Pepperi Mobile Sales Platform & Netsuite Chosen by Beauty Solutions

With a growing sales force of dozens of sales consultants, over 16,000 licensed beauty salons and hair stylists in California, Nevada and Arizona, and a catalog of thousands of ever-changing products (SKUs), Beauty Solutions had to find a way to efficiently and effectively manage their B2B sales process using a single solution.

Their product range includes boutique, upscale brands, such as Kevin Murphy, Alfaparf, Privé, Hot Heads Extensions, Trissola Smoothing Treatments – all listed in a catalog of over 2,500 SKUs.

The company began to use NetSuite as their ERP provider and wanted to find a mobile sales solution that would integrate well with it. But the solution had to meet all the challenges they were currently facing. Here’s what they needed from their new mobile sales solution:

• Super-fast and efficient order taking. This was vital due to the large numbers of SKU’s, together with the fact that salon owners and stylists are always busy with their customers and don’t have time to waste when it comes to ordering.
• Sales reps needed access to up-to-date inventory levels at the time they take an order. After taking an order, the stock needs to be updated again with the new order.
• As each sales rep serves many small customers, there was a huge amount of customer data to maintain, such as current addresses, means of payment or license status. Beauty Solutions wanted each of their reps to have updated information at all times, whether out in the field, online or even offline.
• Sales reps needed to take payment for their orders in the field, regardless of their customer’s payment method and ensure the payment went through correctly.

Pepperi fit the bill perfectly. Within 6 weeks, Beauty Solutions began using Pepperi’s B2B commerce platform with full NetSuite integration.

The NetSuite/Pepperi mobile sales solution changed the way Beauty Solutions ran their business. But how?

In the beauty industry, it’s all about looks. Stylists find it easy to order when they have images of the products in front of them. Pepperi provided Beauty Solutions with an e-catalog to help their field reps serve their customers   easily, in a user friendly, attractive, visual format.

The e-catalog software has a search and replenish option to help sales reps find specific products and take their orders faster when they are with their customer face-to-face. Once complete, the order is automatically sent to NetSuite for fulfillment. Since it is all electronically processed, in place of being hand-written, the margin for error has reduced substantially.

After implementation, sales reps now have instant access to updated customer information even when they are offline. Promotions, discounts, new items and price changes are all automatically updated in the e-catalog in real time.

The Mobile Merchandising feature is proving to be an invaluable tool. Beauty Solutions field reps can now quickly take stock of merchandise, make recommendations for replenishment, optimize shelf space, and ensure retailers never run low on their best-selling products. With Pepperi, the salon owners can see merchandising materials like posters online in real time, and decide what will work for them.

Sales reps now have customer information at their fingertips.  No need to disrupt a sales meeting to call the back office with a query. They have the tools and resources to up-sell, cross-sell and offer promotions quickly and efficiently.

The End Result

The marked drop-off of internal phone calls to the back office means their support center is no longer having the deal with constant interruptions from sales reps and are able to focus on the customers and help and advise them.

According to Shane Brown, IT Manager at Beauty Solutions, they are looking forward to adding more functionality and features from the Pepperi mobile sales software in the future.

As Shane says, ‘now, our reps have up-to-date account, license and inventory information at all times, and are able to sell faster on-site. We are going to do all we can with Pepperi to help them get even better results.’