UNITED TRACTORS SALESMATE PROJECT:

REINVENTING THE WAY OF SALES

In 2017, the UT's Analytics Family team, consisting of Dedi Prananda, Angga W., Rizky Puti, and
Tangkas Saputra, discussed their new project. The team has been handling many analytics-related
projects so far, and they were enthusiastic about those projects. In addition, the team talked to
several salespeople in Surabaya to find out what their next project would be.

The team realized that the salespeople had been struggling with changes in the business
environment. New, and never experienced before events now part of our daily life, from the
pandemic and the global economic situation as a whole, have put everything into a different
perspective. It seemed the game's rules had changed, and UT needed to address these changes.

History of United Tractors

United Tractors is a subsidiary of PT Astra International Tbk. Their vision was to be a world-class
solution-driven company in heavy equipment, mining, and energy for the benefit of stakeholders.
Their missions were to assist the customer to become successful by utilizing comprehensive
understanding through continuous interaction, to provide opportunities for their people to enhance
their social status and self-fulfillment based on their performance. To create sustainable value-
added for stakeholders by striking a balance between economic, social and environmental aspects
and to contribute to the nation's prosperity. The company consisted of five different business
portfolios; mining concession, mining contracting, construction industry, energy, and construction
machinery. In addition, the team was responsible for construction machinery.

UTCM had several strategic directions in 2021. First, at the Board of Directors (BOD) level, they
wish to secure market leadership through improved coverage and enhance digitalization to
generate growth and improve operational excellence. At the functional level, they were driven to
implement digital analytics to increase sales coverage, generate growth, optimize working capital
and operational excellence.

The QC team was formed in 2017, They had been tasked to manage several projects related to
the business analytics needs of the company. As a result, UT Analytics Family has several members
from various backgrounds and expertise from the company, consisting of a team lead, eight data
scientists, two dedicated data engineers, two Salesforce developers, and one project management
officer.

Challenges faced by United Tractors

Expanding market coverage has become a major concern for the company. China has set an import
quota policy to support domestic production, lowering the global demand for coal. Coal prices
continued to fall, and the unattractive coal prices eventually drove the heavy equipment market to
shift from ‘crazy rich group’ in mining sector, a group of buyers which purchased a lot but were
small in numbers, to the retail group in non-mining sector, which purchased less but were bigger
in numbers. This shift in the market and customers’ focus led to a massive change faced by the
salesperson team, who mostly used to handle smaller-sized 'crazy rich groups.’ Now the number
became their greatest enemy, since with the limited number of salespeople, they had to face much
larger retail customers who were more diverse and geographically scattered.

Innovation Starts Now

Everyone in the QC Analytics Family was excited to be tasked with the Salesmate project. Digital
transformation, in particular, calls for innovation in almost every aspect of the company's life. After
gaining additional knowledge related to design thinking from internal training, the team began to
start the process. Dedi was well aware that being a team leader required him to plan ahead and
ensure that the team members were on board with the idea.

Being a cross-functional team leader, Dedi realized that good synergy is key to great collaboration.
Therefore, he built the synergy of his team by implementing three main strategies: bonding by aim
and meaning (vision), bonding by psychological approach (interpersonal), and last but not least,
bonding by the synergistic process.

Bonding by aim and meaning meant emphasizing aligning the shared goals, especially regarding
the importance of the action towards the company strategy and how the project would positively
impact many people and the company's future. This was important to gain collective commitment
from the involved parties and act as a source of motivation.

The second one was bonding using a psychological approach. Dedi believed that the most effective
form of communication is heart-to-heart communication. Therefore, it was vital for him to
understand several psychological tools such as the MBTI test, Belbin, and DISC to grasp the team
dynamics and foster better communication and interaction between him and his team.

The third one was bonding by synergistic processes. This last approach would mean tying
everything neatly into a simple and well-organized process. The approach involved regular reviews
that are participative, including problem identification and corrective actions, which focused on
can-do mentality and innovation. Moreover, there should also be feedback sessions encompassing
appreciation, coaching, and mentoring to build a conducive working climate.

