In early March, the pandemic stopped being something I read about on the news and became something that impacted my daily life and work. Just like it did to billions of people and businesses all over the world. Soon, countries globally announced nationwide lockdowns restricting the movement of people.
While governments did their best to ensure the uninterrupted flow of essentials and goods, it did not take much more than restricted movement and panicked customers to choke supply chains, globally. Most retailers failed to meet consumer demand, and most brands struggled to ensure timely distribution. It raised a big question in Bizom’s product huddle, “How can we help our customers in this hour of need?”
For anyone associated with Bizom, “Algorithmic Jugaad” is a phrase that’s hard to miss. It means creating frugal innovations at the periphery. It’s an ideology deeply ingrained in our thinking, in the way we function as a company, and in the way we solve problems. The same ideology influenced us this time as well. We built innovative solutions to help our customers meet the current supply chain demands:
Bizom Retailer App – Rethinking distribution for the times of social distancing
With social distancing being the norm, the Bizom Retailer app helps consumer brands enable self-ordering from their Key Retail Outlets. It significantly reduces the number of visits required by the sales team to service the retailer.
Apart from moving to a pull-based distribution, Bizom Retailer App already helps brands notify retailers on active promotions, provide insights on store demand, enable trade settlements, and much more.
Read more about Bizom Retailer App here
Bizom Eagle Eye – Channelling sales efforts on servicing the outlets that matter, in these uncertain times
In a time when frontline sales and distribution teams work from home, how can consumer brands identify retailers who truly matter? The ones who are open and catering to the increasing customer demand in these times? More importantly, how can they identify the SKUs that sell the most?
The answer lies in Bizom Eagle Eye. It enables your sales teams with almost real-time, actionable, insights. What’s more? It also analyses your outlet universe with all the retailers on Bizom to identify heatmaps of regions that should be your primary focus for orders, fulfillment, and budget benefits for distributors.
Read more about Bizom Eagle Eye here
Bizom Store Finder– Enable your customers to find your products in stores closest to them
While most retailers stayed open and went to great lengths to ensure customers always got their essentials, they failed to stock all products they earlier did. It meant consumers did not always get their favorite brands and brands lost market share to regional players.
Bizom’s StoreFinder enables your brand-loyal customers to find retailers closest to them stocking their favorite products. What’s more? We also analyze retailers’ orders to only display outlets that have recently been ordered.
Read more about Bizom StoreFinder here
Bizom – Yellow Messenger Partnership – Empowering Kirana stores to transact directly with both brands and consumers on WhatsApp
E-commerce platforms and retail chains failed to meet consumer demand during the pandemic. The last ones standing are our local mom-and-pop shops, or as we call them in India – the Kirana stores.
The partnership between Bizom and Yellow Messenger will enable consumers and retailers to order directly from the brand through WhatsApp. The chatbot orchestrates multiple backend integrations and responds to consumer product-related queries both on desktop and mobile platforms.
Read more about Bizom and Yellow Messenger’s partnership here
It took me a year at Bizom to truly understand that the phrase “Algorithmic Jugaad” is much more than a few mentions in company updates, and posters in the office. It’s a customer-obsessed mindset of solving distribution challenges in almost real-time.
If you would like to know more about any of the above solutions or partnerships, please drop a note at marketing@mobisy.com.
