Gillette realizes impressive productivity gains for Mobile Sales Force by deploying Sysgold applications running on a Pocket PC along with the Flic® Cordless Laser Bar Code Scanner.
Business Situation
Gillette’s field sales and merchandising staff were manually managing sales activities, billing and customer management—including stock reorder, route and logistics support. Orders were paper based and faxed or called into Gillette’s regional distribution centers. Field personnel could not effectively gather data on competitive products, making it difficult for business managers to fine tune marketing and sales initiatives. For example, if a field sales representative discovered a competitive promotion, they were unable to generate competitive data to share with decision makers in a timely fashion. Gillette sought to improve sales force responsiveness, eliminate repetitive data entry and inefficient workflow, and to improve decision making around sales and marketing initiatives.
Solution
Gillette has selected mSales and mMerchandising from Sysgold to eliminate manual paper based order management and improve the ability to collect and analyze field-based merchandising information. mSales is the portable point of sale solution that provides immediate order entry, invoicing, returns, inventory and financials visibility. mMerchandising provides the ability to manage all merchandising information and activities at the point of sale, enabling real-time reporting of critical data to business decision makers.
“Microvision provided excellent support to Sysgold in our efforts to integrate the Flic Scanner into our applications for Gillette. This allowed us to deliver the right solution to Gillette in a timely fashion.” —Juan Carlos Garcia, Director of Business Development, Sysgold
Other components of the Gillette solution include the HP iPAQ HX 2410, a Motorola mobile phone, the Flic Cordless Laser Bar Code Scanner and a mobile printer. The HX 2410 is used to run SysGold’s applications and the mobile phone is used to download data to the application in real-time. The Bluetooth enabled Flic Cordless Scanner is used for bar code data capture to look up Gillette and competitor UPCs at the point of sale. The Flic Cordless Scanner was selected over products evaluated from Unitech, Symbol, and Socket for multiple reasons:
- Significantly lower cost of acquisition
- Extended battery life of Pocket PC as the Flic Scanner is self-powered
- Easier integration with Sysgold applications
- Small and ergonomic form factor
Benefits
- User satisfaction: Gillette field reps using the Flic Scanner, the HP iPAQ HX 2410, a mobile phone and printer now have a powerful mobile platform that reduces end of day order processing from hours to minutes.
- Simplicity and low cost: The Flic Scanner combined with a Pocket PC acts as an affordable, easy to use portable data collection and transaction terminal— up to 75% less costly than competing solutions.
- Productivity: Gillette has improved sales force responsiveness and data accuracy, eliminating repetitive data entry and inefficient workflow.
- Improved Decision Making: Time required to aggregate and share merchandising information with business decision makers has been reduced from several days to minutes.