Solutions to staff monitoring

SOUTH African companies make extensive use of tracking solutions to aid in recovering vehicles when they are stolen, and now the time has come to take the information that tracking systems can deliver to the next level so that companies can optimise their operations.

Daniyel Falk, MD at Succera Technology, says the tracking data can be turned into information that is applicable to the business.

“A sales team can be monitored on a daily basis in terms of the time spent on each call and the routes they are taking to travel from one client to another.

“You can instantly tell if a salesperson dropped off the radar for several hours or took a long lunch.

“However, the key benefit is helping salespeople to understand their own patterns and relate time spent on calls to the results achieved, important information when much of your remuneration is via commission,” says Falk.

“Most of the time they do not realise where they are going wrong and where there are opportunities to optimise their sales, generate more sales for the company and improve their commission.”

The information can be used to highlight patterns such as spending too little time with large clients and too much with smaller ones.

Traffic congestion is an increasingly important issue and good salespeople who spend more time with clients and less time on the road make more sales.

Therefore, sales managers can use the data derived from the system to plan routes better, avoid congested areas during peak times and optimise routes so salespeople can spend more time with clients.

“Many of these issues are fairly obvious to sales managers when they have the information, so the key lies in proper reporting. Small improvements can make a significant difference to a company’s profitability over the course of a year,” says Falk.