Digging for Information

The first stage that the team underwent was the empathizing stage. Dedi believed that well-
executed projects always started with sufficient data. Soon, they discovered that decreasing market
share and decreasing market coverage were two main problems. It is interesting to note that the
number of customers increased, given the market shift. However, this posed another problem as
soon after that, the salespeople employed by UT were overwhelmed with the number of customers
they had to serve. The imbalance between the number of salespeople and the customers would
mean one thing: they now had less time to visit the customers. Fewer customer visits eventually
led to lost opportunities. Potential customers who could have been converted into customers might
have fulfilled their needs by another company. (Exhibit 2)

The team's conversation with salespeople as their solution's customers allowed them to identify
several things, including customer jobs, pains, and gains. The salespeople had several tasks; they
had to do customer canvassing, visit, and create a prospect report. Customer canvassing entailed
finding new customers, which led to scheduling a visit and taking action and ended with creating
a report detailing the potential demand for the management.

The team found out that manual canvassing was challenging for the salespeople. They got
overwhelmed by the number of customers they had to serve to achieve the target. Previously, a
salesperson might only need to handle five customers to achieve 200-unit sales. However, the shift
in the market led a salesperson to manage fifty-two customers to achieve the same sales level. In
addition, regardless of the salesperson's location, they would need to take care of customers who
reside in many different places across Indonesia. This also posed problems as they had limited
resources to do so.

The salespeople had realized they were not well-informed on the cross-selling opportunity between
heavy equipment and trucks. Since there were separate business units, there were different sets
of salespeople for the product categories, It was regrettable since the heavy equipment and off-
road applications were very closely related; in fact, both market correlations were about 80%.

Building, Refining, Improving

Developing the Business Model

The value proposition canvas was first developed by the team, started by defining the main
situation they must answer, sudden and massive expansion of customer numbers. They have
identified three main jobs for the salespeople; customer canvassing, a customer visiting, and report
creating.

The salespeople, as the users, experienced pain in the form of lost opportunities for cross-selling
and even lost deals. Therefore, the team focuses on getting firsthand information from the
salespeople to see what kind of support they need to handle the changing situation. From the
experiences, they identified three crucial areas as their main focus. First, the salespeople are about
to face a scary situation where they must identify data manually amidst the vast number. Second,
handling the fact that cross-selling only accounted for 16% of the overall sales at that moment.
Third, the target of loss-deal number increased from 13% to 18* in 2019,

The introduction of Salesmate was expected to relieve the pains through analytics. The system
would enable them to do auto-canvassing and auto-feeding to tackle cross-selling lost opportunities
and lost deals. In addition, digital tools would help perform sales activities daily.

How Salesmate Works

There were three different components of Salesmate (Exhibit 3). The first one was the input. The
input consisted of web crawling data gained by robotic processing automation such as active
construction projects, government construction projects, and the ministry of energy and mineral
resources.

The second input was customer data, consisting of complete customer data (both active and lost
customers) and the last ten years' transaction data. The next type of input was salesman activities
from the Salesforce app. These activities included sales pipeline, salesman visit activities, loss-deal,
and loss coverage.

The process part involved developing three powerful analytics engines. The first engine was the
potential customer prediction model. It was an advanced machine learning and deterministic model
to predict customer probability to purchase.This model was intended to predict sales of heavy
equipment, truck, bus, crane, spare parts, and services. The second model was called heavy
equipment and truck association model. This advanced machine learning and deterministic model
was developed to predict cross-selling opportunities for heavy equipment and trucks. The last
model was a loss-deal prediction model. This model was advanced machine learning to predict
loss-deal for every prospect created.

The output was the Salesmate. This application had several features. First, it served as a potential
customer compass, with the ability to auto-feed potential customers and manage visit schedules
for every salesperson. Secondly, it enhanced the cross-selling possibilities by identifying and
feeding potential cross-selling opportunities for every salesperson. Lastly, this application enabled
loss-deal prevention by feeding potential loss-deal prospects, making it easier to avoid loss-deal
from occurring.

