CI&T creates new mobile app for Brazil Kirin

Summary

Challenge 

Offering an application to the sales team with real-time data and a customer first, user-friendly interface, to support the sales process reducing team's dissatisfaction.

Solution 

The user experience design guides the salesperson through the sales process instead of being a hurdle. Data is offered in real time, the journey reflects the challenges faced on the day-to-day, and a robust device can handle the tough routine of the sales team.

Results

Order-taking time and time to train newcomers are reduced by half. Trade Marketing can manage the point of sales and obtain competitors data. Support costs are reduced and used on improvements rather than fixing bugs. In such a competitive market, this robust solution will pull Brasil Kirin to continue growing its market share.

Challenge

Brasil Kirin, part of the Japanese owned Kirin Company, is a leading brewery and beverage supplier in Brazil, where its brands are distributed by 19 exclusive centers and more than 190 resellers to around 600k points of sale.

The beverage market operates with slim profit margins and is highly competitive, as 70% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale. Therefore, restocking and distribution are critical factors for success

Background

The mobile sales solution used until 2014 presented problems and needed to be updated. Overloads during the synchronization of orders and frequent errors made a lot of salespeople resort to keeping a paper backup. Devices were outdated, training new salespeople was time-consuming and support was expensive. The app did not count on real-time data and made stock consultations and clients' financial information difficult, which caused dissatisfaction and brought overwork to the company's support.

The challenge brought by Brazil Kirin was to solve this hurdle for good.

Why CI&T

All information had to be available online, providing integration between technologies and systems, making the solution agile and giving the salesperson autonomy to make decisions at the point of sale with the business owner.

CI&T's team has proven expertise on integrations and made a UX-oriented proposal. The team went to real-life conditions and followed the salesteam routine, understanding the sales process in detail, the team's needs and difficulties. The UX ideation was based on Design Thinking to structure the navigation flow and produce a clickable prototype. This way, users have access to the main task without blocks and in less steps.

As part of the solution, CI&T recommended Google Analytics - to collect informations about the salesperson flow in the app, measuring, for example, the most-viewed screens, viewing time on each screen, as well as the sales performance throughout the day.

Optimization

To guarantee reliability and availability of informations in real time, CI&T coordinated the integration of technologies such as Java, Android and SAP (BW, SD, CRM e SMP). SAP Mobile Platform was the technology used to integrate Android and SAP, simplifying security and communication between these platforms and online data transfer to salespeople via 3G.

There are not any other references in the market of this technology being used under these conditions; CI&T developed the needed expertise, transforming this project in one of the biggest SMP cases worldwide.

The old PDAs were replaced by smartphones Samsung S4 mini, in a special issue with an extra battery attached to the phone cover to last all day long. Samsung has been investing strongly in the corporate market and was the only vendor capable of fulfilling the security levels demanded by Kirin. With Knox technology, it was possible to manage every configuration of the sales team devices securely and remotely, increasing even more the inviolability of the new app developed.

Results

The new app supports the salesperson every step along the sales process. For the Trade Marketing department there were considerable gains, allowing to offer, through the app, a checklist for verification of the point of sale, from stock checking to product placement (planogram), and even allowing to send pictures. It is also possible to do gather data on competitors, everything easily customizable on the backoffice environment.

Google Analytics adoption confirmed the choices made regarding the navigation flow. It proved, for example, the importance of the daily schedule where salespeople spend a third of their time. The data also help with app support, previewing potentially problematic screens, and help business intelligence by yielding data such as the average ticket and number of logged in users each hour.

Training new sales people to use the tool takes 30 to 50% less time than before, speeding solution implementation and reducing training costs. Orders are taken 50% faster than in the previous version of the app, and sent immediately, allowing sales indicators to be updated in real time. If there are any problems with the smartphone chip or the network signal, the whole operation can be performed offline and synchronized at a later time. The app gives the salesperson peace of mind and allows them to retire backup methods such as paper notes. Currently, the app is used by more than 1200 salespeople, with an average use rate of 15k visits per day, 6k orders/day, processing 40% of Brasil Kirin's income.

The sales team is extremely satisfied. Application support, also provided by CI&T, uses 90% of its time to implement improvements, since the solution is so stable. The next phase of this project will be to adapt the solution to resellers, responsible for the other 60% of income.