Background
ACNielsen is a renowned and respected worldwide market research company providing an integrated suite of market information products, advanced information management tools, sophisticated analytical systems and professional client services.
‘Homescan’ is ACNielsen Australia’s program for collecting data on purchasing habits from a voluntary group of consumers referred to as ‘panelists’. Panel members can redeem points they’re allocated for participating in the program for a range of rewards – anything from soccer balls to ipods to telescopes.
The Corporate Express role
Headed by GM Promotional Marketing Ross Stevenson, a specifically chosen Corporate Express Promotional Marketing team is charged with the ongoing task of running the Homescan catalogue program. This essentially involves sourcing the best quality, most appropriate products to use as rewards, shooting the products and providing descriptive text to create both a hard copy and online catalogue, warehousing and controlling the stock and distributing stock to panelists.
ACNielsen’s Senior Manager, Wendi Neilson, explains, “We work closely with Corporate Express to come up with innovative products to appeal to our panelists, working within a specified budget. The variety of products is huge – well over 100 – and we’re often placing up to 50 orders per day through the CE NetXpress system, increasing to up to around 150 during the Christmas period.”
The Corporate Express objectives
• Source the latest ‘hot’ items and gadgets
• Source products of quality that will perform as they’re meant to
• Source the best possible products for the assigned budget
• Deliver the product to panelists within a specified time frame
• Smoothly resolve any issues with faulty products, non-delivery or dissatisfaction
Learning ACNielsen’s business inside out
Wendi Neilson comments, “The edge that the CE team has is that they all work incredibly hard to learn our business from the ground up, to the point where we now effectively see them as an extension of our own team, and you can’t get much tighter than that. They basically run the show at our weekly meetings … it’s like they’ve just come in from the next office … and they’ve always dealt with all of the issues from the previous week.
At CE’s request we’ve been on a number of site visits to see their warehousing facilities, which has been invaluable for us. It means we get to see the stock first-hand, check out their inventory control, packaging and security … it’s such a streamlined operation and it reassures us that when they give us stats on stock values and the like, that they’re correct and tightly monitored.
After the site visit, Ross suggested that the CE team come out and sit with our helpline staff (the people who take all the queries and orders for rewards from panellists) so they could learn exactly how the process works. On the back of this visit they came up with some invaluable suggestions – ideas we would never have thought of … things that we’ve genuinely implemented and have definitely saved us time and effort.
Our level of confidence in CE is high enough that we now let our panellists have some direct contact with their team, meaning we no longer need to waste time playing the middleman on certain issues. For example, previously, if a panellist received a soccer ball that happened to be flat, they could ring our helpline for suggestions on how to fix it. However, we now allow CE team members to contact them directly, which makes perfect sense as they’re the ones with all the product knowledge … that’s our level of trust.”
The Corporate Express difference
“When it comes to sourcing products, the CE team is extremely passionate and proactive and really in tune with the market,” says Wendi. “They’re constantly coming up with innovative, often completely left of centre suggestions, and if we ever have a situation where a line is discontinued or unavailable, they’re whizzes when it comes to sourcing an alternative, looking both locally and internationally to find it. They’re incredibly good fun to work with which our team loves and their enthusiasm is constantly evident.
One thing that’s become really apparent is that the CE team genuinely cares about our panelists. We had a case where a product didn’t make it to one recipient and one of their team actually offered to come back from holidays, pick up the product and drive it to them … you can’t fault that level of dedication.
They’re also exceptionally honest, and ethics and integrity are incredibly important to us. If there’s a problem they’ll always inform us first, but they’ll also present us with solutions to fix it.
It’s fair to say that they regularly go above and beyond the call of duty, and their senior people are incredibly hands on, which is reassuring. I know I can call Ross or any of the team at any time and they’ll bend over backwards to do what I need.
We’re at the stage with CE now that we’re totally comfortable and secure with them and we’re confident to leave issues solely in their hands because we just know we can rely on them to sort it out. It’s great to know that we can put the phone down and forget about it – we don’t have to chase them, we just know it will be done, and quickly – we generally have solutions within 24 hours or less.
Most of it comes down to the team they’ve put together – having the right people really is the key. We’ve had communication issues on both sides in the past, but the way they turned the situation around and put extra resources towards solving the problems is really a testament to their professionalism. Whenever we give them feedback, they always really listen and take it on board – they’re great at just picking up the ball and running with it.
Because market forces change all the time our programs are likely to change, and we know that Corporate Express is flexible enough to change with us.