The Salesmate served different purposes. In terms of direct purposes, this application improved
the effectiveness of the sales process. It directed the salespeople to the most potential customers
to visit. Since it could predict loss-deal, the salespeople would also have extra time to concoct
mitigation strategies. Moreover, the application was very practical to use as it was online-based,
and eventually, it provided 'extra power’ to the salespeople by improving the ability to offer the
best promotions based on analytics. These would subsequently achieve a higher purpose: business
impacts. Several positive impacts were achieved, including boosted sales figures, higher customer
coverage, and higher market share.

Cultivating Digital Culture

There were two main stages that the organization had to undergo to cultivate a digital culture. The
first part was change management. This stage involved fostering engagement with stakeholders,
collaborating with different stakeholders, fostering fun competition through gamification, and
socializing Salesmate actively,

Several principles of change management could happen in an organization. First, organizational

resistance might arise as people were unaware of the new changes and worried. Clear
communication that could answer this would become very crucial. Users would try, experience,
and understand the benefits during the buy-in phase. This would mean that before the
implementation, explicit simulation was essential. Dedi and his team always attempted to provide
a simulation that enabled the users to understand the changes that might happen, benefits gained,
the main business impacts, risks, and the risk mitigation strategy.

The change management process should be packaged positively, involving fun and collaborative
participation. These were important since user experiences and feedback became the critical
factors in the adoption and sustainability of Salesmate. On the other hand, ownership from the
users and commitment from the top management would keep things forward. Last but not least,
acknowledgment and appreciation should be conveyed well. This appreciation would include every
single effort that the user had made. The team created a digital competition related to the usage
of Salesmate, to evaluate, measure, and give appreciation for each participation and contribution
of the users.

The next stage was the continuous development stage. During this stage, the team kept iterating
the models and continuing the development. The second step during this stage was getting external
reviewers involved. The team collaborated with Astra Group Digital Strategy (OAH). To increase
the impact, the team ensured that they provided full assistance to the other companies within the
UT group, such as Bina Pertiwi, Patria, and Universal Tekno Reksajaya. Another collaboration was
also done with another company owned by Astra Group.

Digital transformation was a continuous process, focusing both internally and externally. The same
mindset was developed through internal and external collaboration. The end goal of the
collaborations was to give the company the best contribution through digital tools. The team was
sure that the contribution could only be achieved through collaboration and a combination of
optimal adoption and innovative digital product. To achieve those two, a collaboration between the
digital and operational experts allowed everyone to teach and be taught, and to develop themselves
personally was the key.

All these collaborations led to a positive circle of shared responsibilities and roles, forming a working
pattern and digital culture, For example, in handling the projects, the team consistently followed
the same pattern; starting from preparing the project proposal, being committed to the project,
dividing the work and interacting regularly, and eventually evaluating at the end. All of these have
contributed to the cultivation of digital culture.

There were other contributions of Salesmate application towards Astra International's digital
transformation. First, they helped accelerate digital transformation through the Salesmate project.
This project provided the energy which accelerated the new way of work powered by digital and
analytics and improved the data literacy and knowledge on how analytics can translate data into
business value.

Secondly, the project propelled operational excellence and sustainability for digital awareness: by
bringing strong evidence of how digital innovation (Analytics/Salesmate) can bring effective
business solutions and create powerful impacts.

Thirdly, to further leverage the impact of Salesmate, the application was involved in many different
collaboration projects to get more benefits to other companies and business units under Astra.
Lastly, to strengthen the foundation of the company. Salesmate was aimed to support the scaling
up internal capacity and capability of UT employees and develop human resources who are future-
focused, digitally minded, capable, and innovative.

