A toast to workforce mobility at Campari Australia

Brad Madigan is an 11- year veteran of the liquor industry and in that time the national sales director for Campari Australia has managed his teams through numerous changes in the industry, both economic and industry.  

And easily the biggest driver of that change has been technology.

“As the service expectations of our customers change, we really need to be ahead of the curve in terms of leveraging digital and technological advances to meet those expectations,” Brad said.

“The single biggest expectation of our customers is access to real-time information. In 2015 we can’t sell product based on a print-out of information; our customers want to see videos, sales forecasts, category drivers and detailed product specifications and they want to interact with this information in real time during our face-to-face sales meetings.”

In July, Campari Australia rolled out a fleet of Microsoft Surface Pro 3’s to its entire sales force. The 60 person sales team, are now as productive in the field as they would be at a desk with a desktop computer. Feedback from the field highlights that the device’s speed and portability, along with the functionality in being able to use a touch-screen or pen, is adding a high degree of ease and professionalism to the service they provide.

The Surface Pro 3 adds a new dimension to the sales process. Not only is all the information on each customer available via the CRM system, but all product information, presentations and videos can be shared with customers in real-time. Orders can be taken directly on the device, expediting the sales cycle. The portability of the Surface also means the sales team no longer needs to carry around other materials: they can just pick up their device and go.

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On the internal side there is much more visibility into the sales team’s activity in the market. KPIs can be measured and tracked in real-time and reporting at weekly and quarterly intervals becomes less of a burden.

Loic Herbin, IT Director for Campari Asia-Pacific, said that selecting the Surface Pro 3 in order to enable a mobile workforce was a fairly easy choice: “A couple of years ago you could either deploy iPads or laptops – with the Surface Pro 3 we really have the best of both worlds. As an IT professional, you want to be able to provide your team with the best equipment,  while, at the same time, ensuring you can support the device and, importantly, secure the platform.”

“Our first foray into the mobility world was with a traditional tablet device,” he said. ”We wrongly assumed that our sales team would be using the devices to simply show presentations they had created at their desks. However we soon learned they wanted to use the devices as they would a desktop computer – and with the Surface Pro 3 they are certainly able to do just that.

“It’s satisfying to see the great work the guys are able to do once equipped with such a powerful and mobile platform.”

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“One of the features that our team seemed to love the most was the Surface Pen and the way it integrated with OneNote. The ability to draw – precisely might I add – directly onto the device on OneNote was something that resonated really well with the sales team. It’s a feature they are using at almost every meeting, finding it provides a real interactive dynamic to the sales process.”

Feedback from the local team has been positive across the board and that enthusiasm has filtered throughout the Australian business. Although the original plan was to only deploy Surface Pro 3s to the local sales team, results have been so strong that the rest of the Australian team is now calling for the devices. The executive team has already received their devices and deployment will continue to the rest of the business in 2016.

Outside of the Surface Pro 3, Campari Australia is also leveraging the entire Microsoft Stack. All Australian employees use Microsoft Lync and will be moving to Skype for Business in the near future. Also, the company is using SCCM together with WSUS to push updates to the workstation and Microsoft MDT to deploy the tablets.

Excitingly, Campari Australia is also looking to deploy Windows 10 throughout the workforce in Australia, a project which is already in the beta phase.

The Australian liquor industry is extremely dynamic, with constant change the norm. The market tastes are continually transforming and competition and regulation are always a challenge. However, by staying ahead of the technology curve, by innovating and investing in devices like the Surface Pro 3, Campari Australia has been able to remain at the cutting edge of the Australian liquor industry.

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