Beiersdorf brands enjoy smooth marketing efficiency in Singapore

Challenge

The skin care segment has always been a competitive market in Singapore. Although it had a strong presence in Singapore, Beiersdorf needed to ensure that their products and brands were able to continue growing their market share.

The main challenge was to increase the visibility of their brands and that inventory was constantly updated and available to consumers at the stores and retail outlets.

Approach

To help boost the field marketing team’s efficiency, DKSH Smollan Field Marketing focused on ensuring that manpower resources were properly utilized in stores. We implemented a minimum coverage based on store classification and maximized time spent on core tasks using the “70:20:10 rule”: 70 percent on core tasks, 20 percent on non-core tasks and ten percent on travel time.

The core tasks are related specifically to order prompting, shelf replenishment, price check and product display. By classifying stores using historical sales data and by the level of priority, we were able to help the client measure actual time spent in the store on core versus non-core tasks, extrapolate using historical data and map in-store processes to differentiate core versus non-core tasks.

We also streamlined non-core tasks like interbranch transfers, returns collection and other ad-hoc tasks so that they were better managed and did not disrupt the main functions.

Result

With this exercise, we were able to optimize the capacity of the field marketers, allowing for an 83.3 percent bandwidth. As a result, the team was able to insert additional coverage to add focus on top priority stores and allocated minimal coverage to low priority stores. They were able to use the excess time to perform non-core tasks where necessary, for example generating distribution audit and competitor audit reports.