Optimal Sales Planning: Case Study Ascendum Construction Equipment

Optimal Sales Area Planning with Geomarketing

For sales area planning, it is important for Ascendum to always have an up-to-date overview of where customers and potential customers can be found and where the sales representatives live so that they can provide the best possible coverage of the sales areas.

This works much better with geomarketing software than with lists and tables, because all the data and locations can be seen at a glance on digital maps.

“We use geomarketing software for our sales area planning to, among other things, identify white spots in terms of customers. A digital map is much more meaningful and much more of an impact on those involved than an Excel list.” Johann Habring, responsible consultant and project manager for Ascendum

Ascendum specifically decided to use geomarketing to optimally replan their sales areas in Austria. WIGeoGIS was the obvious choice as a geomarketing provider thanks to their professionalism, comprehensive support and excellent price-performance ratio.

Image: The distance tool in WIGeoWeb is relevant for Ascendum to find out how far service technicians can travel in a given time.

Customer service coverage by a service technician

In addition to sales, aftersales is also an important business area for Ascendum, i.e. the maintenance and repair of construction equipment. To provide customers with the best possible service, it is essential to keep the travel time for the service technicians as short as possible.

“Our machines are very large and expensive and are used for up to 5,000 hours a year. This means the appropriate service is required and we also have to guarantee short response times,” says Johann Habring. That is why it is important to know: “Where are our customers located? And where do our service technicians live?”

This and other data are clearly displayed in the geomarketing software.

Ascendum makes good use of the distance tool, where you can set how far you can travel from a location in one or two hours, for example. Habring: “The geomarketing tool really helped us understand why we were having trouble retaining customers in certain areas. We saw straight away: of course, it’s because the service technicians can’t get there within a certain amount of time.”

Putting Data in Relation

To get the most out of geomarketing software, data is everything. Ascendum uses data provided by WIGeoGIS as well as its own data, including:

• Map data such as ZIP Code areas, town, district and country borders that WIGeoGIS keeps up to date
• Customer data
• Sales data
• Locations where sales representatives and the service technicians live
• Points of interest such as schools and technical colleges for personnel recruitment

This data can be stored in WIGeoWeb on the digital map on top of each other, or – as it is called in – geomarketing layer by layer, until the relationship to each other is revealed. In this way, Ascendum can identify white spots in all the relevant areas.

Image: Whether for sales, customer service or recruitment: Ascendum relies on geomarketing software to help make their important decisions.

Fact-based management decisions

Ascendum is constantly expanding their use of WIGeoWeb. Johann Habring: “The tool is used extensively by our sales managers, aftersales managers and service managers because they realize just how useful it can be.” Those responsible then make operational decisions based on the geomarketing analyses. Habring: “The tool supports decision-makers and gives them more confidence in making the right decisions.” While decisions used to be made based largely on gut feeling, they are now fact-based.

Johann Habring finds geomarketing essential, especially for sales organizations that focus on sales areas: “Geomarketing has less to do with marketing than with organization and with the question of how and where you position yourself as a company.”

(c) Image rights belong to Ascendum Baumaschinen Österreich GmbH and WIGeoGIS GmbH.