---
title: "Process Control in FMCG Enterprises Is Turning Salespeople into Tools"
description: "Salespeople complain that logging into systems, taking photos, clocking in, and following procedures leave them less time to sell. Sales operations departments counter that without process data, they cannot verify performance or mitigate risks. This article explores whether typical process-control thinking should be abandoned in digital channel management and how to balance result orientation with process control."
author: "Jack"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-06-02"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/process-control-in-fmcg-enterprises-is-turning-salespeople-into-tools-3005890b/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/process-control-in-fmcg-enterprises-is-turning-salespeople-into-tools-3005890b.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/YY7JeqQ1u3OdEHusZ_5xwg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%BF%AB%E6%B6%88%E4%BC%81%E4%B8%9A%E7%9A%84%E8%BF%87%E7%A8%8B%E7%AE%A1%E6%8E%A7-%E6%AD%A3%E5%9C%A8%E6%8A%8A%E4%B8%9A%E5%8A%A1%E5%91%98%E5%8F%98%E4%B8%BA%E5%B7%A5%E5%85%B7%E4%BA%BA-3005890b.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/process-control-in-fmcg-enterprises-is-turning-salespeople-into-tools-3005890b/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Process Control in FMCG Enterprises Is Turning Salespeople into Tools

> Salespeople complain that logging into systems, taking photos, clocking in, and following procedures leave them less time to sell. Sales operations departments counter that without process data, they cannot verify performance or mitigate risks. This article explores whether typical process-control thinking should be abandoned in digital channel management and how to balance result orientation with process control.

"Every day, logging into the system, taking photos, clocking in, and going through procedures leaves less and less time for selling." This is the real feedback from many salespeople.
But sales operations departments will say: "Without this process data, how do we know if salespeople are working seriously? Without process constraints, many risks cannot be avoided."
Comprehensive monitoring, lengthy approval processes, one-size-fits-all management, and compliance requirements that override reasonable demands...
In the digital management of manufacturers and distributors, should typical process-control thinking be abandoned? How should we correctly view the conflict between result orientation and process control?
This article will attempt to explore these issues from a management perspective, hoping to bring more inspiration to the industry's channel digitalization practices!
**Where Does Salespeople's Time Really Go?**
The author once worked at a leading FMCG company building a channel digitalization system, during which an interesting incident occurred.
Some sales regions reported: "Using the SFA system consumes a lot of time, affecting our sales target achievement."
So our team went to the front-line market, each following a salesperson on their route visits, and secretly recorded the time spent on all their work tasks throughout the day.
The survey lasted a week, and the final data revealed a "new continent"!
According to the statistics, taking salespeople in the circulation channel as an example, system operation time accounted for about 13% of the day's work, with a large portion of time spent on travel to visits and other work tasks.
From this data alone, it seems that most time is not spent on the system. So why do people still have this misconception?
The answer lies elsewhere: in some companies, after implementing the system, the workload for salespeople has indeed increased!
**Why Does Salespeople's Workload Increase After System Implementation?**
Take the SFA system, whose full English name is Sales Force Automation, as an example. The system's value is to improve sales efficiency, but why do some companies see an increase in salespeople's work after implementing SFA?
To answer this question, we first need to look at the following set of data.
As shown in Figure 2, if we classify the work salespeople do in the system by its correlation with achieving sales, we can see that sales-weakly-related tasks such as morning/evening meetings, travel to visits, and display maintenance take up most of the day, while sales-strongly-related tasks like ordering, new product promotion, and distribution take much less time!
It can be seen that most of the above sales-weakly-related tasks are sales process control items. These are basically rules set by the business; whether to do them, how much to do, and how well to do them are essentially unrelated to the system.
But the problem is that the SFA system provides a management handle for more process control items, directly improving the efficiency of process control.
This directly stimulates many companies' operations management departments to turn many process control items from optional to mandatory, and from simple requirements to refined and strict requirements, which undoubtedly increases the workload for salespeople.
