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s.r luthra institute of management

Subject: How Asian Paints leveraged digital

innovations to become customer centric
Submitted to: mr. Riddhish N. Joshi.
(Designation: Assistant Professor)

Submitted by: lankapati madhav(2052)

vaibhavsagar mishra(2062)
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Company overview
The company has come a long way since its small beginning in 1942. Four friends who were
willing to take on the world's biggest, most famous paint companies operating in India at that
time set it up as a partnership firm. Over the course of 25 years, Asian Paints became a
corporate force and India's leading paints company. Driven by its strong consumer-focus and
innovative spirit, the company has been the market leader in paints since 1967.

Asian Paints is India’s leading paint company with a group turnover of Rs 170.85 billion. The group
has an enviable reputation in the corporate world for professionalism, fast track growth, and building
shareholder equity. Asian Paints operates in 16 countries and has 25 paint manufacturing facilities in
the world servicing consumers in over 65 countries. Besides Asian Paints, the group operates
around the world through its subsidiaries Berger International, Apco Coatings, SCIB Paints,
Taubmans and Kadisco.

Asian Paints manufactures wide range of paints for Decorative and Industrial use.

In Decorative paints, Asian Paints is present in all the four segments v.i.z Interior Wall Finishes,
Exterior Wall Finishes, Enamels and Wood Finishes. It also offers Water proofing, wall coverings
and adhesives in its product portfolio.

Asian Paints also operates through ‘PPG Asian Paints Pvt Ltd’ (50:50 JV between Asian Paints and
PPG Inc, USA, one of the largest automotive coatings manufacturer in the world) to service the
increasing requirements of the Indian automotive coatings market. The second 50:50 JV with PPG
named ‘Asian Paints PPG Pvt Ltd’ services the protective, industrial powder, industrial containers
and light industrial coatings markets in India.

Vertical integration has seen Asian Paints diversify into chemical products such as Phthalic
Anhydride and Pentaerythritol, which are used in the paint manufacturing process. The company
has discontinued production of Phthalic Anhydride from end of July 2017.

In the Home Improvement and Décor category, the company is present in the Kitchen and Bath
fittings space and offers various products under Sleek and Ess Ess brand respectively

Summary of case study

The Company At $1 billion turnover, Asian Paints is India’s largest paint company operating in 17
countries. It has 25 paint manufacturing facilities in the world, servicing consumers in more than 65
countries. The group also operates around the world through its subsidiaries - Berger International
Limited, Apco Coatings, SCIB Paints and Taubmans. The Business Challenge When the company decided
to embark on an expansion plan, a key focus area was to empower its 30,000 strong dealer network—its
prima facie go-to-market—which had to keep pace with rapidly evolving consumer demands and rising
expectations. The distribution strategy works such that Asian Paints supplies its products to its dealers,
who in turn sell it to end customers. To facilitate this process, dealers call Asian paints to place any
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customer order. Traditionally, dealers would call over 150 sales offices of Asian Paints in different parts
of the country. However, the legacy telephony system across the sales offices was primitive and couldn’t
render itself to the changing customer demands; a scenario that was attributed to some inherent
lacunae. Firstly, the overall customer experience was missing because the dealers could call only during
office hours. Additionally, the people attending to these calls were personnel stationed at godowns or
depots and therefore did not have the right service mindset resulting in a sub optimal deal interaction
experience. While demands for better service, more responsiveness and consistency were the key asks
from dealers, Asian Paints also found that end consumers were increasingly treating paints as ‘a high
involvement decision’ and expecting consultancy as part of their purchase interactions. With industry
analysts asserting that poor customer service constituted among the key reasons for consumers to move
to a competing brand, Asian Paints was well aware that the quality of customer interactions had to be
viewed as a competitive differentiator. In the context of these emerging stakeholder imperatives, Asian
Paints decided to use this as an opportunity to reinstate customer confidence and build strong loyalties
in the bargain. To support the large dealer base spread across the country, Asian Paints has
approximately 150 sales offices with a 500-person strong sales force. The sales force plays a key role in
managing dealer relationships, explaining schemes, resolving complaints, etc. “We were, therefore, on a
lookout for a strong, flexible and scalable IT infrastructure to manage customer interactions in line with
our organizational efforts to become truly customer centric, “said Mr. Deepak Bhosale, Chief Manager,
Systems, Asian Paints Limited. Moreover, since dealers are the company’s primary channel of
interaction with the consumers, contributing to more than 70 percent of the company turnover, Asian
Paints also needed a solution that would make it extremely convenient for the dealers to conduct
business with them, place their orders for paint products and to resolve any queries. Asian Paints also
offers different consultation and support services to their end customers. For example, Color
Consultants help customers choose the best color combinations for their home/ personal spaces.
Several other allied components of the business include marketing and pre-sales campaigns, customer
loyalty programs and after sales, and complaint handling systems, many of which are managed in
collaboration with the dealers.

