Française des Jeux
Nomadia solutions enable Française des Jeux to realize sales territory management and to provide its agencies and sales reps with an à la carte portfolio optimization service.
Française des Jeux: Their Challenges and the Solution Provided by Nomadia
The relationship between Française des Jeux (FDJ) and Nomadia is longstanding. Since 2007, the company has relied on Nomadia’s expertise and tools for geomarketing and map production, and from 2014 onward, for commercial sectorization challenges in a transformation context. Anaïs Combes, Project Manager at FDJ, discusses the organization and tools implemented to continuously create, optimize, and update the portfolios of field sales representatives.
FDJ’s commercial organization has undergone significant changes since 2014. Could you describe the current organization and say a few words about these changes?
Today, the organization is based on 3 Regional Directions, subdivided into 52 geographic sectors represented by as many local agencies. Each agency relies on a sales team tasked with developing and managing the points of sale in their territory. Thus, we have a sales force managing a network of 30,000 points of sale – mostly bars, tobacco shops, and newsstands – spread across more than 11,000 municipalities. In terms of the number of points of sale, FDJ’s distribution network is known as the largest in France!
Starting in 2014, FDJ began transforming its commercial and logistics organization. The team I belong to was tasked with supporting the network and agencies through the key steps of this transformation. As part of this change, we engaged Nomadia to simulate mapping and cartography of commercial sectors.
With the implementation of the new organizational model involving direct delivery of customer parcels to points of sale—resulting from the centralization of preparation and shipping from a central warehouse—the sales force’s missions were refocused on their core business, and commercial portfolios had to be rebalanced and resized.
“We therefore decided to look for a specialized tool to help us perform multicriteria portfolio optimization and balancing ‘on demand’ in order to quickly meet specific agency needs.”
What tools did you originally use to work on sectorization and portfolios?
For a time, we worked rather archaically, using Excel files and maps, often on Google Maps and sometimes on paper. Given the number of parameters to manage, this was both time-consuming and complicated—and even more so because if one parameter changed or the proposal was not accepted by the agency concerned, we had to basically start from scratch.
So we decided to look for a specialized tool to help us do multicriteria portfolio optimization and balancing ‘on demand’ to quickly respond to specific agency needs. The Territory Manager solution was chosen partly because Nomadia was already known to FDJ for its geomarketing solutions. Moreover, among the evaluated options, it best met all our criteria. Our choice was fully validated after a successful pilot phase.
What are the main parameters used for creating and balancing portfolios?
One key point is segmenting our network of points of sale into four categories: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. This segmentation, based on average sales at the points of sale, specifically determines the frequency of visits salespeople must make. Typically, a ‘Platinum’ point of sale is visited 4 times more often than a ‘Bronze’ one. The goal is to propose portfolios consistent with this segmentation and, of course, balance the portfolios of salespeople within the same sector. Their portfolios must be equivalent in number of points of sale and visits, with each point of sale associated with a predetermined number of visits. Each portfolio must also be geographically coherent, especially regarding the salesperson’s place of residence, the usual starting point of their routes.
Before Territory Manager, it took us at least a day to build one scenario. Today, we directly modify parameters in Territory Manager, which offers us a scenario in 30 seconds and several in record time. The time savings are simply huge!
“We provide FDJ agencies with a tailor-made portfolio optimization service.”
How are you organized to respond to portfolio modification requests?
We have centralized and pooled this expertise. There are 4 of us on the team using Territory Manager and able to respond to the specific requests and needs of the sales agencies. In fact, we provide FDJ agencies with a tailor-made portfolio optimization service.
Regional Directions communicate their needs so we can plan interventions. Then, thanks to the system that capitalizes agency criteria within the tool, we can run as many simulations as needed on agency managers’ requests. Territory Manager provides an output including a sector map with detailed Excel reports.
After nearly 2 years of use, what are the major benefits of Territory Manager for you as a user and for FDJ?
We are extremely satisfied with Territory Manager. As a user, the first benefit is undoubtedly time savings. The second is the increased relevance of the sectorizations proposed to agencies, with far fewer back-and-forths. It’s truly an easy-to-use tool that intrinsically avoids weighting errors or simple omissions. I add that after training, I quickly became autonomous. Nomadia’s support has always been very responsive and helpful in finding solutions.
For FDJ, Territory Manager offers the ability to quickly translate hypotheses and simulations related to the commercial organization. It’s a gain in agility for the organization.
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