Orient Electric launches e-wings, an enterprise wide digitisation programme

The pandemic encouraged the team to work with high agility and adaptability, embracing a digital work culture. Whatsapp and zoom calls became the connecting point between the company and the retailers. The website was regularly updated with the list of retailers and their contact numbers to enable consumers to connect with the nearest retailer. This was backed by strong digital communication on social media. Orient Call center remained open and by digitally enabling the call center executives to take the calls from home. Critical customer service calls were attended after taking special E-pass.

The company informed about a major enterprise wide digital transformation programme – e-wings, at the Q1, FY21 results announcement.

Digitisation under “e-Wings”
Another tranche of new digital interventions got rolled out from the stable of the ‘e-Wings’ program of the company during the quarter. These are expected to establish new-age work culture across the organisation with the final objective of speedier route to market. Being the first-time implementations, it is anticipated that all these will take a little time for adoption as the company endeavours to fast track the same. Digital analytics layer on top of all these interventions is also being planned for the future to get more market insights.

1. Sales Force Automation (SFA): The SFA rollout happened in two parts during the quarter across the pan-India sales force of the company to digitally enable the entire sales force for attendance, better productivity, beat planning, retailer tracking, retailer stock availability, market mapping & monitoring, market feedback, order placement and also facilitate contactless selling.

2. Distributor Management System (DMS) With an objective of getting visibility and tracking of the secondary sales, pipeline inventory, efficient scheme management, territory-wise sales insights, the DMS toolkit is now being implemented across the key distributors of all the businesses to cover significant part of the Sales and also to digitally enable order placement to the company. As this is directly linked to the on-ground implementation at the distributor point, there is a dependency on the accessibility, subject to lockdown situation in each distributor location.

3. Transport Management System (TMS) OEL has initiated the process of implementation of the TMS at all warehouses during the quarter and about 66% roll out is already completed. The purpose is to get better efficiencies and visibility on despatches and order fulfilment and track shipments and costs of logistics right up to the delivery point.

4. Travel & Expense management system The T&E digital rollout that has been done mid-quarter is also integrated with the SFA and HR management system to enable speedy logging and settlement of all employee claims on travel and expense reimbursements.