A prominent pet food company based in the United States, with a portfolio of over 50 brands, collaborated with Ivy Mobility to improve its distribution planning and execution in Mexico. The company’s strategic priorities include enhancing financial performance, ensuring quality growth, and making a positive social impact. Additionally, the brand is actively advancing its sustainability initiatives while consistently striving for the well-being of the local communities it serves.

Market: Mexico 
No. of Distributors: 25+
No. of Retailers: 60,000+
Average Daily Orders: 4000+

Challenges in Operational Efficiency

The company aspires to increase its footprint in the Mexican market and double its production within the next three years. This expansion is in response to the substantial double-digit increase in pet ownership worldwide. In the Mexican market, most local players primarily offered dry food variants, presenting an opportunity for the pet food giant to gain market share by introducing wet food variants. However, as the company expanded its operations, it encountered challenges, including manual routing and visit planning for its distribution workforce and sales representatives. These manual processes proved time-consuming, led to decreased operational efficiency, and resulted in the overutilization of resources.

Real-time KPI Tracking

The Pet Food company required real-time tracking to monitor and oversee its distribution network across Latin America. By integrating Ivy Route Optimizer, they gained visibility into KPIs and parameters to improve operational efficiency and overall performance.

1. Operational Efficiency: Ivy’s Route Optimizer considers 13+ parameters to build the most optimized routes for the sales reps. The solution could minimize delays, reduce costs, and maximize the overall effectiveness of the distribution network to ensure that products reach their destinations in a timely, cost-effective, and reliable manner.

2. Work Timings: The company aimed to enhance its staff’s efficiency. With manual route planning, the staff invested additional hours in devising an effective route. However, with the introduction of the AI&ML-based route optimizer by Ivy Mobility, the staff achieved improved outcomes in a more time-efficient manner.

3. Resource Allocation: Ineffective planning resulted in the company underutilizing a few resources while overburdening others. With the implementation of the Ivy Mobility solution, all resources could be utilized efficiently, minimizing inefficiencies in the system. Vans were loaded to their maximum capacity, contributing to a reduction in the organization’s carbon footprint.

4. Vanload Capacity Management: Every delivery van has to carry an adequate inventory to meet allocated orders. Ivy Route Optimizer ensures and oversees the appropriate load quantity for each delivery van to optimize fuel consumption and contribute to sustainability efforts.

5. Order Fulfillment: Companies monitor the efficiency of the entire process by tracking all assigned orders against the total number of fulfilled orders. The Ivy Route Optimizer ensures the delivery of maximum orders daily while minimizing resource utilization.

Improving Business Processes Sustainably

Our teams collaborated with over 25 distributors serving over 60,000 retail stores throughout Latin America. This collaboration resulted in processing an average of 4000 orders daily, amounting to 40 tonnes of products delivered across multiple vans.

With the implementation of Ivy Route Optimizer, all vans were optimized to travel 450 hours daily, covering a minimum of 3000 miles collectively. The vans were utilized to their maximum capacity, ensuring no wastage of resources such as fuel, workforce, and vehicles.

Ivy Route Optimizer successfully decreased the effort required for route and visit planning by the workforce by 75%. Tasks that previously consumed 4 hours for executives could now be done in just one hour. Delivery representatives improved visit coverage by 8%, contributing to a better fulfillment rate for the field force. Sales reps experienced a daily travel time savings of 13%.

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In conclusion, adopting technology solutions that streamline processes becomes crucial for companies seeking efficiency gains. For CPG companies, the real value emerges when there is a substantial boost in productivity and a reduction in the time spent by their field force agents. Embracing cutting-edge AI-based technologies, such as Ivy Route Optimizer, elevates the productivity and efficiency of their field force.

To explore the full range of benefits, we invite you to book a demo and experience firsthand our latest AI advancements.