Retail marketing company Crossmark has achieved a more than 50 per cent reduction in its transport footprint, following a 12 month campaign of green initiatives for its 500 strong retail team field force.

Crossmark embarked on a year long environmental plan to consolidate its field teams that saw petrol costs, kilometres travelled and travel time all reduced. This program had two aims: to provide a more efficient service to Crossmark’s clients and for the company to become a ‘greener’ organisation.

More than 1.2 million duplicated kilometres were removed, equating to more than 230 tonnes of carbon emissions, 180,000 litres of fuel saved and in excess of 25,000 hours of travel time saved per annum.

Crossmark developed the program to bring its diverse clients under a single field force management structure, providing a consistent contact for the field. It brought the volume of work together by remapping areas where representatives would be visiting; in short, reducing the geographical area a field merchandiser would visit.

The new structure also saw changes in reporting methods, so all merchandisers in field would have a single reporting line that fed into the newly created field operations team led by director of field operations, Andy Kirk. Kirk was appointed to oversee operations earlier this year.

“Clients are certainly seeing the benefits. With field teams now spending less time travelling and more time in store. We have reduced costs by minimising time spent on the road; and these cost benefits filter through to our clients.  

“One year on, we are seeing that the flexibility of this new structure is maximising the benefits for our clients and reducing Crossmark’s carbon footprint. The field teams have greater flexibility around when they can get to store, and also an increase in the speed of which they can execute campaigns.”