Oriflame Cosmetics India

The pioneering approach of Oriflame Cosmetics has been leading its field for more than 50 years in over 60 markets.

With a true entrepreneurial background and innovative vision to combine beauty and wellness, the social selling business has gone from strength to strength. Extensive research, evolution of cosmetic technology and scientific development, all lend themselves to the integrity of the company’s incredible brand. 

Oriflame’s TSP philosophy: Togetherness, Spirit and Passion, combines a collaborative workforce including over 3 million brand partners, a holistic methodology respecting Swedish nature and a mission to fulfil dreams. They pride themselves on quality, sustainability and community, offering a huge array of products, available to consumers worldwide. This far-reaching client base is made possible thanks to Oriflame’s heartfelt investment into individual success, providing each and every brand partner with the ability to prosper, govern their own market and make their ‘dreams’ come true, both in terms of income and lifestyle.

India, one of four continents currently pampered by the beauty and wellness giant

Shefali Sharma, Sales Director for India at Oriflame Cosmetics, has shared an in-depth insight into the beauty guru’s continued success, along with identifying room for improvement and respective strategies to go the extra mile. The Indian market has blossomed throughout the past 26 years, providing staff with a comforting culture in which to work, and helping beauty entrepreneurs from around the country to follow their passion and make a successful living. 

But what happens when such dramatic expansion and widespread exposure become difficult to manage?

With growth, increased publicity and the continuous mission of changing lives, Oriflame India began to discover that their methods of data collection were becoming saturated. With massive numbers of sales representatives out in the field and an incessant flow of information reaching headquarters, Shefali’s management team felt overwhelmed by the huge volume of activity data coming their way on a daily basis. They also noticed that sales teams were struggling to track and keep up with their KPI’s, given the time needed to manually access data. 

Bombarded with reports and an unprecedented amount of daily text messages, Shefali described the setup as ‘haphazard’ and incredibly time-consuming. Manual intervention occupied way too much of her time and to little avail, especially where some of the most important activity was taking place in distribution. Her Business Planning section followed a systemic, yet largely inefficient approach of data collection, mainly using Excel spreadsheets and others similar tools. Compiling sales data had become a mundane and misguided path – problematic and less productive.

Finding a Solution 

Oriflame’s presence in India entails the work of around 50 salespersons and roughly 1500 distributors. Having previously ruled out other methods and the implementation of a website for reps to upload information, Shefali recognised the immense need to collate and use data more effectively, in order to make accurate evaluations and plan ahead – cue the first meetings with Goalplan…

The Goalplan team met with Shefali on location and invested time and patience in order to truly ‘hear’ and understand Oriflame’s needs. After all, Goalplan pride themselves on providing a bespoke service, offering tailormade solutions to companies. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach was never going to work for Oriflame’s unique model, therefore, Goalplan’s structured and personalised ethos was the perfect fit they’d been looking for, in order to move away from manual input and boost results. Several days were spent getting to know one another, to meet various team members and coordinate a designated project group. 

Shefali explained how Goalplan’s digital platform facilitated data collection and activity tracking across geolocations, enabling them to focus attention where most needed during business planning sessions: 

"The convenience that the Goalplan app brought to the table was ground-breaking for the business, helping them to become more agile and save copious amounts of valuable time and effort. The platform solution excels at visualising and tracking performance, in order for the organisation to be able to act upon such data". Shefali particularly praised the ease of access to the real-time accessory – always at her fingertips, at the push of a button.