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Case Study: Paneon

Network Marketing Goes Social and Mobile

Selling sustainable products collaboratively with an adaptive platform for global diversity

The Business

Paneon is an emerging network marketing company in Austria that employs social and mobile technology empowerment using a multi-level selling and bonus principle. Focused on promoting natural and social balance, Paneon distributes ecologically sustainable nutrition, pet food and cosmetic products by connecting with a growing number of global partners and customers through social marketing.

The Challenge

Paneon needed an adaptive customer relationship and process management solution tightly integrated with e-commerce. To enable multiple roles and responsibilities for any given person in any location, Paneon required a sales platform with localization capabilities supporting multiple languages and settings for country-specific taxes.

With success dependent on geographically distributed individuals with differing experience and education, the system's core business functionality must include an intuitive UI with Web and mobile access to easily perform complex and secure activities:

  • Case creation and sharing for team activity and status
  • Order management for partners
  • Inventory management
  • Multi-level sales and commissions management
  • Community (partner) management
  • Inbound capture for multichannel order submissions
  • Communication via e-mail, SMS, Facebook and Twitter

The Solution

Paneon chose the Papyrus Platform for its entire Network Marketing solution to address core business processes, applications and integration with external systems. The goal-oriented ACM system addresses sales and partner management, customer care, warehousing and logistics, with task-oriented collaboration derived from business objectives linked to goals.
The central order process functionality provides the front-end for customers/partners and staff, as well as the back-end system for data processing, documentation, notifications and seamless, end-to-end order completion.

Papyrus supports all business operations and customer care:

  • Sign-in, community hierarchy & roles, change management
  • Content creation for customer on-boarding into ACM case
  • Fax and e-mail inbound order document capture into ACM
  • Webforms interface for direct customer orders into ACM
  • Social media interaction and analysis for customer service
  • Order, stock, payment and logistics management

The Future

With Papyrus, Paneon achieved monthly revenue growth of 12-35% in 2011, and the bold new system has created long-term advantages that benefit both the company and its customers:

  • Fast response to market changes through ACM
  • Innovation with simple creation of new case templates
  • Operational excellence through people empowerment
  • Customer intimacy through better communication
  • Transparency to maintain partner trust and value
  • Management dashboards to verify outcomes and results
  • Bottom-up transparency through auditable case records

Because the start-up expects user growth of 500% by 2014, planned updates will further increase efficiency and user access in the Network Marketing System:

  • Customer satisfaction ratings
  • Mobile (iOS) ACM tasks delegation
  • Link to mobile contact management software
  • Rolling budgeting and warehouse order planning cases
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Task-driven approach (ACM with EYE Widgets)

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The Paneon Web-Shop User Interface

Community Web-Shop

The Web-Shop application for Paneon customers, sales partners and office staff enables online order activity for authorized team members. After navigating and selecting products, Paneon partners and customers can enter personal or customer data for invoicing and shipping and then confirm the order.

Confirmed or corrected orders trigger the back-end system based on the ACM, which processes data, produces documentation, sends e-mail notifications, and interfaces with external systems such as logistics and banking. The task-driven approach in the adaptive order process delivers information to the logistic clerk about new orders ready for shipment.

End-to-End Order Processing

The comprehensive order process manages interaction with both internal and external systems to complete an order:

  • Processing order data
    Generating documents
  • Exporting payment data to the bank and logistics data to the shipping provider
  • Logistics clerk shipment interface

Streamlined and Integrated Operations

Calculation of commissions for Paneon sales people and customers providing referrals can be flexibly managed via adaptive processes, to estimate and approve commissions:

  • Parametrized turnover and commission calculation
  • Different types of commissions
  • Bank interface: credit transfer
  • Simulation of commission calculation

Inventory management and processing payments and ­deliveries is also provided for office and logistics staff:

  • Bank: direct debit, credit transfer (SEPA XML)
  • Logistics: exporting address data for labels, parcel tracking
  • Use cases: Post, GLS
  • Accounting: exporting invoice and commission data

Account Management Simplified

Customer Sales Resource Management is based on the classical CRM model, reflecting the sales structure of partner and customer relationships for each Network Marketing account (sales and customer accounts).

The Paneon CRM/SRM system is extended with special account types and relations, and tasks for creating or updating accounts include accepting terms and conditions via e-mail, as well as notifications and user interaction via the Inbox view.

Papyrus EYE/Widgets are used for account search and task management activity, including partner account management made possible via the Papyrus ACM framework.