”We wanted to ensure that our entire organization’s supply/ value chain was well integrated with this
channel,“ added Mr. Deepak Bhosale
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Why Aspect

Stage 1-
After extensive market research in 2009, the company decided to implement Aspect® Unified IP® to set
up a next generation dealer management system. “While we were researching different vendors and
getting references, the best endorsement was given by customers using Aspect solution to organize
their customer interactions. Since we wanted a cost-effective way to have several solutions in our
contact center, Aspect was the right choice for us,” said Mr. Deepak Bhosale. The technology
deployment was undertaken in two stages. Stage 1 – Pilot Asian Paints implemented Aspect Unified IP
for 50 agents at four sales offices. This pilot was set up for two different services, with multiple
telephone connectivity circuits—one for order taking and the other for query handling. Aspect’s solution
was also integrated seamlessly with the newly launched web-based user friendly dashboard built on the
SAP platform that was designed to take orders and answer all queries. A toll-free service was also
launched, which allows calls to be monitored at the agent level. Even at this early stage, Asian Paints
witnessed reduced waiting time for callers and a 33 percent increase in service availability.

Stage 2 –
Expanding the Horizon In the second phase, the company activated its automatic outbound calling and
added 16 more units into the setup, covering 5,500 dealers for more than 350+ agents. In this case,
Aspect integrated with the technology used to create the web-based interface. Several other
mechanisms were built in during this phase, such as process re-engineering and standardizations for
dealers. A profile change among agents was affected, with order taking and order punching being
merged into a single entity, and agent training being standardized around high quality interactions calls
and for calls with poor CSAT levels, was tracked and an automatic outbound call made to deliver a more
effective customer experience. Apart from the dealers, Asian Paints also extended this service to rest of
the partner ecosystem including contractors, interior designers and end customers who buy directly and
the response has been nothing less that excellent. “The innate efficiency of the system allowed the
agents to spend more time on value addition such as consulting and up-selling, in turn delivering not
only better customer and dealer satisfaction, but also higher revenue,” said Mr. Deepak Bhosale. In its
current state, Aspect Professional services team is working to integrate with SAP system to unify call
flows, business processes, and desktops. The integration will allow real-time access to SAP customer
data thereby help to enhance agent productivity, improve monitoring and provide consistent customer
experience across various touch points such as voice, email, and chat.

“While we were researching different vendors and getting references, the best endorsement was given
by customers using Aspect solution to organize their customer interactions. Since we wanted a cost-
effective way to have several solutions in our contact center, Aspect was the right choice for us. We
needed a little bit of everything, improved quality interactions, dealer interaction and high operational
efficiency. With Aspect every piece fell into place smoothly.”

