trakki
Field sales software: five kinds and which one fits
By Manuel Ober · · 7 min read
Five kinds of software that often get mixed up
“Field sales software” is not one product but five kinds of tool, and each solves a different problem. Pick the wrong kind and you pay for functions you never open and miss the one you needed. If you are already looking for a specific app: Field sales app.
| Kind | Solves | Where the customer list lives | Account needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team CRM | reports, metrics, handovers | with the company | yes |
| Route optimiser | order of stops, drive time | with the provider | yes |
| Excel | whatever you calculate yourself | on your device | no |
| Map service | the way to the next destination | nowhere, it does not know your customers | often no |
| Planning app for individuals | your own week | usually on your device | usually no |
The third column says the most. Software for a team needs the list on a server everyone can reach. Software for one person can leave it on the device.
Team CRM: the software for sales management and the company
A team CRM is a shared customer archive for many field sales reps. CRM stands for “customer relationship management”. It is the standard when a company runs ten or a hundred people in the field.
What it does well: collect reports, show revenue per customer, manage territories, hand customers over when staff change, analyse figures for sales management.
What it does badly: plan one person's week. Map and drive times, if they exist at all, are an add-on. And the person who enters the data often gets nothing back from it the next morning.
The catch for individuals: the CRM belongs to the company. Change company or territory and you leave your customer data behind. That hits the self-employed hardest.
Route optimisers: good with many stops
A route optimiser sorts many addresses into a short route. That includes logistics tools, software for delivery services and trade software with a routing module.
What it does well: with fifty stops a day, the order is a calculation nobody solves in their head. There it pays off.
Where it does not help: field sales rarely has fifty stops, usually it is six. With six stops the order is rarely the problem. The hard part is choosing which six customers are due today, and that is decided by the due date, not the distance.
Excel: underrated and honest
A table with customer, category, cycle and last visit, plus a formula for the due date, is already a working field sales plan. If you know what you want, you build it in two hours.
What Excel does well: calculate, sort, filter, print.
Where Excel stops: it shows no map, knows no drive times and does not re-plan when someone cancels. And keeping it up to date by hand is where most spreadsheets quietly die after four months.
A ready-made template is in the guide Field sales route planning: Excel template, and a second one for reports in the guide Field sales call report.
Map service: good for the drive, not for the planning
A map service guides you to the next destination and tells you how long it will take. It does that very well, and almost everyone has one on their phone.
What it cannot do: it does not know who is due, when the pharmacy closes for lunch or how long the whole day will take. It plans the route, not the day. Where exactly the line runs is in the guide Route planning with Google Maps.
Planning apps for individuals: the thinnest group
Planning apps for individuals lay out one person's week: who is due, where are they, how long will I really be driving. They do not run a company and do not calculate delivery rounds.
There are few of them, and there is a reason. A company buys fifty licences, a rep buys one. So nearly everything is aimed at the sales manager, and the person in the car works with whatever was bought for the boss. This group includes simple customer lists with a map view, some note apps with a location function, and trakki.
Where the customer list lives is the first question
Each of these kinds manages customers, just in different places.
- In the company system. The list belongs to the company and stays there when you leave. For employees that is normal, for the self-employed a risk.
- With the provider. The list sits on a server run by a third party. Convenient, as long as the provider is still around.
- On your own device. The list stays with you and you back it up yourself. In return there is no hotline to restore it.
You work with the names and addresses of real business partners. Before the first entry, find out where they end up, and only then what else the software can do.
What sales managers need and what field reps need
A manager wants to compare, a field rep wants to know tomorrow morning where to drive. Mix the two up and you buy the wrong tool. That is behind most failed rollouts.
A sales manager needs visits per territory, coverage of the A customers, the trend over quarters, and a handover that works when someone leaves. A CRM is built for that. Without one it becomes manual work.
A field sales rep needs help deciding what to do tomorrow. A CRM is not built for that.
That is why many teams run two tools side by side. The company system collects what the company needs, and everyone plans their own week. What matters is that a file travels between the two and nobody has to retype anything.
How to find the right kind in three questions
Three questions are usually enough.
- Who should see the data? Only you, or sales management too? If the company should, you need a CRM, or at least an export as a file.
- How many stops do you have a day? Over twenty is a calculation problem and a case for a route optimiser. Under ten it is a selection problem.
- What costs you the most time today? The thinking in the morning, the typing in the evening or the driving in between? Pick the tool that tackles the biggest item, not the one with the loudest salesperson.
Free software: the price is often hidden elsewhere
Free offers for field sales come in three forms, and they are very different.
- Truly free: Excel templates and map apps based on OpenStreetMap. There is nobody to call when you get stuck.
- With a limit: a trial period or a version for a handful of customers. Good for trying out, too tight for a real territory.
- Paid for with data: ad-funded offers live on what you enter. With a list of names and addresses of business partners, that is the most expensive form, even with no price on it.
How trakki does it
trakki belongs to the group of planning apps for individuals and is no replacement for a CRM. It answers the question that comes up every week: who is due, where are the customers, and what fits into one day?
You upload your customer list as an Excel file (.xlsx); name and address are enough. You set a cycle, the traffic light shows who is due, and at the tap of a button trakki lays out the week. To set off, trakki opens Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze. It has no navigation of its own with voice guidance.
Worth knowing beforehand: trakki starts in Austria, and the address search only finds Austrian addresses. trakki is coming to iPhone and Android. Map and address search need an internet connection. Your customer list is stored on your device, there is no trakki server, and you need no account. You pass your visits on as an Excel file, for the company system, say. In the browser you can look at trakki with sample customers, on the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need anything besides the company CRM?
Often yes, and that is no contradiction. The CRM is the bookkeeping of sales; the weekly plan is your own tool of the trade. Many field reps therefore keep their own list alongside the CRM. The only question is whether that list is a scrap of paper in the car or something that does the sums for you.
Can I do field sales planning entirely with a map service?
For the drive yes, for the planning no. Which customers are due today, when they are open and whether the day works out, you decide beforehand yourself. Where exactly the line runs is in the guide Route planning with Google Maps.