[Exclusive Interview] This SaaS Startup Is Empowering Retail Brands To Turbocharge Revenues & Profits By Leveraging Technology, AI & Logic

Recently, we interacted with Mr. Vinay Singh, Co-Founder of BeatRoute – world’s only Goal-Driven Sales Enablement Platform for Retail Businesses.

Here are the interview highlights:

1. Can you provide an overview of BeatRoute and its role in the FMCG, CPG, and retail industry? How does BeatRoute help companies in the FMCG, CPG, and retail sectors enhance their sales processes?

BeatRoute is a sales enablement platform tailored to the needs of enterprise brands in the FMCG, Consumer Durables, Building-Materials, and other retail industries. Our objective is to facilitate deep collaboration between sales teams, channel partners, and customers to help these brands achieve their business goals. We take pride in our industry-specific focus, designing BeatRoute to address the unique challenges and complexities of the retail route-to-market.

Unlike old-style solutions, BeatRoute emphasizes sales enablement rather than just sales automation. We provide deep features and functionality that prioritize readiness and leverage the latest technology. This approach allows retail brands to easily integrate and implement BeatRoute into their existing systems and workflows, making us a plug-and-play solution.

Initially, BeatRoute focused on enhancing operational efficiency for distributed teams of retail brands. We leveraged GPS awareness to improve the efficiency of sales teams and utilized intelligence to enhance their sales performance. However, we realized that visibility, workflows, and insights alone were not sufficient for brands to achieve their business objectives.

This realization led to the development of our innovative Goal-Driven Sales Technology. With this technology, brands can define their business objectives within our platform and align their sales teams, channel partners, and B2B customers to work towards those goals. BeatRoute employs various methods, including input-based gamification, identifying specific skill learning needs, and utilizing artificial intelligence to assist managers in problem-solving.

Mr. Vinay Singh, Co-Founder of BeatRoute

BeatRoute offers an extensive set of features to meet the requirements of brands in their Route-to-Market operations. Still, the true value lies in how we enable brands to utilize these features to execute their sales strategies and achieve their specific business goals on the ground. By aligning the platform with their objectives and providing actionable insights and guidance, BeatRoute helps companies in the FMCG, CPG, and building-materials industries enhance their sales processes and drive their overall business success.

2. What specific challenges does BeatRoute address for sales teams in these industries?

Sales teams in these industries often struggle with ineffectiveness and inconsistency. For instance, 70% of their sales reps do not meet their monthly targets, which means that brands consistently miss their sales goals. This happens due to 2 distinct set of challenges.

The first set of challenges revolves around procedural difficulties, including process hygiene, data visibility, standard operating procedure execution, and analytics. Traditional automation platforms often struggle to address these foundational problems and exhibit inflexibility in their dashboards, hindering swift adaptation to strategic changes. Implementation delays and risks associated with alignment issues further compound the problem. At BeatRoute, we offer a highly configurable and adaptable automation platform that minimizes delays, aligns with shifting objectives, and reduces implementation risks.

The second set of challenges lies in behavioral issues among sales executives, managers and channel partners. Simply providing workflow tools does not inherently alter their selling behavior. To address this complex challenge, BeatRoute utilizes its unique Goal-Driven Sales Technology. By allowing brands to establish their business objectives within the platform, BeatRoute effectively directs sales teams, channel partners and even B2B customers towards achieving those goals. It uses various techniques, such as input-based gamification, pinpointing specific skill development needs, and leveraging artificial intelligence for problem-solving assistance. This holistic approach to behavioral change equips sales teams with the necessary tools and incentives to overcome resistance, improve their selling techniques, and drive productivity.

3. Could you explain the key features and functionalities of BeatRoute that make it a valuable sales enablement platform?

We have designed our platform with key features and functionalities specifically for enterprise retail brands. One of the unique aspects of BeatRoute is our industry-SaaS solution, which is easily scalable and customizable to meet the unique needs of enterprise businesses. Our zero-code configurability allows for seamless customization and configuration without requiring technical expertise or significant investments. Additionally, we continuously enhance our offering through regular major and minor updates to ensure that brands can address current and future challenges in the ever-evolving retail landscape.

One of the standout features of BeatRoute is its focus on collaborative automation. Recognizing the fragmented nature of distribution channels, BeatRoute facilitates real-time collaboration among sales teams, channel partners, and customers through its intuitive interface. This enables smooth information exchange, improved coordination, and stronger relationships, ultimately leading to increased sales effectiveness.

Furthermore, BeatRoute employs its proprietary goal-driven sales technology, which allows brands to define their business goals within the platform. This technology harnesses the collective efforts of sales teams, distributors, retailers, and channel influencers to achieve these goals. By fostering a high-performance, goal-oriented culture and promoting collaboration among stakeholders, BeatRoute enables holistic sales transformation.

4. How does BeatRoute leverage technology to improve field force efficiency and productivity in the FMCG, CPG, and retail sectors?

