Modicare is the country’s leading distributor of consumer goods like personal care, laundry care, home care, and auto care products, food & food storage, education & toys, agricultural products, stationery, color cosmetics & skin care products. It is a multi-level marketing company that works with home-based businesses, and has 750,000 consultants all over India.

Objective

Modicare had an initial presence on the web, but more like a brochure with no interactive / transactionalfeatures. Modicare came to iridiumInteractive (ii) for help in achieving maximum retail efficiency, by boosting revenues and reducing operating costs through complete cross-channel integration. They wanted to transform from being a brick-and-mortar business to being a click-and-mortar one, and redesign the shopping experience for their customers. Another of their many objectives was to connect consultants and clients all over India via the net.

Solution

Given the multiple objectives, ii had to first scratch its head on where to begin! The first move was to think out a strategy and a business blueprint for converting this brick and mortar business to an online one. To more than quadruple the number of SKUs offered by Modicare.com without increasing physical inventory, ii helped Modicare invisibly and seamlessly link its realtime inventory system to that of the key contract manufacturers. ii also worked on redesigning the shopping experience, and enhancing site navigation and systems architecture. In addition, dozens of ease-of-use features were added, such as custom shopping lists, persistent shopping carts, and “bread crumbs.” The final step of the engagement was to provide a virtual office for the distributors, allowing each distributor access to his own portal where he can manage his business and conduct all commercial operations. While working on the project, ii had to ensure that the new portals were integrated seamlessly with existing legacy and supporting systems. This required the involvement of three separate entities: head office, retail outlets & the portals. Integration of the separate infrastructures of these three channels created its own technology and business challenges There were a large number of people who worked on this project, both from the client and customer sides. ii helped define the cross-channel integration project and then worked on developing key front-end and middleware components to make this happen. Within six months, Modicare and ii had done it. The portals were up and running.

Benefits
The new product launch was done in a span of 25 days. The convenience offered to the distributors through the portal is such that on an average, there are about 100 transactions happening per week with an average order value of about $25 to $150. The new website allows customers to find all they need with just one click, thus improving the browse-to-buy ratio. Through a series of front-end and back-end initiatives, ii has helped 55 retail stores of Modicare, Internet channel, catalogs, kiosks, point-of-sale systems, and more than 750,000 distributors from 2,000 odd locations work together to create a seamless customer experience. Integration of the portals with Modicares’ retail outlets, head office and warehouses led to the achievement of the Modicares’ ultimate goal – true cross-channel integration. As part of the support services, ii is also offering 24/7 online customer services to the distributors, and Modicare is “pleased with the bottom-line business impact that Iridium Interactive has helped us create from our investments in these new technologies,” (Samir Modi, President, Modicare)

About ii

iridium Interactive Limited (ii) specializes in providing online business solutions. With a presence across three continents, it has been at the forefront in integrating strategy, design and technology to build unique and robust user-centric e-business solutions. At ii, a holistic approach is adopted towards complex business problems to arrive at a complete solution. ii’s talented team has worked on a variety of disciplines for a multitude of clients drawn from various industries, and has a number of award-winning works to its credit. ii offers it services in the areas of interactive marketing, web marketing, e-learning, enterprise consulting and web accessibility initiatives.

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