Helped Whirlpool's Baltic European marketing departments gather and analyze point-of-sale information from hundreds of locations.

Organization

Whirlpool Corporation is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. During the 1990s, together with Phillips, the company created two new subsidiaries to sell and service appliances in Hungary (Whirlpool Hungarian Trading Ltd.) and Slovakia (Whirlpool Tatramat). Later, Whirlpool Europe opened sales subsidiaries in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia.  Whirlpool coordinated the marketing and sales efforts of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from its Warsaw sales office.

Problem

A key problem for manufacturers is to ensure that their distribution and retail partners adequately feature and market their products to favorably reflect the brand and influence the sale. In 2001 Whirlpool's Warsaw's sales office sought to coordinate an effort to collect information about the characteristics and quality of product placement across most of its retail sales partners in the Baltic states of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It needed to collect detailed information about product displays and bring the data together in a way that would be accessible to analysis. Once priorities were identified, reports would need to be prepared to quickly report on vendor quality and compliance with contractual obligations.

Solution

The regional marketing department consulted with Newitech on how to most cost-effectively and accurately collect information from the field and disseminate the key findings to decision makers. Newitech's consultants were able to propose an elegant solution that would fit with Whirlpool's technological capabilities and needs. The proposed process would involve having account managers log survey information on a printed questionnaire while visiting retail locations. Information about product placement in store windows and other key information could quickly be tallied on brief forms. The surveys could then be mailed to Warsaw for quick processing. The surveys were scanned, results tallied, and reports disseminated.

Newitech was able to leverage its experience in developing large-scale automated document data entry (see government ordered cross country examining solution OKE'Y) to develop a simple solution that melded offline data collection with online analysis. Once requirements were finalized, Newitech's engineers were able to quickly assemble the system, test, and make it available for the marketing team. Newitech prepared the overall solution including software, deployment, training and designing the questionnaires.

Results

The system allowed the marketing department to conduct multiple rounds of surveys. The data revealed the key problem areas and allowed  their account managers to effectively manage the sales partnerships and for the central marketing department in Warsaw to develop strategies and guidelines to assist their sales managers.  

Key Technologies

• Microsoft MFC based application
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Crystal Reports
• FineReader’s OCR engine