Cloud, mobile and social technologies are dramatically changing the way consumer goods companies and retailers operate and interact with consumers. In this eBook, we look at 10 real-life case studies of how companies like L’Oreal USA, Brown Forman, Starbucks and 1-800-Flowers are using cloud, mobile and social technologies to reimagine their operations, consumer and partner relationships. Get inspired by their stories and get started on your path to the cloud!
2. Cloud Mobile Social
90% of consumer goods
companies aim to implement
or at least pilot cloud
solutions by 2014
(source)
38% of daily media
interactions on mobile
phones (source)
Social and mobile shoppers spent 27% more than those using traditional channels
(source)
Cloud, Mobile, Social are Reshaping Retail and
Consumer Goods
25% Consumer Packaged
Goods purchases are
influenced by social media
(source)
3. Leading Consumer Goods Companies are Using Cloud,
Mobile and Social Technology to Rethink their Business
Consumer
Relationships
Retailer and
Supplier
Relationships
Workforce Operations
Cloud Mobile Social
5. Consumer Relationships 5
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
Starbucks had an idea in late 2008 to
launch a social campaign to drive a
national pledge for service to coincide
with President Obama’s inauguration
in mid-January. The challenge was that
it was just 3 weeks away and they had
no idea how much traffic to expect to
the site.
Appirio rose to the occasion, building
a highly scalable interactive website
using Salesforce’s Force.com platform
in just 21 days . The site allowed
millions of users to search 30K+
volunteer opportunities, sign up, and
spread the word through an integrated
Facebook application.
The site scaled seamlessly to support
massive traffic when the brand’s CEO
featured the app on Oprah and raised
1.3M hours of volunteer time from
participants nationwide.
Social Consumer and Community
Engagement
• Millions of Users
• App showcased on Oprah
• Raised 1.3M hours of volunteer
time from participants
• Built using Salesforce platform
• Completed in 3 Weeks
"With the cloud, we can make
ridiculous things happen in a
short period of time."
- Chris Bruzzo,
SVP Channel Brand Management
6. 6
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
Consumer Relationships
An American multinational consumer
goods was facing a company-wide
product recall. To make matters
tougher, the Brazilian government
was threatening country-wide action
if the company did not streamline its
product recall process immediately.
In just 3 days, from initial phone call to
a fully operational product recall site,
Appirio developed a website solution
using Salesforce Sites for consumers
to request monetary reimbursement
or product exchanges in return for
defective products. In addition to basic
functionality, the site included complex
Portuguese language requirements and
high security features, given the bank
data involved.
Within just days, the site was
up and processing 100s of recall
reimbursements and product
exchanges, saving the company
from facing country-wide sanctions
and fines.
Consumer Self-Service for Product
Recall
• 100s of users
• Built using Salesforce platform
• Completed in 3 days
7. 7
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
Consumer Relationships
The hair care division of the world’s
largest cosmetics and beauty company
relies on salons and store owners
for business, but providing them
incentives and rewards for their loyalty
was challenging. The loyalty system
they had in place made it difficult to
launch new promotions quickly and
required weeks of effort from valuable
IT resources.
Appirio built a custom rewards
program application using the
Salesforce platform that calculates
award balances, points awarded and
redeemed across multiple brands,
programs and membership tiers. The
applications integrates with SAP for
order placement and connects to 6
brand websites for use by 100,000+
salons and stylists.
Appirio did in 3 months, what it had
taken 6 years to build out in the
original system. And with the new
system in place, the company is able
to roll-out brand programs more
frequently and properly reward loyal
customers, to keep them coming back
for more.
Cloud Powered Loyalty Program
• Integrates data from 6 product
websites for use by 100,00+ salons
and stylists
• Custom Salesforce application with
SAP integration
• Completed in 3 months
"Today, the field is more
empowered and has better
information than in the
past. They can pool their
own information, look at it
themselves, or ask us to help."
- Senior Manager,
Salon Care
9. 9Workforce
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
The world’s largest cosmetics and beauty
company demands a brand and user
experience that is consistent with their
leading brand. Unfortunately, the way
their sales reps communicated with
salons and retail outlets, was falling
flat. Each month, HQ distributed 2GB of
content on 1,000s of CDs mailed to each
individual rep that showcased the latest
and greatest for the products they were
pushing. It was costly, cumbersome and
not in line with the forward-thinking
brand.
