Arbonne

Arbonne is a global leader in direct sales and product innovation in health and beauty, all in support of transforming lives. While this transformation focuses on both business and wellness, we worked on the business side of things. As field management re-imagined their incentive structure and a host of new systems were coming online with oversight from the CIO, our job was to ensure it all worked together. And, at the same time, technical product innovation had to continue. So, they outsourced the entire process to us.

[$5M technology and design consulting fees over 4yrs.]

 

In addition to mission-critical application design, we focused on 3 primary areas…

  • Outsourced Innovation Lab
    Innovation partner on full-team retainer to explore new technologies and entirely new user experiences.

  • Integrated CRM for Field Reps
    The first Salesforce implementation in the direct selles market, integrated Prowess and numerous legacy systems.

  • Social Media Empowerment
    Supercharge 300,000+ independent consultants with social media through an elite global team.

 

The Innovation Lab

We went deep quickly and gathered insights directly from customers. We became a proving ground for hunches and intuition from the CIO on down. In exploring a new idea, we would brief leadership on the investment and estimated returns, build and iterate numerous proofs of concept, and ultimately hand off source code to internal teams to continue development.

The following are just some of the breakthroughs we produced as innovators-for-hire.

Mobile Office

Sales consultants and teams needed to manage their business while in the office or traveling the globe. We consolidated the best features from previously built desktop tools and integrated additional back-end systems including order processing and CRM. Arbonne experienced a near 100% field adoption rate among sales associates and a profound impact to the business's bottom line (re-orders, for instance, increased by over $60%).

 

Voice Activated Business Assistant

We developed Alexa Skills that allowed consultants to receive audio updates on sales targets, reminders on team activities, product information, and guidance on sales techniques.

Our APIs developed in cooperation with the Arbonne technology team and third-party providers allowed a top performing Arbonne sales person to now ask Alexa, "Who are my top prospects today?" or, "Which team members are closest to their sales goal?" In turn, she could then get a list of top connections to make and schedule those meetings for that same day… all in a brief conversation with Alexa.

 


Facebook Sales Assistant (ARBOT)

We developed text and voice applications on the Facebook Developer’s platform to scan for conversations about makeup, nutrition, and Arbonne itself. When an existing customer engaged with the 'Arb-bot' they could ask questions about re-orders, product ingredients, and the like. From there, the bot handed off to a personal sales consultant or directly into checkout, dramatically streamlining the buying process.

 

Multinational In-store Touchscreen

We built a touch interface for dramatic 60+ inch screens located in Taiwan, Australian, Germany, and the Middle-East where sales teams require an in-store tool to start a relationship with a new customer. The immersive on-screen experience provided background information and education until redirected with the tap of a finger.

Once activated, associates could walk a customer through products, applications, ingredients and more. Originally designed for the Taiwan market and delivered in Mandarin, we subsequently universalized the application for use globally, pulling dynamic catalog information and localized products, ingredients, and languagea.

This product is now the backbone for launching a new market and requires little-to-no on-site maintenance based on its connectivity with centralized content management at the home office in Irvine, CA.

 

Personalized Lead Generation

Arbonne undertook the first Salesforce implementation in the direct selling market, integrating it with their backbone Prowess system and a number of legacy systems. The primary objective for the first release was to increase independent consultant reorders and to help less experienced consultants sell more effectively. We created the user journeys and related interfaces for a custom Salesforce implementation in the Lightning Component Framework, allowing the business to generate, track, and manage relationships. We connected social media, business intelligence, warehousing, distribution, and order processing systems to create an intelligent relationship management program based in real-time analytics.

 

Integrated Research and Design

We completed extensive field research to reveal how Arbonne’s independent consultants would use this software for its highest return. User testing on interactive prototypes allowed us to refine our direction.

After launch, we collected usage information through live sessions and recordings online, noting functionality that could be designed into subsequent releases. The product management process we established continues to direct ongoing improvements today.

 

Social Media — Engagement and Sales

As one of the top nutrition and cosmetics companies in the world, Arbonne needed to improve the performance of each of their 300,000+ independent consultants with the power of social media. We coordinated the most elite members of Arbonne’s global team, working in quick-hit efforts to improve personal branding, unique content, and coordinated marketing strategies that increased individual leads and integrated intelligence with the new Salesforce CRM.

 

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Targeted Insights

We extracted social media data at the individual consultant level in order to determine the real effectiveness of each individual’s social performance. Our custom tool allowed us to tailor social strategies for each individual and across teams with minimal interference in day-to-day activities.

Using simple code, we calculated overall reach, engagement, and supporting audience data to repackage it into simple directives consultants could put to use immediately.

 

Creating Truth in an Online Presence

We queried over 1 million social interactions across Arbonne’s top 25 competitors. We then built weekly reporting for Arbonne’s elite sales team based on our analysis. The result: Arbonne gained actionable best practices for their unique market position that translated down to each individual sales consultant. Conversely, we were able to develop personalized branding statements with each sales consultant that complemented corporate direction.

 

Empowering the Entire Organization

Based on our research and analysis, we provided participants with a user-friendly toolkit, including videos, interactive guides, tutorials, and best practices on an organizational level, as well as individualized guidance, refined strategies, and tech support for each participant. This training and reference material allowed Arbonne’s independent consultants to confidently navigate the complex nuances of social media.

We also developed a Social Media Toolkit to allow each consultant to determine their social media presence in concert with their innate brand characteristics. Working from these learnings, we developed eight online modules to support growth at the individual and team level. In addition to private coaching sessions, we developed a series of videos promoting social media best practices, informing trainees on the various tools available to help them grow their presence. Today, this toolset represents a standard in elevating individual sales performance with social media tools.