Food, Candy And Confectioner Enhance Global Sales Force Management With SAP Portals

Company Background

Our client, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is the number one gum manufacturer in the world, generating sales of more than $2.5 billion dollars. It currently makes up 50% of the U.S. gum market and is the absolute market-leader in Europe with shares of 80% or higher in 18 markets. The company was founded in 1891 and has been operated by three generations of the family. It currently manages 14 manufacturing factories worldwide, including three in North America and four in Europe.

Our client's mission is to ensure its brands are woven into the fabric of everyday life around the world - a mantra that has secured its position as the industry leader. This food, candy and confectioner has been able to maintain this top spot by being an innovative company that looks to continuously enhance and invest in its products, processes and systems. The company has recently been challenged to explore new offerings and has moved into the healthcare arena as well as expanding its candy products.

Business Issue

Our client has a rich heritage of innovation, as in the past when the company included a free stick of gum as a 'perk' with every purchase of baking soda. Recently, the company decided to apply similar innovative behavior to the area of technology, recognizing the evolution of the Internet as a primary means to facilitate and improve business processes. Although traditionally a highly localized company, the company has seen the value of becoming a unified worldwide unit by allowing information to be readily shared between people in different regions and positions within the company, and also by sharing products around the world.

Our client's priority was to accelerate and enhance the sharing of information between two functional groups - marketing and sales - that are heavily reliant on intellectual capital but traditionally operate independently. The company realized that in order for its field-sales team to take advantage of the lessons learned by their colleagues across the enterprise, information sharing would need to become a primary focus. This is where Inforte and SAP portal technology stepped in. Working with Participate Systems to design and build the Sales Web Center, the joint consulting team determined that the solution needed to be comprehensive enough to capture many types of relevant data. In addition, the solution must be compelling enough to attract hundreds of sales people across the country and be user-friendly so that these same sales people, who have had little or no exposure to computers or the Internet, could easily take advantage of the available functions.

In addition to a portal solution, our client recognized that increasing competition and slowing growth meant the need for an improved sales process and value proposition for customers. The company therefore decided to focus on improving the value of information in sales processes, partnering at the appropriate levels in customer organizations, effectively capturing market feedback and ultimately working towards corporate globalization.

Inforte's Solution

Inforte was chosen by our client to help implement a portal solution and Sales Web Center because of its market-leading project delivery capability, real-world, industry expertise and prior experience in implementing SAP solutions for Global 1000 clients.

Wrigley looked to the consulting team to provide a solution that would:

• Improve value-added selling
• Provide information to partners at higher levels in the buying organization
• Disseminate information efficiently
• Share best practices among sales and marketing representatives
• Provide external information and news including Nielsen and IRI data
• Create a comprehensive territory management application
• Offer online training and support
• Develop relevant support tool

The consulting team assessed immediately that there were significant challenges associated with the project. First, the client was considering a change in strategy to address the organizational issues with the field sales team, in addition to having no systems in place to support them. Since this system would be the first for sales users within the company, there was added pressure on the team to deliver value quickly and skillfully.

Furthermore, integration between the company's Community Software and SAP Portals technology had not been attempted before. Inforte knew that this would be a challenge and diligently set to work to make the integration successful. Finally, the desired functionality required the creation of custom process modules that had to be flexible so they did not impact the upgrade path of each vendor. Custom functionality was created to reside along the two applications instead of heavily modifying either one.

Business Benefits Delivered

Our client has launched a strategic initiative to increase its sales force productivity and ultimately drive revenues for the company, and the Sales Web Center development and deployment is a key component of that initiative. The primary goals for the Sales Web Center include:

• Offering a secure and segmented space via the SWC where marketing and sales teams may share information within their team about customers, branding and advertising.
• Integrating the global sales force by sharing information through a central communication vehicle.
• Streamlining existing business processes and removing non value-added work.
• Delivering actionable and targeted advertising, marketing and product information to impact business results.
• Empowering account managers to partner at higher levels in the customer organization and support transition into category leadership.
• Obtaining timely marketplace feedback.
• Improving sales as a result of increased productivity.
• Decreasing the overlap of solution time - allowing people to learn from their colleagues.
• Becoming a dashboard for Wrigley sales users - enable daily access to all information.

The Company has engaged Inforte for additional work as it continues planning for the Sales Web Center. After delivering the SWC, Inforte will be involved in the following engagements:

• Evaluation Phase of SAP Portals v 5.0 - this evaluation will inform our client of the functionality of SAP Portals 5.0 and open the way for mass use of SAP Portals across many departments and divisions.
• Planning for a Sales Web Center Upgrade - Inforte will assist Wrigley in the resource and project planning regarding the potential use of SAP Portals 5.0 for the Sales Web Center. An upgrade of the SWC using SAP Portals 5.0 would showcase this new functionality for all of our client's to review.

Client Reaction

Our client is experiencing the increased amount and quality of information now available, including what its own employees have generated, valuable market trends and pertinent sales information. Since the Company is expecting to drive further productivity into sales and operations processes with this information, they may implement a portal tool in SAP that lends itself to even more comprehensive gathering, classification and disbursement of knowledge. Ultimately this process would lead to a better, more directed sales process to drive revenue growth in the years to come.

Words of Advice

The consumer products industry continues to become more competitive, with most products being commoditized on a continual basis. Therefore companies must compete on their value-added services and the information surrounding the product itself. Solutions that effectively manage information delivery to the right personnel at the right time are critical tools in the ongoing struggle to differentiate product offerings to retail customers and ultimate consumers. Our client has chosen SAP Portals for its ability to link users to critical information on a worldwide basis, and they have chosen Inforte to assist with implementing the Sales Web Center. By implementing a portal solution that can provide an enhanced virtual workspace for their sales and marketing personnel, leading confectioners like our client can protect existing market share and also support growth through increased sales and employee productivity.