An SFA-Enabled Growth Story for an Indian Cosmetic Brand

One of the budding Indian cosmetics companies, which was founded only in late 2015, was aiming for an aggressive expansion strategy in late 2017 after experiencing a moderate growth in first one and half years of its operations. At that stage, they had approximately 30+ Beauty Advisors and some 10-15 Area Sales Managers covering few metros and tier 2 cities. As they were planning to penetrate 100+ Indian cities in the next couple of years with 1000+ sales force, they very well understood that this kind of growth can only be managed through a robust, scalable and flexible Sales Force Automation solution. Not just a vanilla SFA solution, but rather what they were looking for is a partner who can help them to achieve their growth plans by providing cutting-edge and ever-evolving solutions, super-responsive service, and best practice consultation. After evaluating multiple SFA vendors, they finally selected Assistive. And the current numbers - which is 800+ users across 95 cities selling 450+ SKUs - tells that it was not a wrong decision at their end to trust Assistive as their SFA partner.

Approach

The task at hand was two-fold. One was to do a quick implementation when the project started, i.e. in 2017 and then to ensure all new requirements coming from client are fulfilled quickly so that the SFA tool can work as a catalyst to achieve the tremendous growth target. Thanks to our experience working with leading brands in Cosmetics and Apparel industry, to the numerous config options Assistive comes with and to the brilliant Assistive engineering team, we were not just able to meet all client expectations, but also made them delighted with our agility. Some of the key activities in project execution were as follows:

• Master data requirement was explained to client stakeholder in detail and the same was uploaded in system without much hassle
• Different mobile app workflows were developed for different roles as and when the clients asked for it.
• The app workflow ensured Beauty Advisors mark their daily attendance and tertiary sales data with geo-fencing enabled
• For ASMs and Sales Executives, workflows included new GT outlet addition and secondary order placement
• Supervisors started using the SFA app for checking hygiene of Beauty Advisors, imparting trainings to them and performing retail store audits
• Implemented an intra-company Social Media platform for highlighting great works done by the BAs or the make-up artists
• In order to ensure quick execution of secondary orders, developed an automated email report going to different company SPOCs with order details for the day
• Developed a customized dashboard for real-time monitoring of Beauty Advisor and ASM activities
• Train the Trainer’ model was followed for a quick roll-out in all geographies
• User activity was closely monitored to quickly address usability issues and constraints leading to a rapid adoption of the system

Outcome

With the successful implementation of Assistive CRM, the client could get complete visibility and insight of its sales operations (both secondary and tertiary) which formed the foundation for the huge expansion that was realized in subsequent years and for the growth which is planned to happen in the coming years. The key highlights are as follows:

• Significant improvement in discipline and hygiene of the sales force
• Details of ongoing scheme information were readily available to the beauty advisors which helped them to push for more sales
• Significant increase in the retailer database as ASMs were able to add new outlets easily through the app
• With secondary order details automated through email, the order execution timeline improved significantly
• Continuous usage tracking ensured solution is adopted by all users without any hassle
• All these played an important role in the spectacular growth that the client has observed in the last couple of years