Case Study

Asian Paints revitalizes field sales and productivity with IBM Lotus solutions
Asian Paints Limited is Indias largest paint company and Asias thirdlargest paint company, operating in over 65 countries. Since its inception in 1942, the companys paint has been used on thousands of houses, factories and automobiles.
Challenge
Asian Paints has a sales force team of over 600 personnel who service 25,000 dealers that in turn sell paint to end consumers. Since business processes were manually managed from the field, managing expectations for such a large and diverse population of dealers around information, order taking, query handling and more was a challenge. Salespeople had to travel back to depots to perform tasks like registering orders, filing reports or checking on complaint status, resulting in time delays with limited online information. With an automated sales force solution, Asian Paints could accelerate the sales process and improve efficiency. Asian Paints also had a need to provide call center agents with very simple and intuitive office applications to manage basic data capture in the form of creating, editing and sharing spreadsheets, documents and presentations. A solution would need to be lightweight to accommodate call center computing limitations as well as based on open source technology to limit the cost impact of adopting new office software.

Overview Asian Paints Mumbai, India www.asianpaints.com Industry

Retail

Employees
4,260

Products
IBM Lotus Expeditor IBM Lotus Symphony

For more information, visit: ibm.com/lotus

Lotus Expeditor helped us empower our field sales team with the same strategic data we enjoy at headquartersand improved productivity in the process.
Deepak Bhosale, Chief Manager IT, Asian Paints

Solution
With the help of the IBM India Software Lab (ISL), Asian Paints successfully implemented a sales force automation initiative on personal digital assistants (PDAs) using the IBM Lotus Expeditor infrastructurea software framework for the construction, integration and deployment of managed client applications, which are deployed from, configured and managed via desktop or mobile device, usually by a remote server. Lotus Expeditor extends processes, information and applications in real time, allowing customers, business partners and employees to reap the benefits of integrationreal-time decision making and interaction that helps to improve productivity and increase revenue and profit.

The solution, called MPower, connects the Asian Paints field sales force to SAP CRM and SAP R/3 data at headquarters, allowing them to execute the following business tasks in real time: Process sales orders and check order status Check inventory in warehouse Take customer feedback and comments Synchronize data on PDA with back-end systems at regular intervals Set an automatic scheduler to synchronize the information (useful when the salesperson is in an area with no network connectivity) From the time the salesperson identifies a prospect to the time he or she closes the deal, the information is fed into the system so that sales managers can constantly monitor progress and even provide coaching online. The salesperson can enter information remotely. Since Lotus Expeditor allows data to be stored locally and later synchronized with the companys server, the salesperson can also continue to access and analyze the information while on the move. Asian Paints also rolled out IBM Lotus Symphony software to 100 users in its call center. Lotus Symphony provides an intuitive, richly-featured set of productivity tools based on open source technology that offer integration with traditional Microsoft Office applications at a minimal cost.

Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 Produced in the United States March 2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Lotus, Lotus Notes and Symphony are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. The information contained in this documentation is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this documentation, it is provided as is without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on IBMs current product plans and strategy, which are subject to change by IBM without notice. IBM shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related to, this documentation or any other documentation. Nothing contained in this documentation is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or representations from IBM (or its suppliers or licensors), or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of IBM software.

Benefits
Arming remote sales staff with mobile services and business-critical information accelerates the sales process The ability to process feedback in real time helps Asian Paints increase customer satisfaction Sales managers can monitor employee progress in real time and even provide coaching from headquarters to improve sales team performance Lotus Symphony is integrated with the companys IBM Lotus Notes messaging software, allowing call center agents to work from a single environment Familiar productivity tools minimize training demands on new call center employees Eliminated software licensing fees for productivity software, lowering total cost of ownership

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