trakki
Route planning for pharma sales reps
By Manuel Ober · · 4 min read
Pharma field sales has three peculiarities
If you look after pharmacies and doctors' practices, you plan differently from someone driving to building sites or workshops.
The call cycle is the obligation. An A pharmacy every four weeks, a practice every six, a C customer twice a year. That is not a recommendation, it is the target you are measured against at the end of the quarter. Anyone who keeps the cycle in their head loses sight of customers until they are overdue.
The time windows are narrow. Pharmacies in many countries close for an hour or two at midday, practices only see you around their consulting hours, and in both the stretch between ten and twelve in the morning is the worst moment for a conversation. A plan that does not know the times sends you to a locked door at 12:45.
The customer list is company property. Which pharmacy turns over what, and who decides there, is confidential. Route planning that uploads that list into someone else's cloud is a problem before it has helped once.
What a week with trakki looks like
Friday, ten minutes. The map shows every pharmacy and practice with its due date: red overdue, yellow due in the next two weeks, green done. You see at a glance which cluster is next and build the week around it. trakki works out the drive times for all of the day's calls, including opening hours, consulting hours and your break.
Monday, seven in the morning. The day is on your phone: first call, time, drive time to the next one. trakki hands the navigation to the customer over to your usual navigation app.
Tuesday, nine o'clock, a cancellation. The practice has no consulting hours today. You pull the call over to Thursday, the rest of the day is recalculated, and a customer nearby moves up.
Friday, four o'clock. Every call is documented in one line: when, with whom, what was discussed. The quarterly report is an Excel export, not an evening at the desk.
How the weekly planning works in detail is in the guide Route planning in field sales.
What trakki brings to pharma in particular
- A call cycle per customer, with the due date on the map and in the list.
- Opening hours and consulting hours on the customer record; they count every time the week is planned.
- Categories such as A customer, chain or new customer, as a colour on the map, switchable on and off.
- Call documentation: visit and phone call per customer, with date and note, exportable as Excel.
- A customer list read in from Excel, matched in Austria against the official address register, and taken back out again at any time.
- Overnight stays for large territories, with multi-day tours built around the hotel.
What stays with you
trakki has no server holding your customer list. Everything is on your device. Phone and computer keep in step through your own storage, or at home over your Wi-Fi, and what you hand to your manager is your decision: a report as Excel, not access to your data.
That is not a side note. For many pharmaceutical companies it is the condition under which a rep is allowed to use a tool of their own at all. More on this in the section Your customers stay your customers.
Who trakki is not built for
For a team of twenty reps with a sales manager who wants a dashboard, trakki is the wrong tool. There is no team view and no manager login. trakki is built for the individual who plans their own week and looks after their own data. If that is what you want, you get it without an account, without a cloud, and from €9.99 a month.
Trying it costs nothing, to the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I bring my existing pharmacy list with me?
Yes. Read in an Excel list with addresses, trakki turns the addresses into points on the map and shows you which ones it could not find. What the list should look like is in the guide Getting your customer list from Excel onto a map.
Can I set different cycles for pharmacies and practices?
Yes, the cycle belongs to the customer, not to the category. An A pharmacy every 30 days, a practice every 45, a new customer every 14: all of it at the same time.
Does trakki run on a computer as well?
The Mac and Windows version comes after the iPhone and Android apps. Your devices then keep in step through your own storage, or at home over your Wi-Fi.