Mr. Deepak Bhosale Chief Manager, Systems Asian Paints Limited

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Key Challenges and Business Need

With this offering, the company removes much of the anxiety and legwork from the home painting
process, giving consumers access to hassle-free professional services, style consultations, color
recommendations, and even free samples. The offering combines all the professional services that a
customer might need in the course of painting a home. In addition to end consumers, major
stakeholders in the Asian Paints Home Solutions offering include interior decorators, contractors, and
retailers. Each of these stakeholders has different needs and different ways of connecting and
communicating with Asian Paints. To manage this complex network, the company had been using an
early version of the SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application plus a custom-
tailored composite solution built on the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform. The custom-built
solution supported delivery tasks associated with painting jobs – including appointment scheduling,
ordering, billing, and reporting. The prior release of SAP CRM supported Asian Paints’ call center,
enabling activity management, lead management, and other customer-oriented processes.
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Putting the Pieces Together

While this blended IT approach worked well, Asian Paints recently concluded that the system needed to
be upgraded in order to enhance the business processes supporting the Asian Paints Home Solutions
offering. At that time, the company was launching a number of imaginative sales and marketing
programs. For example, after obtaining a digital photograph of a customer’s home, Asian Paints would
provide three different pictures showing how the residence would look if painted according to
suggested color schemes.

However, the sales leads and customer data gathered from these and other interactions arrived via
many different channels – Web, e-mail, telephone – and were stored in many different places. “We
needed CRM software that would allow us to manage multiple engagements with customers and other
stakeholders,” says Deepak Bhosale, chief manager of IT at Asian Paints. “We were looking for an
application that would help us consolidate all the important information, bring it into one platform, and
give us a 360-degree view.” Asian Paints Limited is a highly successful manufacturer of decorative and
industrial paints. As the largest paint company in India – and the third largest in Asia – it has achieved
enviable growth by building a formidable presence in emerging markets. One of Asian Paints’ most
successful initiatives has been the development of a service brand – Asian Paints Home Solutions.

Why SAP was selected

As a long-time user of SAP software, Asian Paints was well aware of the advantages of SAP applications
and technology. The company regards its highly capable IT organization as a competitive advantage and
views SAP as the solution provider of choice – considering non- SAP software only under very specific
circumstances. In addition to a prior version of SAP CRM, the company had been using the SAP ERP
application to support financials, procurement, supply chain management, and other key processes.
Asian Paints also uses SAP NetWeaver to solve integration issues and support custom development –
including the composite application the company built to manage sales delivery processes for the Asian
Paints Home Solutions service. With a strong preference for SAP software and the need for a more
robust and comprehensive CRM application, Asian Paints began evaluating the latest version of SAP
CRM long before the product was available for general release. In a meeting with developers at SAP Labs
location in Bangalore, India, Deepak Bhosale and his IT team previewed the improvements being
planned and concluded that the new release would have the features and functionality their company
needed. “We saw immediately that SAP CRM was capable of giving us a 360- degree view of our
stakeholders,” says Deepak Bhosale. “This came across very strongly.”
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Conclusion
“The implementation then brought us a lot of benefits and gave us three year headway over
competition, as the competition has now started to realize the benefits of such a system and has started
adopting similar approaches to manage a customer”, said Mr. Deepak Bhosale. Post implementation
Asian Paints achieved significant improvements in the productivity of contact center agents due the
technology. Customer satisfaction levels also improved. As a result of the deployment and integration
with transaction systems, agents now have a 360 degree view of dealers and dealer histories before calls
are taken. Consequently, Asian Paints witnessed a 40 percent drop in average call handling time, and an
80 percent satisfaction increase among dealers. The average service availability window increased by 33
percent and overall waiting time was reduced significantly, leading to an effective 40 percent reduction
in manpower. We also conducted a dealer satisfaction survey post implementation, with close to 85
percent of the dealers giving the service a very good rating. Asian Paints has extended the technology to
two additional contact centers thereby building in redundancy. The company also observed that its ‘go
to market’ programs were implemented faster. Because of centralized communication, the current
contact centre framework gets in touch with the dealers and informs them in the event of a new
product or service launch.