Leading a Team of Change Agents

QC Analytics Family was assigned to develop this Salesmate project. They consist of members from
various functions from different departments, with various backgrounds and expertise. The small
team, originally formed in 2017, consists of a team lead, eight data scientists, two dedicated data
engineers, two Salesforce developers, and one project management officer. Within this team, Dedi
was assigned as the leader of this small yet fast-moving team of experts. He considered himself a
hands-on team leader who participated in the activities with the QC Analytics Family throughout
the project. Yet this team was originally formed by people with different backgrounds, various
technical and business understanding, as well as different departmental points of view,
Dedi was aware of the condition; therefore, he decided to focus on developing his team's strength,
technical capabilities, and business savvy to provide them with a bigger picture of the project
requirements. His method was proven successful. The team was not only very technically capable,
but they could also easily communicate with any users giving them analytics type of projects, thus
building trust throughout the vast structure of UT. He strongly believed that one of the main
essences would be conveying crystal-clear type of goals or expectations to this team. He tried to
convey the main goals in a simple yet effective manner, including elaborating the purpose or goal
of the project, not only with the viewable benefit for the company but also benefit to UT audiences
as their direct benefactor, as well as the goal and benefit for each of the team member, thus
securing a better motivation from inside the team itself.

He also acknowledged different generational gaps within QC Analytics Family in leading the team.
Therefore, he tried to balance and synergize other points of view through empathy between the
team members. Yet by conveying the project goal and benefit to each team member, he nurtured
emotional maturity and a sense of meaning inside the team, hence the different age groups.
Moreover, he also preferred to call his team a "family", as in QC Analytics Family, to build a sense
of belonging among the team members, especially since the team was formed during a rough
period of the covid pandemic. Since during this period of time, many companies implemented a
Work From Home (WFH) policy to reduce the possibility of contamination of the covid virus among
valuable workers. Dedi and QC Analytics Family implemented better ways of communicating with
each other.

The PDCA process was developed during the pandemic, yet Dedi used digital aids, such as Microsoft
Teams and Whatsapp, as their main communication channel. But more importantly, he contributed
almost 24 hours a day, including weekdays and weekends, standing by within those communication
channels. He was always open for discussion relating to projects and set clear targets of daily
review, weekly coordination, and monthly commitment meetings.

Dedi believed that the younger generations are more socially connected and wired together. That
was the reason why he named the team "UT Analytics Family'. The usage of the term’ family instead
of team’ was also evident in the naming of their communication groups on Whatsapp, among other
things. As a part of ‘developing wirearchy' that Dedi encouraged, he also encouraged expressing
ideas, equality, and open-mindedness. In addition, he was very supportive in coaching them to
accelerate their leadership skills.

Inside the QC Analytics Team, Dedi knew that delegation could be crucial. In delegating, he paid
close attention to the alignment between people's and task preferences. People's choices consisted
of elements such as personal characters (communication preference, strengths, and weaknesses,
personal interests, etc.), learning style (auditory and visual), and competencies (knowledge and
experiences, durability in handling works, etc.). This would imply that the communication approach
might differ for different individuals; some might feel that a brief explanation is sufficient, whereas
others might take longer to understand and need a longer time to grasp things fully.

Dedi believed that aligning task preference with the people's preferences would create a good
delegation; because the right men will be in the right places, eventually improving bath productivity
and work enjoyment. He strongly emphasized that delegation was not about unloading or dividing
the works but instead providing opportunities for the team to learn and grow. To him, this
delegation process was intended so that his coaching and mentoring as the leader would work
well, The delegation was also intended so that his team would keep improving their skills and
competencies, eventually leading to a solid succession process as the team became Astra's valuable
assets. Dedi nated how his team would learn from him as their leader. He divided the work in a
way that allowed him to be involved so the team would feel supported, eventually creating trust
and harmony.

The team had two different communication mechanisms to ensure that they communicated well.
Formally, they were regular reviews as well as daily and weekly check-in. A dedicated PMO (project
management officer) facilitated tracking and monitoring processes. As part of the formal
communication process, Dedi developed a monthly commitment report within the team to report
to the team supervisors. On top of that, Dedi was also involved in every step of the process to
ensure coherence works throughout the project. He led the brainstorming and problem-solving
process as well as the improvement and innovation execution. He made sure he was contactable
and always ready for discussion. Every time they handled a project, the team created a monthly
commitment report to be escalated to the higher-ups.

