As Thailand's leading distributor of one of the world's most recognized brands, Coca-Cola^®, Thai Pure Drinks, LTD faces the challenge of servicing over 250,000 customers. Before they implemented solutions from UPS Logistics Technologies, Thai Pure Drinks, were performing their re-routes manually. This was a very time consuming and expensive process, and they realized there had to be a more efficient way.

Thai Pure Drinks is the largest soft drink company in Thailand for bottling and distributing Coca-Cola products. Headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, they have 61 sales offices and 6 bottling plants throughout 62 of the 76 provinces in Thailand. They manage more than 1,200 routes to service their vast customer base. Their customers include provision and food shops, grocery and convenience stores, restaurants, hotels and wholesalers.

Thakorn Yunsamarn, distribution manager for Thai Pure Drinks, realized during one of his re-routing sessions that bringing in sales managers from each branch office to manually perform re-routes was inefficient. "This monthlong process was proving to be very ineffective in today's technology age. That's when we learned about UPS Logistics Technologies' Territory Planner," Thakorn explained. He knew that Territory Planner software would streamline their re-route process, allowing Thai Pure Drinks to become more cost-effective, efficient and strategic.

Although Thakorn had some hesitation from sales managers, he was able to overcome their reservations by including them during the initial re-route. This allowed the sales managers to be more comfortable with the results and trust Territory Planner. Since their initial implementation, Thakorn performs re-routes every six months.

Thakorn has been most impressed with the results he has experienced in the Bangkok region. In 2001, prior to Territory Planner's implementation, the Bangkok facility had approximately 497 daily routes. Thakorn used Territory Planner to create various scenarios, to reduce the number of daily routes, therefore reducing overall expenses. Additionally, Thakorn is able to use Territory Planner to plan for increases in volume due to seasonal fluctuations.

Overall, Thai Pure Drinks has seen significant results since implementing Territory Planner, including:

• 75% reduction in time to perform re-routes
• 12% reduction in total routes (Bangkok region)

UPS Logistics Technologies' software is capable of handling Thai language characters, streamlining the process for Thai Pure Drinks, LTD. And since the maps are also available in Thai, "re-routes and driver directions are even easier for our staff," stated Thakorn.

"Territory Planner has proven to be a very valuable tool for Thai Pure Drinks' management team to make quick and informed decisions for sales territories and route analysis," Thakorn explained. "The time to create territories and routes for different scenarios was drastically reduced." Thai Pure Drinks has also made use of Territory Planner's extensive reporting functionality, which provides them with data they need to make informed decisions for each of their distribution centers.

UPS Logistics Technologies will continue to improve their solutions to provide industry leading software for Thai Pure Drinks and other distribution companies throughout the world.