Appirio developed a unique
user experience using Salesforce
Authenticated Sites, Calendaring
and Content that displays recent
announcements, featured content
for easy access and sharing based on
individual role. Additionally, reps use
Chatter to collaborate around how to
best use content in the field.
Now, all product information,
promotions, events and updates are
easily accessible from one place and the
social functionality allows reps to share
tips and stories about their experiences
in the field. The online portal also saves
money and the environment.
Branded Sales Enablement Community
• 1,000+ users
• Salesforce Portal, Chatter and
Content Management
• Completed in 4 weeks
10. 10Workforce
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
The American-owned spirits and wine
distributor was a siloed and somewhat
traditional organization in that they
had employees all over the world that
didn’t have the means to collaborate.
They did have a traditional SAP portal
in place, but it wasn’t user-friendly
and adoption was extremely low.
After hiring a new CEO who wanted
to revitalize the company, global
collaboration became a key initiative.
Brown-Forman employed Appirio to
roll-out an employee collaboration
portal built on Salesforce with a
graphic iPad-like user interface.
A combination of a social enterprise
blueprint designed to identify use
cases and ensure adoption, and
the CEO’s passion for top-down
collaboration made the portal a huge
hit, both in the US and abroad, allowing
cross-company collaboration.
Global Employee Collaboration Portal
• Salesforce platform and Chatter for
social collaboration
• Completed in 2 months
“With more than 3,000
employees in more than 135
countries, keeping our employees
connected, informed and
aligned—all in real-time—is
critical to delivering customer
satisfaction.”
- Jennifer McClinton,
Director of Technology Development
11. 11Workforce
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
The US-based airline that offers low-
fare, high-quality service between
major metropolitan cities across
the country was having trouble
communicating with its employees.
With the majority of employees in
the air or working on the ground at
airports, it was impossible for them to
access the company’s legacy intranet
system on a mobile device, leaving
them feeling disconnected from the
fun-loving brand.
Virgin turned to Appirio to create a social
and mobile employee intranet. The
mobile-optimized intranet has Salesforce
Chatter and Content embedded into
the portal, enabling cross-company
collaboration for 2,700 users.
Now, pilots, flight attendants and
ground crew can access the social
intranet on-the-go to get the latest
and greatest company announcements
and news and communicate with other
employees. As a result, the average
site visit has gone from just 45 seconds
to 6 minutes, with employees finding a
way to stay connected on the road.
Social and Mobile Employee Intranet
• 2,700 users
• Built using Salesforce Company
Communities
• Completed in 6 weeks
• Increased time on site by 8x
"VXConnect is now up and
running and the initial response
has been tremendous.”
- Ben Eye,
Communications & Events Manager
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE
12. 12Workforce
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
1-800-Flowers, a floral and gift retailer
and distribution company based in the
United States, was missing out on the
opportunity for its employees to have
deeper, more meaningful interactions
and better collaboration. Their existing
intranet and email system were dated,
difficult to use and offered no ability
for sharing documents, tracking
revisions or collective scheduling.
Appirio Replaced Bloomnet, the prior
system, with Google Apps, Google+ and
Google Docs for 1,400 users nationwide.
Smilelink, a new intranet portal was
developed with Google Sites templates
and served as the HR department‘s
home page. Appirio also developed a
community engagement and training
plan to ensure adoption and maximize
the impact of the new intranet.
Google provided a unified platform
for both internal collaboration and
external marketing, making it easier
for employees to share and track
interactions, while making it easy
to maintain and update the intranet
without IT support. 1-800-Flowers now
has a social intranet that’s engaging,
fresh and easy-to-maintain.
Social Employee and Partner Intranet
• 1,400 users
• Built using Google+, Apps, Docs,
Sites
• Completed in 7 weeks
13. Operations
• CRM and mobile sales enablement
• Mobile retail execution
• Kiosk/store operations management
14. 14Operations
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
A multinational alcoholic beverages
company and World's largest producer
of spirits had limitied visibility into
quality control after production was
complete. They were shipping product
all over the world, without full visibility
into what was happening at the store
level.
Appirio built a mobile quality survey
app on the Salesforce platform that
allows the company to send out e-mail
requests to employees to sample
product quality from store locations
based on a GPS code. The app supports
5 languages and multiple mobile devices,
providing visibility by brand, region,
country, etc.
