Schwarzkopf

Our company's main policy is the focus on consumers. In distribution of Schwarzkopf & Henkel products in Russia via a distributor chain we arrange our activities in such a way that ensures obtaining comprehensive information and controlling activities of partners in accordance with the company's pricing policy, supervising operations of exclusive teams of sales representatives, and facilitating growth of their efficiency.

The expansion of the distribution chain involves problems in relationships with our business partners that are connected with significant distances from the Schwarzkopf & Henkel head office and human errors, in particular, in reporting. These factors reduce the efficiency of joint efforts of the manufacturer and distributors.

The distributors, which are mainly represented by 'multibrand' companies, increase their customer basis on a day-to-day basis and, respectively, the load on sales representatives, operators, and warehouses also increases.

Having analyzed the market situation, we decided to implement an automation system. In 2004, CDC won the bidding and shortly afterward the project for implementation of the OPTIMUM automation system in operations of distributors and Schwarzkopf & Henkel head office started.

Our distributors' sales representatives can now collect information in sales outlets in a rapid and efficient way having access to updated information about availability of products at warehouses. They can now serve each client on a basis of an individual scheme without wasting time (and eventually money) for search of price lists and making decisions regarding granting of discounts, since all required, and no less important, updated information is available the sales representative's PDA.

One can find on the marketplace many systems with functionalities required for sales force automation. BUT it is the solution offered by CDC that contains powerful and efficient distribution management mechanisms that we strongly need as a manufacturer.

When deploying the system in the chain of our distributors, we have found out that all of them operate different corporate information systems. Our CDC partners showed that this is not a problem since the OPTIMUM system is compatible with any accounting system operated by the customer, including 1С, BEST, Monolith, Domino, and distributors' proprietary products developed on the basis of Oracle, etc.

Currently the system is operated by more than 600 sales representatives at more than 50 sites of the Schwarzkopf & Henkel distributor chain.

After having started production operations of the system, we were able to dramatically streamline our efforts on efficient distribution of products in the manufacturer -> distributors -> distributors' affiliates -> clients chain.

Our experience shows that Optimum can fulfill any goal we set and provides unquestionable advantages to our company and our partners.

Slava Baranchikov

Distributor's Operation Head, Schwarzkopf & Henkel Russia