Sanitarium manufactures and distributes household name-brand products in Australia and New Zealand including Weet-Bix, Marmite, Up&Go, and a host of other soy, vegetarian and other healthy products. A nationwide team of some 70 sales representatives are employed to  continually travel the country, promote its products, monitor in-store promotions and generally act as the front-line liaison with retail customers.

Sanitarium started a mobility project with a major goal being to improve the flow of data to and from the head office - and, in so doing, to improve the visibility of company and sales team performance.
"We were looking for a situation where we could control the rollout, and to continue to develop the software in the future without being dependent on the software vendor", says Wayne Hawken, sales system analyst with Sanitarium. "It was also important to be able to provide on demand reports to the business in a timely way."

After weighing up options in the market, Sanitarium settled on a sales force automation solution from Quofore.

In a departure from most mobility rollouts, the project was managed completely by the sales team, with "very little traditional IT input" from the relatively small in-house IT team. This approach reflects a slightly unconventional yet effective business structure, in which forecasting responsibilities are owned and operated by the sales team rather than falling under the purview of the IT department.

Employees are able to use the software from Quofore to track goods on the shelf of the retailers they visit; encourage store compliance with Sanitarium-funded discounting schemes; document in-store promotional displays; and relay that information to the company's back-office systems using a secure GPRS-based connection and virtual private network.

"If we have production problems, for example, we can monitor what effect that physically has on the shelves through out-of-stocks," Hawken explains. "We've also been able to set and monitor national business objectives. Previously, much of our team was state driven, but now [with the consistent mobility platform in place] we have been able to move to a national focus."

As with any mobility rollout, protecting data on the handheld devices was a paramount concern -- and a particular challenge since many salespeople stay in the field for months on end, and therefore can't just return to the sales office easily. "From my point of view, everything is remote," says Hawken.