O4 Corp turns up the heat!

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 22 April 2009 09:36

Business IT - Technology

Australia’s O4 Corporation is to give a real make-over to Melbourne-based cosmetic and personal care distributors, The Heat Group, who will replace an old, manual laptop system used by its sales teams with O4’s mobile sales force automation solution.

Under the contract with O4, The Heat Group will use the O4 Solution to ensure product availability, and build sales and retail performance across its nationwide sales force through faster, more informed decisions in-store and out in the field. The company is one of the largest distributors of cosmetics and personal care products in Australia, working with major retailers and pharmacies like Target, Kmart, Myer, BigW, Coles, Woolworths and Priceline.

The Heat Group’s sales director, John Simcocks, said the company had outgrown its previous laptop system that required marketing and promotional CDs to be manually posted to sales teams each month. It would now be replaced with O4’s software on personal digital assistant (PDA) devices to enable electronic access to key information when it’s needed in the field.

Simcocks said O4’s retail execution software meant the company could now assess in-store activities and base sales and relay ‘live’ information to its marketing teams, sales account managers and display teams in head office for immediate action.
 
“By eradicating the time-consuming tasks of writing down and faxing orders, manually capturing display and point of sale information, and hunting through manual files for latest pricing, we can place and process orders within 24 hours to ensure in-store activities are generating best revenues.”

Simcocks said each sales team member made around five or more store visits each day, and relied on accurate, efficient, easy-to-use mobile support.
 
“We needed to upgrade the system we had, to help minimise the time required in each store. This time can now be spent with retail customers themselves, identifying the correct cosmetics stock, and ensuring the best promotions strategy.”
CONTINUED page 2