Always ePromode is one of the largest brand activation agencies in Malaysia. The company actively drives clients’ marketing campaigns through brand activation events across Malaysia, by effectively leveraging their nationwide presence—14 locations across Peninsular and East Malaysia—and their extensive partnerships of over 2000 retailers such as hypermarkets, pharmacies, and petrol stations.
The future is data-driven
As a next step, the company looked to reinforce its market leadership by breaking new ground, a future in which digital transformation plays a key role. “Data-driven transformation allows us to have more meaningful and personal engagements with customers which reinforce our market leadership,” shared Patrick Goh, Managing Director of Always ePromode.
However, it faced immediate administrative and technical roadblocks that threatened to derail its plan for more seamless operations and responsive client reporting—operational staff were still manually reporting all activation rates such as sales, conversions, merchandising, retail related operations and event attendance which was prone to human error. “We’ve found out that manual reporting brings a lot of inefficiencies. Verification was difficult due to bad writing and inaccurate reporting by some of the field operation personnel, and what’s more it’s slow,” said Patrick Goh.
These inefficiencies protracted the turnover time for client reporting which could take up to 2 weeks to a month. With more than 160 employees and 2000 promoters/merchandisers (and field operational tasks) across Malaysia, the company knew that the only way to protect their reputation and push ahead with market expansion was to embark on digital transformation—they needed to streamline solutions and launch innovative services fast.
And the first thing to accomplish was to digitize reporting. The company aimed to go a step further by enabling real-time reporting, tracking and analysis of data which would offer clients more visibility into their brand activation campaigns.
Going digital for faster reporting
The ePromode team found their answer in RetailAIMTM, a field-force automation system application which was developed in-house and runs on Azure. Now all field operation personnel like promoters, merchandisers, and their supervisors can update attendance, sales figures, stock levels, and other retail-related information in real time, greatly facilitating client reporting. Azure’s 24/7 performance monitoring and alerts also offers equips ePromode’s activation teams with the insights and performance management information they need to offer clients quality data—round-the-clock.
A platform for agile innovation
And the company is taking it further by equipping clients with more real-time insights of brand activation campaigns. “We’ve also developed our very own in-house solution portal, QuickViewTM, which allows our clients to monitor day-to-day field operations complete with real-time data.” With this application clients now gain more transparency and visibility into their marketing campaigns, further reinforcing ePromode’s credibility as well as value-add for clients—90% of clients are now using the solution, signaling a new competitive differentiation for the company.
“Our adoption of Microsoft Azure allowed us to streamline capital expenses, and opened the way for us to cost-effectively develop new applications,” shared David Ng, ISIT Director. “From coding and testing to deployment of the software, we sped up everything with less resources. With Microsoft Azure, we’ve got a total solution that enables us to achieve unprecedented efficiencies which improves our speed to market.”
ePromode’s digital transformation journey is well underway, enabling the company to go from maximizing efficiency to pioneering new solutions for growth. As Patrick Goh shared, “We are now confidently able to leverage on Microsoft Azure to take us into new markets effortlessly. The best thing is to hear our customers share how happy they are with our service, which differentiates us from competitors.”
“From coding and testing to deployment of the software, we sped up everything with less resources. With Microsoft Azure, we’ve got a total solution that enables us to achieve unprecedented efficiencies which improves our speed to market. Azure has given us an opportunity to build new services such as RetailAIMTM. We’ve also developed our very own inhouse solution portal—QuickViewTM. It’s a portal which allows our clients to monitor day-to-day field operations complete with real-time data.”
David Ng, ISIT Director
“We are now confidently able to leverage on Microsoft Azure to take us into new markets effortlessly. The best thing is to hear our customers share how happy they are with our service, which differentiates us from competitors.”
Patrick Goh, Managing Director, Always ePromode