Growing a Team of Champions

Even though leading a team of talented and brilliant members with different backgrounds and age
groups proved to be quite challenging at times. However, Dedi managed to handle the situation.
During the early stage of team development, his role mainly was directing. However, he was fully
aware he needed to create another engine within the group as soon as possible, Therefore, his
coaching style implemented the GROW Model, where he balanced Goal, Reality, Options, and Will.
He believed this coaching method could capture the member's inner voices and, at the same time,
contribute based on their passions and capabilities to achieve their full potential. The GROW model
would only be effective in an open environment with a high level of trust; hence all his efforts in
leading this team were based on mutual trust. Another critical element of this coaching method
would be the patience of NOT directly jumping into giving solutions or directions. Hence, he
patiently implemented the coaching method while seeing his team grow from themselves, not just
based on direction or control.

Within the whole process of Salesmate development, Dedi implemented the whole GROW model
directly. Acknowledging that the Salesmate was not only a mere small-scope project, but the team
must also face technical issues and the challenge of changing the established culture in many areas
within the bigger organization. Thus, when starting, Dedi ensured that the whole team understood
there would be apparent resistance to the change. He clearly defined the situation and possibilities
of why that resistance might occur while also ensuring the QC Analytic Team members understood
the importance of the project. This was needed to synergize both the top-down (Management) and
bottom-up (Team and all levels of the internal stakeholder/Salespersons) concerns of the upcoming
changes. Not long after, his concerns were proven.

There were some resistances, but Dedi and QC Analytic Team collaborated with the Digital Change
Management Team to convey the transformation in fun, positive, yet competitive manners, through
gamification, for example. After these efforts, it is proven that the effects of the changes were
quite well-received by the Sales team as their main stakeholder. Yet the team still captured every
feedback and response from the Sales team to provide the best user experience and secure their
sense of ownership and commitment to Salesmate. In the end, this strategy proved to be
successful. At this later stage, the QC Analytic Team even received so many requests and appraisals
from the Sales Team regarding the Salesmate, and even more, they even routinely give feedback
as well as improvement ideas to QC Analytic Team, where they always try to capture and implement
whenever possible.
In addition, Dedi worked in a multi-generational team. His team consisted of himself, a part of gen
Y, four members who belonged to gen Y, and the other four members who belonged to gen Z
generation. Dedi believed that regardless of the generational cohort to which he or she belongs,
every person is unique. To align the perspectives and manage differences, empathy would be the
key. Dedi also found that the younger generation wanted freedom, flexibility, and growth
opportunities, Above all, this generation wanted to find meaning in what they found important.
That was why Dedi felt that it was crucial to help them achieve those goals and make them feel
comfortable and accommodated by the company and their superiors, regardless of the significant
age gap and generational differences.
Dedi believed that the younger generations are more socially connected and wired together. That
was the reason why he named the team 'UT Analytics Family’. The term’ family instead of team’
was also evident in the naming of their communication groups on Whatsapp, among other things.
As a part of 'developing wirearchy' that Dedi encouraged, he also encouraged the expression of
ideas, equality, and open-mindedness. Wirearchy is a dynamic hierarchy, where knowledge can
quickly move through without restricting power or authority. He was very supportive in coaching
them to accelerate their leadership skills.

How the Project Was Handled

The team breakdown the works related to the Salesmate project into several parts: potential
customer prediction model, HE & truck association model project, loss-deal prediction, and three
different PCP models (for heavy equipment, truck, bus & crane as well as for spare parts). Each
model work was divided into nine different components, including business understanding, data
analysis & pre-processing, model concept development, model concept UAT (User Acceptance
Test), model development & evaluation, business impact evaluation, automation & integration with
SF and leverage & continuous iteration.