The app has helped to resolve local
issues with product shipping and
handling with improved product
quality to the consumer. The improved
reporting capabilities, provided by
the app in dashboard form, help the
company assess product quality across
numerous filter parameters and offer
greater insight into customer needs
and quality concerns.
Mobile Quality Control Survey
• Mobile app powered by Salesforce
platform and HTML5
• 5 Asian languages and 20 filter
points
• Completed in 3 weeks
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15Operations
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
The world’s largest cosmetics and
beauty company manages thousands
of combinations of beauty advisors,
brands and store locations. Employee
quotas and performance were tracked
in spreadsheets, which was extremely
labor intensive and inhibited timely
analysis.
Appirio built a custom Salesforce
application with complex sharing
rules pertaining to Beauty Advisor
Managers and Brand Managers to keep
geographies and brands separate. The
application included custom objects
for Doors (individual store location, i.e.
Macy's SF), Accounts (Macy’s), Beauty
Advisors (Contacts) and Performance
for reporting across the entire
business.
By having all this data at their finger
tips and being able to slice and dice it
across accounts, brands, geographies,
managers have been able to measure
the performance of each Advisor
against their weekly, monthly and
quarterly goals. And in turn, they
have been able to establish and
refine training programs based on
performance data to help improve
sales or reallocate Beauty Advisors
from one location or brand, to another
where they can have more impact.
Real-time Beauty Advisor Talent Analysis
• Custom Salesforce app
• Completed in 7 weeks
16. 16Operations
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
For a global high fashion and cosmetics
brand, managing field sales, including
orders and pipeline for retail stores,
was nothing short of a “spreadsheet
frenzy”. The 18 year-old homegrown
system built with LotusNotes eForms
involved lots of manual updates and
disconnected data. With data stored in
numerous disparate systems, tracking
and reporting tended to be done in
spreadsheets, offering no visibility
across the organization and taking up
a considerable amount of time from
both field sales reps and management.
Appirio deployed a custom Salesforce
CRM system that improved the field
sales experience by providing a
single point of reference for business
processes and an access point for SAP
data, including orders.
By reducing time spent on
administrative tasks, the new system
enables field sales personnel to spend
more time in stores coaching team
members, promoting products, and
driving customer satisfaction.
Cloud-based Retail Operations
• 200 users
• Salesforce CRM integrated with SAP
• Completed in 5 months
18. 18
CLOUD MOBILE SOCIAL
Retailer and Supplier
Relationships
The professional division of an
American multinational consumer
goods company serves a wide range
of industries, including food service.
With thousands of customers under
its belt, the company was experiencing
difficulty managing service requests
from business partners and as a result,
the company’s response time was
suffering.
With the help of Appirio, the company
revamped how they manage customer
service requests, content and metrics
by developing a custom-skinned portal
with a dashboard gauge component
displaying metrics on store cleanliness
and compliance, based on inspection
reports.
The securely available portal not only
makes it easier for business partners
to submit and track requests, it is also
customized to their individual brand,
making it a familiar and easy-to-use
experience.
Branded Partner Community
• Improved response time
• Custom branded Salesforce portal
• Completed in 10 weeks
19. Getting Started on Your Path to the Cloud
If you’re inspired by these examples and want to get started on your path to the cloud,
we’ve identified three simple steps to get started.
Assess Current State Identify and Prototype
Opportunities
Create Cloud
Transformation Roadmap
Start by understanding your
company’s strategic priorities
and how the current technology
aligns with those priorities. The
objective is to identify where
the biggest gaps are.
The next step is identifying
the areas where cloud, mobile
and social technology could
help achieve business goals
more quickly and efficiently
(take a look at our customer
use cases as a starting point).
We suggest starting with a
long list that you can prioritize
based on potential impact and
risk. Consider crowdsourcing
development of your cloud
prototypes or PoCs if you don’t
have the expertise in-house.
The final step is prioritizing
opportunities. Assess the risk
and reward associated with
each opportunity and then
sequence projects based on
your appetite for risk and
financial objectives. Turning the
roadmap into reality requires
a solid business case as well
as a change plan for your
organization. Quick wins and
prototypes are keys to getting
commitment to drive a broad
cloud transformation program.