How management software optimizes sales team work and real-time tracking: the Coomeva case

Coomeva Cooperativa was founded in 1964 in Cali, Colombia, by a group of 27 doctors. The cooperative, which had 400 members in its first year, today brings together some 275,000 members and their families; Coomeva Cooperativa is the reason for being and the unifying core of the Coomeva Business Group, present in 1,050 municipalities across Colombia. 

At first, the cooperative provided savings and credit services to doctors in Valle del Cauca. Today Coomeva brings together professionals and technicians from every discipline, and their families, who benefit from the 16 companies the cooperative has built up in the financial, health, insurance and leisure sectors.

Coomeva offers more than 140 products and services aimed at improving members' quality of life throughout their lives, and it supports members' entrepreneurial drive through financing, training and business creation. 

It has won several awards recognizing the quality of its organizational management. In 2016 it took the Gold award at the Ibero-American Quality Award in the Private Company category, and in 2011 the Colombian Award for Management Quality, granted by the Office of the President.

Coomeva has a team of sales executives responsible for selling and communicating the various benefits available to members — financial, health, insurance, business development or travel services — and for bringing in new members. 

The most pressing challenge: improving the sales team's platform

Coomeva needed to improve the management platform for its sales team, having spotted the opportunity to track its sales force and its field sales work better. That work took place as part of the commercial cycle of signing up and retaining members, from phone contact through to appointments and visits. 

Before GDW Sales was implemented, Coomeva had a platform that gave it no real-time view of what its executives were doing, which created inefficiencies in managing their schedules and left manual processes that looked obsolete next to the possibility of more centralized management. 

At the same time, it was keen on the possibility of obtaining valuable statistics about how its sales force was performing, for a better assessment of their work in the field; a digital management platform such as GDW Sales generates exactly those statistics, and they improve management decision-making.

The solution: a consolidated view of Coomeva's field sales operation

GDW Sales delivered a consolidated, real-time view of field operations for Coomeva's sales team, along with online systematization of the information and the statistics needed for better control and understanding of the team's performance and the opportunities it was winning. 

That allowed them to better assess client satisfaction in field sales work, to understand and improve their people's capacity to bring in new members, and to deepen those members' engagement with Coomeva's commercial offer. 

With this digital view of the sales process, client contact and scheduling became better documented and audited, and more efficient. That improved the ability to manage the commercial cycle's processes — contact, recording and field travel alike — which made it possible to guarantee they were carried out in the executives' daily work.

The benefits achieved at Coomeva

The GDW Sales management tool made better use of time in the sales process and brought greater efficiency to client follow-up. Thanks to digitization and the introduction of digital recording processes, less information goes missing. 

Time was saved in the member sign-up process through better planning of executives' visit schedules. Travel also fell as a result of the efficiency gained: time spent traveling by the sales force dropped by up to 20%. 

Having a centralized tool let Coomeva increase the number of field visits. Digital records provided consolidated tracking of field sales work and so guaranteed the commercial cycle was completed. 

The information the tool provided also led to a better and deeper understanding of the catchment areas its field sales team was building. GDW Sales gave them statistical indicators that strengthened their analysis, thanks to systematic capture of the information generated in the field. That brings greater insight into how the field sales force is performing and, ultimately, a clear view of the commercial opportunities to pursue and a stronger ability to decide.

Across the field sales process as a whole, productivity rose and the return on investment in sales team activity improved, thanks to the consolidation of resource management processes that form the basis for continuous improvement. 

In summary:

• A tool that centralizes the record of field operations and makes it possible to check that the sales and client retention process is being followed.
• An improved ability to manage the field visit schedule, with more efficient travel and more visits completed.
• Thanks to digitized processes, valuable statistics for better evaluation and analysis of field sales work. 
• Higher productivity, resulting from streamlined operational and resource processes.