Perfetti Brings in Business Efficiency with Collaboration Tools
A case study on Collaboration in FMCGExecutive Summary
In a world filled with data, complexity and unfriendly technology, it’s the simple that often gets heard. Basant Kumar Chaturvedi lived that credo when he introduced unified communications at Perfetti and changed the way India’s largest candy maker did business.
What’s sweet, popular, and takes plenty of a lot of collaboration to sell? Candy. No jokes. At Perfetti Van Melle India, executives have spent an impressive Rs 6.6 crore on travel — just in the last 10 months. Collaboration costs, that’s the bitter truth. And not bitter in the way chocolate can be. Perfetti Van Melle India isn’t exactly small. As the makers of Alpenliebe, Marbels,
Center Fresh and a dozen other candies and gums that have become household names, Perfetti has about a quarter of the Indian sugar confectionary market. But even for the big daddy of candy, a Rs 6.6-crore tab for teamwork wasn’t easy to digest.
Case Study Highlights
Perfetti Van Melle India operates from 48 locations within the country, including one actory in Rudrapur (pop. 88,720), a small town in Uttarakhand, probably most known for its proximity to Nainital. That's how it is at Perfetti. Because its operations are so spread out, travel became a norm or Perfetti’s executives. Meetings and discussions — part of every business’ veryday functioning — meant extensive travel at erfetti. This, Basant Kumar Chaturvedi, Perfetti’s senior manager IT, figured could be replaced by online collaboration tools.
Chaturvedi chose a Web-based on-demand business collaboration service that includes chat, voice conferencing, video conferencing, the ability to make sales presentations and even the ability to run a remote IT helpdesk. With this service in place, business units could collaborate using any media — chat, voice or video — with manufacturing units and regional sales office alike. Apart from the expenses it would save, he knew it would lead to greater visibility within the company and quicker decisions. But experience told him that getting people to change the way they work is among the hardest things to do. One of the biggest bottlenecks to the success of a project that involves collaboration tools is user acceptance. As is installing and troubleshooting an application at remote locations. This is where Chaturvedi played to the role of a simplifier to perfection. Rather than face these issues by going with a custom-built application — and endanger a project he knew could transform the way business at Perfetti was done — he took a Web-based service route. His strategic decision meant that there would be no installation and support hassles, and that all users needed to do to join a meeting is click a link. His decision to keep an enterprisewide project as simple as possible got it immediate buy in. Interactions with Perfetti offices in other countries including Dubai, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are now done over this service. In fact, Perfetti’s so taken up with the service, it’s taken it beyond its own locations. For instance, the company now uses it to interact with their tax and excise consultants. And the HR department is looking into conducting interviews remotely by sending potential recruits an e-mail with a link to an online meeting. Ramesh Chari R., CFO, Perfetti says he uses the service three to four times a week. As the head of finance, he appreciates the cost savings that flowed to the bottom line post the implementation of the service. “The intention of this project was to achieve business efficiency,” he says. And it looks like it’s met that goal.
The Person Behind It
the decision to turn to collaborative tools was easy. How to get everyone on board was harder.
the decision to turn to collaborative tools was easy. How to get everyone on board was harder.
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