Mondelez International Builds The Amazing Wall
The consumer goods sales rep by nature is creative and communicative. Yet, outdated organizational processes often uphold barriers between them that prevent the collaborative sharing of ideas.As one of its first orders of business, the Mondelez Canada Sales Organization broke down these barriers and resurrected a new wall that connects, rather than separates, its entire sales organization.
In the old way of doing things, sales reps for Mondelez Canada would take pictures of in-store displays on a digital camera, upload them onto a PowerPoint slide and then e-mail them to a manager who cascaded the images up through the sales organization. Images were then shared on a TV screen in the main lobby of the head office, a location not visible to the many sales reps located in satellite or home offices across the country. Thus, there was a major opportunity for the company’s Information Systems (IS) and Sales teams to work together to both streamline and enhance this process.
Using smartphones and the company’s internal social sharing tool (powered by Sitrion, formerly NewsGator)) as inspiration, Hamid Khan, IT lead for Sales, developed a concept wherein reps could snap-and-share photos at retail in one easy step using a mobile app connected to its social sharing platform.
“Similar to how we all use social media to share photos with family and friends, this process allowed for instant sharing and real-time action and reaction,” says Khan. “The process includes adding a small description on their success and also using a few predefined hash tags on their post for easy filtering by others.”
After a short pilot, the IS and Sales teams rolled out the process and technology, dubbed “The Amazing Wall”, nationwide in six weeks.
The shared images — ranging from large-scale cookie and cracker displays to small gum counter units and even roadside signage to call out a promotion or hot price — immediately became visible to sales leadership, account teams and peers.
“In addition to the significant time savings for reps to share their images of success and for leadership to commend them, The Amazing Wall established a social sharing environment allowing reps to comment and congratulate each other on jobs well done, or replicate visually stunning displays at their retail stores,” explains Stephen Goodfellow, regional business manager, Sales, Mondelez Canada.
For example, one rep shared a photo of a point-of-sale display of Maynard’s single-serve candy positioned by a drug store’s checkout counter and mentioned that the store was next to a movie theater. This had others considering similar opportunities. Likewise, a shared image of a Cadbury Dairy Milk display setup in the floral department of a grocery store inspired other reps to think “outside the aisle”.
Currently, this innovative process is only rolled out in Canada. “Yet, Mondelez International recognizes the value of collaboration and we are looking at ways to further improve collaboration in Canada and other areas,” closes Goodfellow.
“Similar to how we all use social media to share photos with family and friends, this process allowed for instant sharing and real-time action and reaction.”
– Hamid Khan, IT Lead for Sales, MondelEz Canada