Client Description:
The typical sales process for some of our client’s products includes conducting “in person” live demonstrations. In order to schedule a demo, the field sales force must coordinate product availability and shipping to the customer location. Ensuring that the demo product is in perfect working order is extremely critical to advancing the sales cycle. Our clients team identified an opportunity to improve the quality of sales demos by improving this demonstration process through the implementation of a mobile application.
Previous Situation:
At the core of this process are our clients Product Demo Specialists (PDS). The PDS spend 100% of their time in the field conducting product demos with customers to demonstrate the value of our client’s products. Demo equipment undergoes a tremendous amount of wear and tear as it is unpacked, used during the demo and shipped to its next destination. The PDS had no defined process to effectively communicate demo equipment issues to corporate headquarters. As a result, demo equipment with limited functionality and faulty features was often being shipped to customer sites for demonstrations. Sales reps were struggling with inconsistent customer experience during these demos which reflected poorly on our client and impacted sales effectiveness.
Results:
Speridian worked with our client’s team to build UL Mobile, a mobile application that enabled all PDS to submit product status and any related product issues to corporate headquarters via their smartphone. As a result of providing real-time access to this key data, the faulty demo equipment is efficiently shipped to headquarters and properly working demo equipment is shipped to all client sites. Another feature of the application that improved demo product inventory management was the ability for field sales representatives and inventory managers to scan demo product equipment via the smartphone camera which improved the efficiency of inventory intake and shipment.
The UL Mobile application was developed using PhoneGap and is comprised of a collection of Ultrasound mobile apps. Our client’s team distributes and upgrades the application using Adobe PhoneGap Build cloud service. The backend leverages an on-premise SharePoint server and user authentication is managed via Active Directory. UL Mobile has enabled our clients to improve the quality of the demo experience for all prospective customers by ensuring that all demo products are in good condition and working properly. In addition, the demo equipment management process has been considerably optimized by creating an automated means of product check-in and checkout.
