Barilla: retail execution to increase consistency across countries

Barilla partnered with XTEL to drive SFA digital transformation across markets in an standardised and automated manner

January 11, 2023

Challenge

Prior to beginning its Sales Force Automation journey with XTEL, Barilla faced challenges managing multiple local solutions and their customisations. This caused KPIs and guidelines to be misaligned between commercial teams across geographies and fragmentation. Data from SFA tools were stored in local silos, which meant high effort was required to create global KPIs and global analytics.

Approach

In order to address the key challenges it was facing, Barilla decided to bring the majority of its markets under the same SFA umbrella by implementing the XTEL solution across countries. Each stakeholder, across headquarters and on the field, would be equipped with complete functional coverage and analytics – under one umbrella solution across countries. By doing this, a common language and set of retail execution guidelines would be defined, which all markets could refer to as best practices as the rollout progressed. Performance would also be improved through standardised ways of working, clear insights, and automated processes.

Insight

Creating initiatives to gain buy-in from the right stakeholders has been key. Pushing the initiative through the business teams instead of IT led to higher commitment across markets. Advocating for a solution that was unanimously accepted, along with being flexible to local needs, is an effective adoption driver when reshaping ways of working.

Impact

With Barilla operating under one SFA system, the business can increase consistency across processes, establish a “common language” across countries and common KPIs with a global view of performance, operate on shared guidelines and simplify onboarding and career mobility. The technical benefits include a simplified IT landscape, a solid future roadmap, constant processes management evolution, minimised cyber security risks, and a lower total cost of ownership.