Zodiac Makes a Splash with ComActivity Mobile App for Field Services

French-based Zodiac Group is Australia’s market leader in pool care technology and equipment supplies. Its team of dedicated professionals lives for the outdoors and revels in delivering swimming pool products that promote fun, active and healthy lifestyles. Best known for its inflatable boats, Zodiac also makes some of Australia’s best-known pool equipment brands, such as Jandy, Baracuda, Polaris, and Clearwater.

To date, the Zodiac Sales teams has used the existing dealer Business-to-Business online ordering tool, Lawson Ezsales. Whilst effective in catering for Zodiac’s Trade customer transactions, Ezsales fell short in functionality required to better improve the connectivity and integration of the Zodiac Field Sales teams. Such limitations included:

• No field function mobility.
• No functionality without internet.
• No flexibility to change sales order pricing (e.g. to cater for additional discounts).
• No flexibility to the change order address delivery (e.g. deliver orders to 3rd party addresses).
• No key ERP look- up features such inventory availability, or credit hold status checks.

Zodiac reached out to its key industry technology vendors and was able to partner with Comactivity to help deliver the Zodiac Field Sales Tablet Mobility solution in December 2012. This new Field Sales Mobility tablet solution has resulted in immediate cost reductions and overall improved sales order process efficiencies. Some of these key benefits include:

• No more emailed or faxed sales orders from the APAC field sales team to the customer service call centre.
• Provided the field sales team the ability to lookup and search by customer name or number; as well as lookup by item number or description, which will result in reduced overall sales order entry errors.
• Provided the Field sales team with the ability to change the discount price, which comes included with discount approval process flow to a reviewer for approval or rejection.
• Provided the field sales team with the ability to change delivery address (e.g. deliver a trade dealer sales order directly to the end user customer).
• Provided the field sales team with the ability to look up important ERP – M3 customer information – including: credit statuses, past orders, inventory availability lookup, etc.
• Provided the field sales team with the ability to use historic sales orders to generate a new order template with full functionality to add or edit the order lines and prices.
• Provided the Tablet App for functionality via online (3G or wifi); and or via offline mode.
• Full ERP – M3 integration to allow for sales representative order traceability.
• Integrated with key IOS and Android tablet features such as email and geographical map functionality.
• The ability for this field sales mobility tablet application to cater for other order types (e.g. early campaign sell in, warranty and free goods orders).

These benefits have also taken critical support load away from the customer service call centre and thus freed up resources to better serve its trade and consumer market customers,

Zodiac is pleased to be continuing its partnership with ComActivity to deliver its next mobility tablet solution for its Field Service teams. This will provide the same paperless and real time benefits as has been achieved with the recently launched Field Sales Tablet Mobility Application.

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FACTS

Zodiac Group Australia is is a subsidiary of the global Zodiac Marine & Pool Group, which is wholly owned by the Carlyle Group. It specialises in the production and development of Marine and Poolcare equipment and sales across the government, private and consumer markets.

The company established its presence in Australia in 1983. Following this, it acquired international pool cleaner company Baracuda, in 1996. In the same year, it also acquired Driclad, Australia’s leading manufacturer of above-ground pools. Expansion then led to the 2001 acquisition of Australian-based Clearwater Products, a manufacturer of salt water chlorinators. In 2005, Zodiac also acquired Polaris Pool Systems, a leading supplier of quality pool equipment. In 2007, Zodiac Marine Segment and U.S.-based Jandy Pool Products merged to become Zodiac Marine & Pool. Since then, Zodiac Marine & Pool continues to expand its global Pool Care businesses with ongoing acquisitions which have most recently included Pool Care Chemical Solutions and Service.