The project management process at UT followed the PDCA framework. The team did it internally
during the initiation and planning stage, with everyone participating. The background, business
and problem analysis, determination of target, scopes, and project initiatives were all done based
on one basic mentality: a strong focus on facts and data.

In organizing, actuating/executing, and monitoring, the team was assisted by Swandini/Dini, a

dedicated project management officer who helped Dedi run daily control, weekly coordination, and
monthly commitment agenda. Dedi also jumped in to directly assist initiatives that needed
acceleration. Dini helped to monitor the progress and key processes of each initiative. As a leader
in each of the processes, Dedi always oversees, directs, does problem-solving, motivates the team,
and escalates the projects. In the control process, Dedi assigned two team members to conduct
an assessment based on UT's standard operating procedures to ensure that everything would go
smoothly. They also had a discussion session to look for potential improvements from the ongoing
processes.

Regarding tools, Dedi and team utilized an astra management system, where the project initiatives
were translated from the company's strategic direction and implementation. Tools used included
project monitoring, visioning process, strategic alignment, process alignment, and equipped with
Microsoft TFS/DevOps for automation purposes. In addition, Dedi utilized the work breakdown
structure, project timeframe and critical path method (CPM) to track the project step-by-step easily.

Overall Achievements
The hard work that the team gave finally paid off. The potential customer prediction model
increased the total customer visit by 94%, the total prospect number by 67% and the total prospect
finished into billing by 62%. In total, they managed to gain 1531 customers, consisting of 93%
retail customers and 7% big customers. The model has led to a total of 1,592 unit sales. The heavy
equipment and truck association model led to 17 customers and 133 truck sales. The loss-deal
prediction model enabled them to have additional 104 prospects followed up by salesmen and
completed up to the billing stage.
Future Improvements

Through assessment of the current Standard Operating Procedures, Dedi and the team identified
several areas of improvement for Salesmate. In a broader context, the first improvement is network
collaboration, partnering with other stakeholders to gain mutual benefits. The second is in the form
of structure, IT integration in the form of integrated technology, resources, and applications. Yet
when going to the technical area, the next improvement is in the process itself. Innovation on
predictive analytics is intended to improve sales effectiveness powered by predictive analytics. One
of the ways would be applying automation in their tracking model development, where they
implemented a real-time tracking system inside Salesmate. At the same time, another way would
be using a better Quality Assurance (QA) system, where Dedi delegated two of his team with
limited authority for their second layer QA for their analytical model development process.

In the near future, they also plan to include new product performance features by adding features
to the Salesmate application. Many of the analytics functions have gone live; especially the
Salesmate projects, which included a potential customer prediction engine,

Dedi also felt that his team was mostly exposed and developed in technical competence areas such
as area analytics, IT, business management competence, and business process. Continuously
developing these skills would become a good combination if they could also improve in innovative
mindset, vision-business sense, and leadership. The analytics solution is expected to be more
impactful if there is a better understanding in terms of the strategic direction of Astra. This would
enable better contribution in the future.

What's Next for the United Tractor?

The pandemic has brought a myriad of changes to the business world. Many companies and
industries implemented new methods to survive. To build a data-driven organization, United
Tractors has already implemented several analytics projects such as a potential customer prediction
engine, HE and truck association model, loss-deal prediction,

What would be the future of the QC analytics team in further developing their winning app?
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About the Authors

Adilla Anggraeni

Adilla is currently the faculty member of Binus Business School International Undergraduate
Program. She earned her doctoral degree from University of Indonesia in 2016. Her research
interests include consumer behaviour, social marketing and branding. She has written several case
studies on marketing, book chapters, and journal articles.

Ahmad Seiichi Ramadhan

Seiichi has more than 10 years experience in research methodology and applied research in several
industries. His research projects and experience in business and management have been
recognized internationally. Prior to joining BINUS, Seiichi worked as Research Assistant for AON
Consulting Singapore. He continued his career as a Research Manager for BINUS University
International, and currently working as an Operation Manager of BINUS@Senayan.