Reference no: EM132231302

Unilever is an international company that owns brands in the food, beverage, cleaning agent, and personal care product industries. With 4 million consumer connections across all of North America, the volume of Unilever?s data is enormous. Consider this for Dove, one of Unilever?s many brands. Depending on what country the product is being shipped to, it must have different packaging with a different language and adhere to different countries? regulations. Production managers must work together with sales managers from different parts of the globe to ensure that the right order gets to the right destination with the right labeling. One can only imagine the amount of data Unilever accumulates from transactions for Dove and their additional 90 brands. Accessing Unilever?s large, complex product information database was slowing response times to customer inquiries and affecting sales negatively because the sales team did not have adequate access to organized, pertinent information. Managers were challenged because the data they needed was not on their desk until it was too late or the information was unable to be found at all. Over a period of years, Unilever had been building its database with product, health, and ingredient information and made the database accessible to agents. Agents, whose responsibility is to engage with customers, are the faces and voices of brands. It is easy to see why agents need access to the right information at the right time. The problem was that because the database had been built up over time by many different contributors, the organization of the database was lacking. Some information was in the database multiple times, sometimes under different titles. Some information was not there at all. The internal product information database was extremely user unfriendly. In order for the customer relations employees to run a search, they had to go through a „trees? system in which the only way to exit was to back out, requiring six clicks. This was a time- consuming process with a customer on the phone. The database?s disorganization and processing method were costly for Unilever on two levels. The first being an internal support team costs time and money. The second issue is that the unorganized database was hurting the sales of the agents who had to muck through the trees system while a customer waited on the line for an answer to their inquiry. The telephony system was another aspect that needed to be updated to become more centralized. Needless to say, Unilever?s database system had many areas for improvement. Unilever turned to Astute Solutions to streamline their product information. They implemented a „one- click? approach to database navigation which made it much easier to navigate the database and thus to accurately respond to customer inquiries in a timely fashion. Visual images of labels and web links were also available to inform employees of ingredients, some of which had unpronounceable names. Not having to leave a desk to retrieve a bottle or label information saved a lot of time. As elementary as it may sound, one of the most useful aspects of Astute?s solutions was the natural language screen that caught common misspellings. The telephony system was upgraded to a single system with multiple contact centers with call controls embedded with ePowerCenter Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. All calls were recorded to prevent any „he said/she said? scenarios. The Astute system they chose to install was a “learn-by-use” system, saving the company money in training costs that are associated with a traditional “babysitting” system, which requires much more over-the-shoulder training. Management Information Systems 7/e Instructor’s Manual Chapter 9 Although the changes were not welcomed by Unilever employees, the changes did pay off. The results of the changes made by Astute Solutions led to a 50 percent reduction in calls made to the internal help desk, a sign of a user-friendly database. Unilever has also achieved a 95 percent web self-service accuracy rate and has experienced a 90 percent reduction in email volume as a result of effective online self-service. How do these results affect the bottom line? Unilever has received an annual savings of $4.4 million in addition to a sales impact of about $9 million. In addition to those statistical results, an organized and streamlined approach to product information that is accessible across all company fields can add predictive value to a company?s data. Unilever?s streamlined approach to data management has reduced response times and saved the company millions in reduced support costs. Unilever?s next step is to move more into social CRM.

Thinking About the Case

1. When management said that pre-kitting helped to support more efficient operations and inventory, discuss what you believe they found.

2. The vending machines capable of Internet connectivity are more expensive to purchase and operate for the company. Discuss how the new technology and connectivity benefit the organization.

3. Technology adoption is often called either “leading edge” or “bleeding edge.” Do you believe that the pre-Quickstore 24 technology implemented by Foley had any benefit to the organization? Or was it an inefficient use of funds and resources?