I used to work as Head HR of the Marketing division for a large MNC. Marking attendance for Marketing people was something which we found it to be complicated, especially in large cities, since the marketing person would turn around and state that he was on a sales call. So we came out with something different. All marketing people practice something which is known as the PJP. This means Permanent Journey plan. The employee is not allowed to come to office. Instead he works out a route plan in the beginning of every month. He mentions in the journey plan as to which dealer he will be at what time and on which date. We removed their office space. Instead put up lockers and a couple of round tables. The employee would come to office on every Saturday morning and make all his claims and also check his orders etc with logistics department. The orders were obviously placed through Blackberry. Any letters/circulars/mails which came in were put into the lockers of the concerned staff. The lockers were big enough to accommodate most of their personal stuff. The sales officers were linked on BBM to their bosses and commercial team.
We used to visit the market once in a while and reach the store at the specified time on the specified date on surprise visits without intimation to the sales person and invariably we found the concerned employee with the dealer. Similarly, when we travelled from HO to other parts of India, we never informed the concerned sales person that we are visiting their town or city. Instead we directly landed at the store based on their PJP. They are supposed to be there. If the concerned sales officer was not around, then we used to initiate disciplinary proceedings. This was also easy to check whether the person visited the dealer at the time or not.
This system actually resulted in cost saving for us since planned calls were being made to the dealers and more calls were being made and this obviously resulted in more sales happening. And the dealer knew the time and day of the week when the sales person from our company will visit his place. Apart from that the office space utilisation was much less, thus saving on rentals. Apart from that, it also was easy for manpower planning. The number of calls were directly proportionate to the volume of business the dealer gave. If business was more he made two to three calls a week. If the business was low, then he would make a call once a week or fortnight or a month. It depended on the volumes.
We used the GIS software developed by InfoTech Enterprises, Hyderabad for creating the PJP.
This is the most professional way of handling, attendance and manpower planning of a marketing department. Trying to apply HR processes or systems which are being applied in manufacturing or those employees who are regularly stationed in the offices will yield lesser productivity, since they are not relevant to marketing professionals.