be
found and sometimes connections are
abruptly dropped, requiring the sales rep to
restart the billing process from scratch.”
Measuring Mobility Satisfaction
Home Run Inn adopted this new system in
concert with the launch of a new business.
In that environment there was a great strain
on capital—acquiring vehicles, facilities,
ancillary equipment, etc. The cost of
PRONTO-Xi was not insignificant, but
according to Larek, “It was greatly
favorable to alternatives…The choice of
PRONTO was not a penny-wise and
pound-foolish selection either; the system
was the right choice irrespective of cost.
It’s growing with us, and at an affordable
cost.”
Under the DSD model, Home Run Inn became the
top selling brand at Jewel/Albertsons, the
leading chain in Chicago. From the first
year as a DSD company, the growth has been
about 50% in three years. Larek is clearly
pleased, “The most important part of
PRONTO-Xi revolves around our people being
mobile sales staff. We have people who pull
out of here every morning with a truck full
of product but they’re not delivery staff,
they are sales staff—they do deals at store
level.”
Thomas R. Cutler is president and CEO of
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based TR Cutler, Inc.,
(www.trcutlerinc.com) and founder of the
Manufacturing Media Consortium. He can be
contacted at trcutler@trcutlerinc.com or at
( 954) 486-7562.