**Deep Dive into Typical Process Control Thinking in Channel Digitalization Management**
Next, let's look at common phenomena in daily channel digitalization management that reflect typical process control thinking.
1. "Comprehensive" monitoring
a. Visit trajectory monitoring: using the SFA system's positioning function, real-time recording of salesperson location information, and the day's visit trajectory can be clearly displayed on a map;
b. Arrival/departure time monitoring: from the first store visit, each store collects the corresponding arrival/departure time; monitoring this data helps analyze the quality of route visits and detect abnormal visits.
2. Lengthy process approvals
A typical situation is the market expense allocation and reimbursement process. For example, for display expense management, many companies set up multi-level approval processes from city manager to regional manager to expense control specialist, attempting to maximize risk prevention by adding more review steps.
3. "One-size-fits-all" management
a. Requiring visit completion rates: many companies have requirements for the number of visits per store per month or total monthly visits, as core indicators of visit quality;
b. Requiring minimum stay time per store: the quality of a salesperson's visit to a single store is ensured by requiring them to stay in the store for at least x minutes. These methods directly limit the flexibility of visits and are essentially a lower-limit standard approach.
4. Compliance "overrides" reasonableness
A common business scenario is order/expense signing. When a salesperson visits a store and the store owner is not present or is busy, the store owner authorizes the salesperson to sign for orders or expenses. Can the salesperson sign on behalf of the store owner in the system?
The answer from sales management departments is often no. Although the scenario is reasonable, it is not compliant.
Upon reflection, this compliance actually requires the store owner to comply with the company's "rules." But the store owner is a customer; is the customer obligated to comply with the company's rules?
In channel digitalization management, there are many more examples similar to the above four phenomena, fully reflecting that process control thinking is everywhere.
So should process control thinking be abandoned? If needed, how should the balance be struck?
**How to Balance Process Control and Result Orientation?**
The channel digitalization system is essentially a system that serves sales and improves sales efficiency, like installing a turbo engine on a fine horse.
But in the implementation process, the addition of many process control thinking elements is like putting a saddle, reins, and bridle on the horse.
The only purpose of sales is to achieve results, and process control is actually to ensure that sales can achieve results better.
But in this complex business world, there is never a perfect solution. The typical process control thinking mentioned above often limits sales flexibility and even affects sales efficiency. So when the two conflict, how should we choose?
This is actually a management dilemma: result orientation vs. process control. In current popular terms: the former focuses on doing the right things, while the latter focuses on doing things right.
The former is result-oriented, satisfying the first principle, and is the starting point for all actions; the latter focuses more on process compliance and efficiency, but easily "instrumentalizes" people and reduces their subjective initiative.
When implementing channel digitalization management, the conflict between the two is inevitably brought to the table.
Before the system was implemented, many conflicts were hidden, had gray areas, and were not urgent; but after the system is implemented, the system is a very serious fellow—one is one, two is two, and no gray areas are allowed; comprehensive analysis shows that weighing result orientation and process control is the biggest problem facing channel digitalization management!
So how to weigh the conflict between the two? My personal view is that there is no standard answer, because it is closely related to the company's development stage, management capability building, and even leadership style.
So is there no solution? Actually, there is a solution. To solve this problem, we need to change our perspective: everyone involved in channel digitalization management needs to realize that all channel digitalization management must go through three processes: "conflict - compromise - relative balance."
**Change Perspective:**
**All Channel Digitalization Management Goes Through 3 Stages**
This perspective is not new, because many companies have been doing this when implementing channel digitalization.
It's just that they haven't elevated it to a management cognitive methodology.
For example, consider a couple who often quarrel and want a divorce.
If you ask them the reason for divorce, both sides may complain a lot, such as the other not paying attention to hygiene, bad temper, etc.
Finally, after analysis by emotional experts, a conclusion is drawn: their incompatible worldviews are the root cause of the marriage breakdown.
The problems encountered in channel digitalization management are similar. Salespeople complain that the system controls too strictly, affecting their sales, while headquarters management complains that it's the company's compliance process, for the greater good.
