Philip Morris will transform 150,000 grocery stores with its digital literacy training program. Philip Morris/Sabanci General Manager Filiz Yavuz Diren said, “With this program, we will be able to meet the business needs of our 150 thousand grocery stores very quickly.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a tremendous transformation in many areas in terms of digitalization.
Companies have gained significant momentum in all areas of digitalization. Philip Morris, which started the digitalization project in 2016 and implemented the transformation model in 2017, transformed its way of doing business and carried its hot sales operation to digital.
Rolling up its sleeves to involve its business partners in the digital transformation project, the company took action to accelerate the transformation of 150 thousand grocery stores. In this context, Philip Morris, which created a certified digital literacy training program consisting of three very advanced modules for 150 thousand grocery shopkeepers in cooperation with the university, has given this certificate to 30 thousand tradesmen so far. The company, which plans to include 120 thousand grocery stores in this program by the end of this year, aims to complete these trainings that allow all grocery shopkeepers to develop business in the new world.
WE ARE THE LEADER ON THE FIELD
Filiz Yavuz Diren, Philip Morris/Sabanci General Manager, stated that they started these studies a long time ago and said that they are the digital transformation leader in the field of fast-moving consumer goods. Diren said, “We are using the most advanced business model and our system has started to be taken as an example on a global scale.” Explaining that digitalization alone is not enough to make a radical change, Diren said, “In this direction, we have created a highly developed, three-module, certified digital literacy training program for our 150 thousand grocery shopkeepers in cooperation with the university.”
WE CAN REACH 150 THOUSAND GROCERY STORES IN 3 DAYS
Diren explained the details of the business model as follows:
“With 150 thousand grocery stores operating in Turkey, we carry out more than 90% of our commercial activities through our B2B digital platforms.
In a pool of 150 thousand grocery stores in a traditional fast-moving consumption operation, it takes a month at best to get in touch with all the grocery shopkeepers. At the point we have reached, we have had the opportunity to contact all of our 150 thousand grocery stores in less than 3 days.
In this way, we can visit more of our grocery stores in a shorter time and meet business needs much faster.”
DIGITAL TRAFFIC INCREASED 10 TIMES IN FOUR YEARS
Explaining that 50% of grocery shopkeepers interact with their digital platforms in one day, Diren said, “Our digital traffic has increased 10 times in the last 4 years. We meet with our grocery shopkeepers on our digital platform a total of 2 million times a month. We can access data from the field for our business development needs in a maximum of 2 hours. We collect our data in the field with visual recognition technologies. Our artificial intelligence bots are in contact with our tradesmen 24/7, and all interactions on our platforms provide insights to our analysis teams with text identification technologies. All these opportunities allow us to better understand the business needs of our commercial partners and provide them with much more personalized services.”
Source: Sabah / Translated by Irem Yildiz