IJsboerke knocking on the right door at the right time thanks to Selligent’s CRM
The number one on the ice cream market in Belgium, IJsboerke wanted to modernise its door-to-door delivery services in order to better meet the needs of its customers. The « Ice On Demand » project, based on the Selligent software, allows the company to take into account the preferences of its customers at all levels.
frans janssensEDP Manager
“Each salesperson has a hand terminal allowing orders to be relayed to the server in the truck, itself permanently linked to the Home Vending Base Station”
“Thanks to Selligent we are able to respond to customer needs and soon it will enable us to strengthen and improve our service”
A delivery service that responds to the needs of the customers Ijsboerke uses set rounds for their trucks to follow. Until recently, they used to stop even if customers had no need for ice cream that day. Ijsboerke wanted to move away from the old way of working with the familiar Ijsboerke trucks travelling purely on set rounds because this meant they missed those customers who only wanted an ice cream once in a while. The system concentrated on the supplier, and customer needs could not be exploited to the full. In mid 1999 plans were started to create a more easily managed and more customer-oriented door-to-door delivery service. Instead of coming to the door whenever the Ijsboerke truck was passing, Ijsboerke wanted visit the customer when it suited him and deliver exactly those ice cream products he had a wanted.
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«Ice On Demand» takes into account the preferences of the customers
In September 1999 the new system for doorstep selling was christened ‘Ice on Demand’. The implementation of Ice on Demand paid much attention to acquiring and managing knowledge about the customer. He can place ad hoc orders by telephone, internet, fax or with the roundsman himself. He can decide the time of the visit and the number of visits per season. Inno.com wanted a system capable of storing customer history and preferences. Inno.com opted for Selligent as customer database because of this software package’s pliability and value for money. Selligent makes it possible to manage customer information. Based on that information Ijsboerke can supplement and alter the set routes at any time of the day. Selligent lays the foundation for further expanding on the ‘Ice on demand’ concept. One single customer database… Every one of the 180 Ijsboerke trucks is now equipped with a computer with the Home Vending Support Application installed. This software immediately generates orders from Selligent, the customer database. All information about customers of interest to Ijsboerke (catering and doorstep sales alike) is now united in one storage system.The database is an Oracle 8i and serves as integration platform for the Home Vending Support Application. This allows Ijsboerke to make a daily selection of customers requesting a visit. An integrated route planner enables the route to be tailored immediately. It is further possible, for example, to analyse sales data by means of a solution for business intelligence. …fed by mobile terminals on board the trucks Each salesperson has a hand terminal allowing orders to be relayed to the server in the truck, itself permanently linked to the Home Vending Base Station. This stores all data received from the trucks in a central database. The Home Vending Base Station (IS Microsoft server with NT as platform) generates a link between the route planner, the database and the different orders from the servers in the trucks linked with the station around the clock. Big quantities of data are sent using the FTP protocol, smaller real-time messages are sent via sockets. A wireless IBM Gateway manages data transfer.Each server in the truck has a communication stack for safeguarding the link with the Home Vending Base Station. The software on the server was developed in Java in accordance with, among others, the Model View Controller model with such additional techniques such servlets and Java Server Pages. Microsoft Internet Explorer provides the user interface. A portable browser is linked to the server in the trucks and communicates with the server via radio frequency in HTTP protocol. Besides the server each salesperson has a hand terminal for entering for instance new orders, a printer for printing off invoices on the spot and a scanner for reading the bar codes off the ice cream. This scanner is integrated in the portable browser. The components described above are set up in a TCP/IP network based on the following technologies: (1) Ethernet and token ring between the systems on the home base in Tielen; (2) RAM for the mobile data network between the Home Vending Base Station and the various truck servers; (3) radio frequency between the server in the trucks and the browser.