In the end, the blame falls on the digitalization department or the project implementation company, making them the biggest victims (scapegoats) of this conflict.
In fact, the root of these contradictions needs to be analyzed and solved from the cognitive level of management.
I believe that to solve the above problems, we need to establish the following cognitive premise from a management perspective: each stage of channel digitalization management will cyclically go through the three processes of conflict, compromise, and relative balance.
Next, I will elaborate on the above three processes from the system research and design stage and the implementation stage:
Stage 1: System research and design stage.
When conducting requirement research and sorting out business processes, system designers often find that some headquarters operations department regulations conflict with regional demands, or that headquarters regulations are not implemented at all.
At this time, the usual solution for system designers is to meet the regional flexible demands while complying with headquarters requirements. Essentially, this is the first conflict and compromise between process control and result orientation;
Stage 2: System implementation stage.
After the system goes live, when regional users actually use the system, they will truly discover some problems.
Voices such as the system is not user-friendly, too restrictive, increased workload, and affecting sales will be reported one after another.
When the volume of feedback is large enough, headquarters management will re-examine the initially set business rules and finally make some compromises to the market and adjust the system.
This constitutes the second conflict and compromise between process control and result orientation;
Problem insight: Why do the three processes of "conflict - compromise - relative balance" inevitably exist? Apart from factors such as system designers not thinking thoroughly and business departments not considering comprehensively, I think we should see the following core points:
a. The conflict between process control and result orientation has always existed, and at different stages it is affected by a series of factors such as market environment, corporate governance capability, and corporate culture;
b. Compromise does not mean that the market was wrong at the beginning or that the management department's stance is untenable. Compromise is essentially a trial-and-error correction of the company's operating mechanism, an attempt to adapt corporate governance capability to the current market environment.
From this perspective, we should not only not deny "compromise," but also cherish it, using compromise to reflect on operational management issues.
**Action Section: Key Points to Note When Implementing Channel Digitalization Projects**
To summarize: after the above discussion, we have talked about the common conflicts in channel digitalization management: process control vs. result orientation.
Facing conflicts, we need to change our perspective and recognize that all channel digitalization management must go through the three processes of "conflict - compromise - relative balance."
After recognizing the above points, how should we specifically act when implementing channel digitalization projects?
Personally, I believe that when implementing channel digitalization projects, we need to pay attention to the following key points, which can help us avoid many detours:
Key Point 1: A good system design must find the right conflict person and find the balance point.
When designing the system, we must not only find the key users who make decisions on requirements, but also identify the conflict persons corresponding to processes/rules. This requires us to bring this perspective during the early system research. Only by finding the conflict persons can we have the opportunity to fully communicate and find a balance point.
Of course, some conflict persons may be hidden, because what users express may not be their true intentions. These hidden conflict persons will appear when they actually use the system, and we need to be mentally prepared;
Key Point 2: Don't try to design the system in one step; not only is the system iterating, but the company's management thinking is also iterating.
As mentioned above, the digitalization implementation stage will inevitably cycle through the three processes of "conflict - compromise - relative balance," so system design cannot be achieved in one step.
Therefore, the best way to implement the system is to first ensure the smooth flow of core business processes; for disputed processes, it often means that management thinking is not yet clear. For such problems, we should first seek common ground while reserving differences, keep the functions simple, run them in the market for a period, collect feedback, and then decide on the improvement of the plan. Time will often give a satisfactory answer!
Key Point 3: Starting from the first principle, return to sales, and treat people as users of tools, not as tools themselves.
The original intention of the channel digitalization system is to serve sales and improve sales efficiency. The formulation of many process control measures should first think about returning to sales and pay attention to the balance. Only in this way can we avoid falling into the management logic trap of controlling for the sake of control.
Sales itself is a job that requires flexibility. Only with flexibility can individual potential be stimulated, and thus things be done well. When salespeople feel they are treated as tools, the "bad results" are already on the way!


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671