Divella brings order and pricing management to the cloud
The historic company, mill and manufacturer of pasta and biscuits, has chosen to improve and centralise its sales force automation (SFA) processes, ensuring the protection of company data and guaranteeing access to information even from mobile devices.
November 16, 2023
Challenge
Divella is a historic Italian company, founded in 1890, which has always been attentive to quality control, selection of raw materials and technological innovation. With a production of 1000 tons of dry pasta and 90 tons of biscuits per day, today it has an important presence on the market, exporting its food products to over 120 countries.
The business context of the project is developed in the modern and traditional channels on all product categories (dry and fresh pasta, biscuits, tomato preserves, oil, etc.), across relationships with both direct and indirect customers, the latter managed through a network of dealers.
Divella’s challenge was to renew the existing tools, to make the daily order management processes, both commercial and administrative, more efficient and fluid. Divella did not have mobile devices for the sales force, which limits agents’ access to commercial information; moreover, this information was available on different data sources, which made it difficult to analyse.
The management of all commercial conditions and their reliable and real-time application to orders, in all sales channels, is crucial for Divella. These processes require energy and resources, which Divella wants to make more efficient in order to improve the management responsiveness of the customer service team. A further challenge is to have new flexible and scalable solutions that allow a high degree of security and data protection according to the highest market standards, to enable the company to grow also abroad.
Approach
Divella carried out a screening of the best solutions on the market, looking for an option with the functional completeness and flexibility required to operate in the CPG sector in Italy.
From the existing partnership, built over more than 18 years, XTEL proposed to Divella the adoption of the renewed Sales Performance Platform in the latest cloud version, for the integrated and multi-channel management of pricing conditions, orders, assortments, promotions in the traditional channel and sales force automation (SFA), through a digital business transformation project supported by the partner NTT DATA.
This year we are celebrating the 18th anniversary of our collaboration with XTEL and we are thrilled to be facing a new digital transformation with a partner that over the years has enabled us to achieve tangible benefits, exceeding expectations and confirming that we made the right choice and work well together.
From the entry of orders at headquarters and in the periphery to their real-time valuation, from the planning of customer activities to detailed business analysis, the entire process will be managed by a single cloud-based application based on Microsoft Azure technology and Power BI, which maximises the collaboration and efficiency of all business departments involved in the process (customer service, sales, administration, logistics and production).
XTEL’s solution therefore acts as a master system for the collection and management of all corporate orders, interfacing with the client’s ERP for the dispatch of already validated orders and the exchange of administrative information relating to all customers from all sales channels. Plus, the company’s real-time valuation, from the planning of customer activities to detailed business analysis, the entire process will be managed by a single cloud-based application based on Microsoft Azure technology and Power BI, which maximises the collaboration and efficiency of all business departments involved in the process (customer service, sales, administration, logistics and production).
Insight
The cloud architecture of the Sales Performance Platform provides customers with greater IT security and protection of company data, which is essential in light of the increase in cyber attacks in many large companies, including those in the CPG sector in Italy. The move to the cloud was, therefore, an important decision for Divella, which considered it a top priority and evaluated XTEL’s solution as the most suitable for the high-security standards offered. Another distinctive feature of XTEL’s order, pricing and SFA management solution is that it is natively integrated with the other modules for managing the customer plan, sales forecasts, promotions and customer contracts.
We are excited to embark on a new digital transformation path with the aim of facilitating the daily work of the head office teams and the sales force, improving their access to information and speeding up their decision-making process. We confidently reconfirm our partnership with XTEL and NTT Data to bring innovation to Divella’s sales team.
The project team, experts in CPG and led by NTT DATA, ensured the implementation of the project and some very important features for Divella, such as the real-time calculation of the logistics discount during order taking and the type of vehicle for delivery, or upselling support for agents, showing all the benefits provided by the commercial policies applicable to the order for each customer.
XTEL’s new solution is a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that guarantees high business continuity and profound technological innovation, while also providing AI algorithms to optimise the orders proposed to the sales force.
Impact
Divella’s objective is to embark on a path of digital transformation by adopting state-of-the-art software, that guarantees maximum security and protection of company data, greater usability of data access, and allows processes to be improved and simplified. Making the most of new technologies to improve the relationship with their B2B customers and the collaboration between head office, sales force and dealers to stimulate sustainable business growth. XTEL’s solution will enable Divella to analyse business data faster, having a single consolidated data source, simplifying internal audits and enabling faster decision-making.
With this new project we want to take advantage of all the opportunities offered by the new Sales Performance Platform of XTEL, to significantly increase the level of integration between company systems and protection of company data, thanks to the experience of NTT DATA’s CPG team and the high level of security offered by the Microsoft Azure cloud.
A key element of the new XTEL solution for Divella is to make the entry of orders, receipts and access to all commercial and administrative data of B2B customers by the sales force more usable, allowing them to be consulted also through mobile devices (tablets) and offering the possibility to work offline.
The organisation’s overall efficiency benefits from a digital evolution in which each work team can rely on up-to-date information in real-time to carry out their daily commercial and administrative activities involving the entire company.
