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@ WORK e-tterly butterly amul India's first e-nabled foods company has served up a 3-course virtual meal of Topicals, e-Commerce, nd nostalgia. By R.Chandrasekhar One day, e-Commerce may even become its bread-and-butter. The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF)-the marketing arm of the National Dairy Development Board-is the first food-products marketing organisation in the country to be e-Commerce enabled. Not only can customers buy products on amul.com, the Website also succeeds in proactively using the Net to promote an endearing Indian brand. And the state-level apex body of milk co-operatives in Gujarat-which markets fresh milk, dairy products, edible oils, and ice-cream-has beaten transnational food companies to occupy the delicious first-mover position. Cool as cheese? Co-operative, affirms B.M. Vyas, the 49-year-old Managing Director of GCMMF. ''We are not a food company,'' he smiles. ''We are an infotech company in the foods business.'' That infotech-and the Net-is underlying the new thinking at GCMMF is apparent from its early-bird entry into the Net, in March, 1996. ''Mass communication and transparency of operations are key factors in our kind of business,'' says Vyas, ''and the Net provides the perfect synergy to our business.'' Indiaworld Communications' Rajesh Jain, who is now better known as the man who sold a clutch of portals to Satyamonline last year, agrees. In March, 1996, GCMMF approached him to design the Amul Website. Avers Jain, 33: ''GCMMF wanted a 6-month contract. This was unusual.'' Used to selling Netspace for a week or a month at the maximum, Jain was impressed by GCMMF's long-term view. Says Jain: ''We finalised the rates in less than 3 hours, and the Amul Topical appeared the next day, just in time for the cricket World Cup semi-final, on the IndiaWorld homepage.'' ''The decision to outsource the Website was deliberate,'' says R.S. Sodhi, 40, Head (Marketing), GCMMF. It was, after all, a specialised job for which the company did not have in-house skills. ''And what is noteworthy is that the page has continuously evolved,'' he adds. A SERVING OF NOSTALGIA. Taking Amul Topicals-Sylvester da Cunha's long-running advertising campaign, featuring the Amul Moppet in a host of topical situations-global was the raison d' etre of the Amul Website. To start with, GCMMF's goal was modest: reach out to Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). The pitch: nostalgia. Remember, Amul Topicals had been around since 1967. The hoardings were retrieved from the archives and placed on the Net. Within hours, e-mail started pouring in from NRIs, who had suddenly discovered their roots. And, soon enough, the billboards were being updated every week at amul.com. Like most corporate Websites, amul.com outlines the story of the co-operative effort, gives a profile of the markets and products, and traces the history of the brand. SPREADING INTO E-COMMERCE. Realising that the site needed a bit more to draw in viewers, amul.com has introduced recipes of Indian dishes on a regular basis. Subsequently, interactivity was slowly built into the site. In August, 1998, viewers of Amul Surabhi-the long-running weekly programme on Indian art and culture on Doordarshan-were asked to respond to posers at the end of the programme by e-mail. The winners got Amul gift hampers. The site draws upto 3,500 responses via e-mail per episode. And then, in keeping with its focus on cricket, the Amul Cricket Rankings were instituted. Here too, updated posers have been feeding a cricket-crazy audience. Meanwhile, GCMMF was laying the foundation for e-Commerce. The first development-a comprehensive TQM programme-was initiated around the time amul.com was set up. Three years down the line, the movement-which was conducted in collaboration with Eicher Consultancy-had cascaded down to wholesale dealers, who had been organised into specific Quality Circles. Which worked in tandem with the company's salesforce. The domino effect had delivered a structure that had put the customer-both internal and external-at the core of all activities at GCMMF. Then, in January, 1998, the company put into place an Information Systems Technology Plan, whose aim was to make gcmmf a wired organisation that delivers real-time data on-line. At that stage, a tie-up with the National Infomatics Centre was already in place, with a V-Sat connecting 12 member dairies and 7 zonal offices in Gujarat to gcmmf's headquarters at Anand. ''The purpose of the IST Plan was to align, more closely, the needs of the business with infotech,'' says S. Hegde, 37, GCMMF's head of infotech. This was done in 3 ways: »
Identification of critical business processes-being the marketing arm of
NDBB, dispatch and logistics were, clearly, the core processes for the
company. A CLICK OF INDIA. GCMMF was now ready to move into b2c e-Commerce. The first opportunity came in November, 1998, when it launched select Amul products in the US, in partnership with a US firm, Kanan Dairy Products Inc.. NRIs in the US could now visit Kanandairy.com to buy select products, like ghee, processed cheddar cheese, and dessert. And then, in June, 1999, GCMMF launched a cyberstore for Indian customers. Explains Vyas: ''This was not only a logical extension of our success in the US market, but a logical step forward in our journey in cyberspace.'' Customers in 75 Indian cities can order the complete range of Amul products on-line. They have to pay cash on delivery, and have to order a minimum of Rs 200 worth of products, which takes a couple of days to be delivered. GCMMF says the e-Commerce component has been a grand success. Avers Jayen Mehta, 30, Marketing Manager, GCMMF: ''We now have a database of 50,000 customers with profiles of their buying-patterns and -preferences. We can reach them for our new product launches even as we get direct feedback from them. The one-to-one communication has an emotive appeal at both ends, which enables us to develop relationship marketing.'' And what of the existing distribution chain? To start with, the retailer-there are about 500,000 of them all over the country-will not drive the e-commerce initiative. In fact, the number of retail outlets is expected to double to 1 million by 2005. Traditional marketing channels are not going to die in a hurry. But it is the wholesaler who will drive the e-Commerce segment. The reason: all cyberstore orders will be executed by the Net-savvy wholesale dealer. The incentive for the wholesaler to execute cybersales is that he can pocket the 8 per cent margin that the retailer would normally be entitled to. It does pay to keep all channels happy. Of course, there are issues GCMMF has to tackle. For instance, it is yet to move into on-line supply- and demand-chain management. But, within a year, it forsees dramatic improvements in cash-flows, thanks to Net-based financial transactions. As of today, each wholesale distributor sends financial instruments through courier, and it takes nearly a fortnight for sale proceeds to be credited. ''Net banking will reduce it to a single day,'' claims Sodhi. Then, the delivery mechanism-currently
courier-has to improve as the product is, after all, perishable. The
company is yet to use the Net to know which SKU is moving faster in the
market and, therefore, needs faster replenishment and which SKU is
stagnating, and, hence, needs to be taken off the shelves. When the
company is fully into e-chain management, the information-gap will be
reduced from 6 weeks to 1 day. ''It will enable us to decide quickly on a
product-mix that would ensure continuous growth for the company and faster
movement of tonnage,'' says Sodhi. Clearly, for Amul, it is just the
beginning of a long and finger-licking journey on the Net. |
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