Intersnack (VisiTour Enterprise)

The Intersnack Knabber-Gebäck GmbH in Cologne emerged in 1995 from the fusion of the Convent-Group and Wolf Bergstrasse. Since then, it has become the market leader in the area of salty snacks in Germany with the top brands Chio, Funny-Frisch and Wolf Bergstrasse.

One year ago, both sales organisations were merged from different distribution set ups into one team. The successful Convent-Concept was preferred. One of the biggest national field organizations has been challenged since the quantity structure was extremely complex.

More than 350 fresh-service travelers distribute the Intersnack products from the truck to approx. 30,000 outlets of more than 25 subsidiaries. In the merged fresh-service organization the products of Wolf Bergstrasse had to be quantified as goods for direct delivery. Chief of Sales Alfred Müller, also a member of the executive board, and his project team had to resolve the questions e.g. :

• Which present subsidiaries have the right location?
• Does it make sense to establish new subsidiaries or close subsidiaries and if yes: Where?
• Which outlets should be taken out of the direct care of the fresh-service to pass the order acceptance to the classic field force and the delivery of the goods to forwarding companies?
• Which customers should be looked after by which subsidiaries?
• How many fresh-service travelers are then necessary in every subsidiary?

Questions which could haven been answered only by planning software with driving time calculations. For this purpose Internack used VisiTour Enterprise. The system automatically determines the customer’s individual call duration generated according to the sales volume.

After the customers have been allocated to the field service territories, periodical route plans are scheduled and transferred to the SAP r/3-System. Finally, the data is transferred electronically to the subsidiaries to prepare the delivery notes for the next workday.