At BeatRoute, we leverage technology to improve field force efficiency and productivity in the FMCG, CPG, and retail sectors. Initially, our focus was on solving problems related to operational efficacy and efficiency for distributed teams of retail brands. This involved utilizing GPS awareness to enhance the efficiency of sales teams and leveraging intelligence to improve sales performance for channel partners and retailers.

However, we at BeatRoute recognized that achieving business objectives required more than just visibility, workflows, and insights. Many business leaders expressed satisfaction with their existing tools but struggled to reach their business goals through those tools. This led to a disconnect between the brands’ objectives and the platforms used for their Route-to-Market.

To address this challenge, we developed our Goal-Driven Sales Technology that we just discussed. While BeatRoute offers an extensive feature set to meet the requirements of brands for their Route-to-Market, the true value lies in how these features are utilized to execute sales strategies and achieve specific business goals on the ground. By leveraging technology and our Goal-Driven Sales Technology, BeatRoute enables brands to operate more efficiently and productively, leading to improved sales performance and the attainment of business objectives.

5. How does BeatRoute ensure seamless coordination and communication between field teams, managers, and other stakeholders?

At BeatRoute, we ensure seamless coordination and communication between field teams, managers, and distributors and retailers/dealers through our platform features designed to promote collaboration at all levels of the sales and distribution hierarchy. By bringing everyone onto a common digital platform, BeatRoute eliminates silos and ensures that execution remains on track.

For example, when a business sets a specific goal, such as introducing a new product, it is defined within the BeatRoute platform as a set of measurable KPIs. Sales teams, distributors, and retailers are then empowered with the right workflows and tools to achieve this goal. They have easy access to product information, sales executives are motivated through gamification, distributors are guided to maximize trade schemes, and retailers are educated and incentivized to include the new product in their orders.

In addition to the platform’s workflow capabilities, we at BeatRoute recognize the communication preferences of field teams and integrate with popular channels like WhatsApp. This integration allows users to communicate within the context of active links to relevant data sets, facilitating efficient and timely collaboration. Furthermore, BeatRoute enables close-ended collaboration between different user groups by integrating with external platforms, such as with ERPs, HRMS and distributors’ inventory/accounting systems.

Ultimately, by facilitating seamless coordination and communication, BeatRoute helps enterprise brands realize their sales strategies and business goals on the ground.

6. Can you share any success stories or case studies where BeatRoute has significantly improved sales performance for FMCG, CPG, or retail companies?

With over 150 enterprise customers across the globe, we’ve supported numerous businesses in optimizing their sales processes to achieve their unique goals.

One success story that stands out is San Miguel Foods Corporation. It implemented BeatRoute to ensure effective sales execution and prevent stock-outs at retail outlets. By leveraging our platform’s functionalities, it achieved its business objectives and ensured that its teams and distribution partners were equipped with the right tools and intelligence. This resulted in improved sales performance and increased customer engagement.

Another notable example is a leading Paints company in India. It adopted BeatRoute’s Industry SaaS platform to enable its sales team. By utilizing our platform’s gamification features and leveraging the integration with WhatsApp, the company fostered healthy competition among its sales reps and strengthened relationships with its dealers. This approach drove higher productivity and facilitated mutual business growth.

The success stories continue with Perfetti India, which reduced its cost to serve retailers by leveraging BeatRoute’s Route Optimization solution. This solution optimized its sales and delivery routes, resulting in maximum efficiency and significant cost savings. Additionally, Nurturemed experienced a remarkable 20% increase in productivity per sales rep by aligning individual goals with company objectives and improving selling behavior through BeatRoute’s goal-driven solutions.

Mega Global, with the help of BeatRoute, enhanced the productivity of its retail stores by an impressive 50%. Recorn Foods achieved a 20% increase in productive visits, while Cosmic Nutracos saw a remarkable 20% increase in sales per retail store. Cremica and Davies Paints both experienced a 30% boost in sales productivity by leveraging BeatRoute’s comprehensive solutions.

These success stories demonstrate how BeatRoute’s platform and features have consistently delivered tangible results.

7. How does BeatRoute measure the ROI (Return on Investment) and effectiveness of its platform for its clients?

At BeatRoute, we use two key methods to measure our success. The first method is by measuring adoption, which involves assessing the frequency and depth of usage of our platform’s workflows by our client’s sales team members, distributors, and retailers. By monitoring the extent to which users engage with our platform and utilize its features, we gain insights into the platform’s adoption and effectiveness in facilitating sales processes and operations.

Our second method focuses on measuring the actual achievement of our customers’ sales goals using the BeatRoute platform. Each brand has its unique sales strategy and specific business outcomes they expect from BeatRoute. Therefore, our platform’s success lies in our ability to help clients attain those desired results. We value customer feedback and testimonials that highlight the tangible business impact achieved through our platform. To showcase these positive outcomes and success stories, we feature customer testimonials on our YouTube channel and website, providing real-world examples of our platform’s ROI and effectiveness.

---