In Pawan Bakshi, Senior Manager-IT, Amway
What was the approach he took, as told by Bakshi
What is Unique?
I rolled out the Amway India website in 2008 in line with Amway's Global Framework; since then, ABOs (Amway Business Owners) have taken it very well; the online business grew from less than 1per cent of overall sales to 22 per cent until 2011.
The target for Year 2012 was to make it 30 per cent of overall sales. The challenge was to move more of existing ABOs and new ABOs to the website and increase the productivity per ABO to help continue the growth over the last couple of years.
My Involvement
As a project manager, I was given the responsibility to work towards achieving this target. I was asked to make IT strategies very much in sync with business strategies, which would enable the business team to achieve its goal for 2012. I was responsible for planning, cost benefits analysis, execution, and deployment of any solution as per plan.
Crucial Steps
Mine was a two-pronged approach with the focus on two aspects of the project - to address the business side and technical aspect of the project.
From the functionality standpoint, I focused more on stability and reliability of the solutions and strategies and provided additional features to business users.
On the business front, I roped in key business users (Internal) to understand the field feedback. I directly got in touch with key ABOs (we call them Amway Leaders) to know the truth, pain points and requirements. Also,
* Addressed their concerns related to existing features by fixing them
* Reiterated the benefits of using the website among ABOs like:
* Real time business information 24x7
* Convenience and ease in managing Amway business online
* Access to new product launches or product promotion starting midnight which is about 8-9 hours prior to the opening of the Amway offices, as offices open at 9-10 am
* Taking the help of business group to address any backend concerns and improve the response time. For instance, helped the Amway operation team in streamlining home delivery (as all the website orders are home delivery orders, it has major impact) by integration with a courier company and automating the internal processes
From a technical standpoint, I got a third party review of the complete solution to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, and took the initiative to address these areas; also, got the load and stress testing done to resize the infrastructure wherever required.
I also implemented solutions like Web Cache to improve content delivery and also reduce the load on backend servers and optimise them. To assure stability and reliability in the project and processes, I reviewed and revised the real time infrastructure monitoring strategy from reactive to pro-active mode, streamlined the integration with existing payment gateways for a better online payment experience to ABOs, beside ensuring high availability of critical infrastructure
Roped in Business leaders
I discussed the new features required with ABO leaders to understand common requirements across multiple ABOs groups, to get a sense of the business impact and value addition of these features. I introduced new features, reports which enabled ABOs to manage their Amway business at their convenience and more effectively, besides launching new payment modes.
There were challenges with regard to justifying the new investment for additional solutions, services and development; I presented a strong business case to management; demonstrated to Internal and External users the improvement in reliability, adoptability of online channel among end users (ABOs), and customer satisfaction levels.
I defined the existing performance, the total number of unique ABOs using the website for ordering, base lined user satisfaction to monitor improvement later on. For instance, I showed the increase in the ratio of ABOs using the website as a mode for placing orders, over last year.
Team Management
There was involvement of business groups in defining the scope of the project, role and responsibilities, expectations, business value and benefits to respective groups and to the company. I approached the project in terms of base lining the current website and performance, knowing the truth from the field directly, defining the key imperatives and success factors, partnered with brick and mortar channel of physical offices to track the Amway business and shop online. I got the buy-in of the proposed plan from internal and external users wherever applicable.
How is business impacted?
The project of increasing the penetration of Amway website with ABOs and its contribution to overall sale was well achieved when we gained the 30 per cent mark.
It also helped in improving the profitability as per order fulfillment; the cost at the website is lower as compared to ordering from a physical office.
Management support and involvement and ownership of business groups at various stages of the project helped us to drive better profitability without the ability of IT being questioned.
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