Unilever arms its sales force with 'SAWA'

Unilever's sales force across Arabia now has megabytes more power at their fingertips thanks to a feature-packed handheld solution known as Sales Automation Wireless Application (SAWA).

This application is run on a hand-held mobile phone.

SAWA, the hi-tech solution for General Trade Salesmen totally revolutionizes the way the team works - from automating the process of ordering to measuring performance against targets.

SAWA also allows the sales team to shelf check, monitor warehouse stock levels as well as generate sales productivity reports.

The smart application, part of the "SAWA" project; (the Arabic word for 'together'), was developed by the Unilever Mashreq IT team.

According to Mohammed Saeed, Managing Director Customer Development, Unilever Arabian Gulf, "SAWA will enable our sales team to work more effectively and efficiently. It allows instant digital access to our inventory and more importantly it is a great tool to measure and closely monitor our performance".

SAWA has been successfully launched earlier in Unilever Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, becoming instrumental in adopting the best practices of the region and one of the recommended solutions by the AACEE IT CD team.

"We have decided to introduce it to our region as it has proved to be a very effective tool for Unilever in other regions", adds Sanjiv Mehta, Chairman Unilever North Africa Middle East.

The project was launched in January this year and is now successfully running across the UAE and Bahrain.