Avon builds a global business-to-business web platform
Avon Products Inc., which has spent much of the past year restructuring the company to become more competitive, is retooling its global business-to-business Internet platform.
Avon, No. 25 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, is rolling out an enhanced global web platform that will feature more tools and services to support the company’s network of sales representatives in more than 100 countries.
Avon recently named Stephen Pedley vice president global web enablement and new marketing, a position that heads up Avon’s global business-to-business web initiative. He will report to Brian Connolly, executive vice president of global sales strategy.
While the company isn’t releasing many details, Avon chairman and CEO Andrea Jung says the new initiative will help Avon use the web to sell more effectively in growing international markets. Over time Avon also will offer reps upgraded interactive tools for online ordering, training, recruiting and order management support.
“In the U.S. more than 70% of our representatives order online, but outside the U.S. the numbers are significantly lower,” Jung told Wall Street analysts on the company’s recent third quarter conference call. “But we have always believed that the receptivity of our representatives to doing business online would parallel Internet penetration in a market.”
A new global web platform with advanced business-to-business e-commerce tools will help Avon reps stay ahead of the market in countries with an emerging Internet base, she says. “While less than 15% of the Turkish population has Internet access at home, almost 95% of our orders in Turkey are submitted online,” Jung says. “As I have traveled to other emerging markets, I have seen a similar phenomenon unfolding. This to me says that we need to move faster to provide more sophisticated online tools for all our representatives worldwide.”
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