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How CIGNA, WordTech and Zeneca Use Intranets
for Effective Marketing

By Albert Fried-Cassorla, albert@fried-cas.com

JOE RIVEST of WORDTECH spoke about the ARIES Intranet, which his firm established for Zeneca Agricultural Products	MIKE SLEPIAN of CIGNA showed the many uses of their company's Intranet.

 

INTRANETS AND EXTRANETS have grown tremendously in popularity in recent years. Corporate marketers are finding that they can give a valuable lift to their work with these powerful information-sharing systems.

On July 15, 1998, Database Marketing Council speakers from CIGNA Companies, and WordTech, Inc. revealed how their organizations are benefiting from the new technologies. The meeting took place at CIGNA Companies' headquarters at Two Liberty Place in downtown Philadelphia.

The first presentation was made by Mike Slepian, Director of Marketing Services, CIGNA Companies. He told how their Intranet, a.k.a. "CIGNA Central," came to be. Its uses - current and future - were thought out carefully before the system was designed. Now users across the globe access the system daily. A live, on-line demo of the Intranet was shown to attendees. Slepian's colleague, Barry Nelson, is responsible for the entire CIGNA Central. But Mike handles any matters pertaining to marketing.

Recently, CIGNA wan an Effie Award for advertising. Selected frames from a commercial were set up on the Intranet, and these scenes flash at visitors.

Because CIGNA is so diverse, cross-selling of the company's lines is sometimes difficult. For example, CIGNA sells insurance to private pilots. "Why not ask them if they also own a boat?" Slepian wondered to the crowd. Perhaps CIGNA could provide a competitive quote on insurance. "Do they employ people and need Workers Compensation insurance?"

Mike reasoned that employees need to at least know: What does CIGNA sell? No one had a complete list. Mike was able to get a 2" thick print-out of policies sold. But much of it was incomprehensible, even for an experienced insurance marketer. So Mike compiled a briefly up-to-date product list as a starting point. He found himself often e-mailing different department heads and asking for their input.

One caveat: If you have advice such as: "Send updates to (name of individual)", do not put your own name there! Put someone else's name in that spot! In other words: Be careful what you ask for, because you may get it.

Mike noted that the Intranet contains very internal and sometimes sensitive information. As Mike drolly added: "As a mater of fact, we have to kill all of you now." For different products, sub-categories shown on-screen include: target markets, CIGNA Selling Advantages, Key Competitors, and other headings.

Password protection for accessing the system externally is important. However, access must be denied as soon as a person leaves the company.

Every month, an Intranet committee meets and checks Intranet pages and makes sure they are set up well. People go on to an on-line system and assume the system is current. Thanks to the efforts of many, it may now be! The Intranet committee makes sure each division of the company has a webmaster. The company is in the publishing business by setting up the Intranet.

Mechanisms for feedback are limited. There is a click-counter. Also, a survey asks users to rate the site's effectiveness.

An attendee asked: What didn't you count on? Mike's answer: it grew exponentially, and it quickly gets very large. Mike is charge of the "marketplace" section of the site. He volunteered to create the section. Soon, he said he needed help. He received a budget to help out. There were so many options to choose from, that the site became difficult to navigate. New names for sections and re-organizations of the site became needed.

Sometimes, a test server was set up. People were brought in and asked whether the organizational scheme made sense to them. An example of the effectiveness was that people asked for a Sales Force Directory. This enabled sales people to find each other.

CupidNet is an important feature of the system. It provides a D&B profile of various companies, matched with data on whom CIGNA does business with. This way, sales people can look up a prospect and see what kinds of insurance the company is now selling them, as well as company size, sales data, and so forth.

In the future, customers will be able to track their claims checks on the Internet public) site itself.

Joe Rivest, Sales and Marketing Manager for WordTech, Inc. gave the second presentation to the Council. He explained how the Intranet which WordTech set up for Zeneca Agricultural Products helped to promote sales, convey sales data, and convey information about incentives earned. WordTech, Inc. is a database marketing company with programming and lettershop capabilities.

Through a system known as ARIES (Agricultural Resource and Information Exchange Service), Zeneca now knows which farmers are growing certain crops, whether they are using a Zeneca product or a competitor's, how much of the product has been sold by various dates, sales by distributor, by re-seller, and by end-user.

Originally, this system was based on paper. Skids of materials were sent out. An Internet-type of front end was needed. They did not want to get in the "web business." Instead, they wanted to have the mainframe accessed easily.

The users needed to access a local Pont of Presence (POP), get on the Internet and access the Intranet. This avoided paying a VAN, or Valued Added Network, for access. Citrix, a front-end program, was employed in the system. This allows database access to the system. They did not want it necessary for a special application to be loaded simply to access the system. Citrix can be loaded onto one diskette. Instead of clients running Citrix locally, it runs on WordTech's server, which can handle 300 simultaneous users.

The system tracks: what products are distributors allowed to sell; what contracts do they have; what kinds of bonuses have they earned (up to $130 mm); and more. All sales data is handled via EDI. Sales people can now make statements to customers such as: "If you buy just $X more, you will be over the threshold to qualify for a higher level of rebate."

Salespeople and distributors now have this information, and it is up-to-date. New incentive programs may also be initiated by Zeneca marketers in a very short time-frame.

In some companies, IS departments perform similar functions. However, WordTech does this as an external provider. WordTech made critical connections in obtaining EDI data from various participants, making their managing the operation easier to accomplish. Since WordTech has been managing this data for eight years, they were in a position to create ARIES expeditiously.

Once ARIES went live, demand for more information exploded. What ARIES has done in 7 months of existence has created needs for more on-line access and more data. The system is more intuitive and easier to use than the paper-based system.

Not only buying data is important: also, stimulating sales elsewhere, through a vendor / distributor / re-seller / end-user system. End-users are acculturated to incentive programs now.

The system is investment-neutral. Zeneca does not have to re-invest in the system. They have a better strategic advantage in the marketplace. Distributors are more involved, able to see what invoices they are getting credit for…. This gives Zeneca a strategic advantage versus competitors.

Getting distributors to enter their data can sometimes be difficult. Now free software is under development, to collect data at point of sale. This will reduce data entry work dramatically.

Security is very tight; three "doors" are used to enter the system. Passing through these three firewalls only entitles someone to use a personal ID card that provides a code. A managed security gateway us handled by the ISP. A serial number from the back of the ID card is entered. The card has a calculator with an algorithm. A challenge is issued on screen. It is entered in the card's calculator, which in turn yields a coded response. That must be entered on-line.

Team leaders at Zeneca have access to different levels of data than lower echelon salespeople. In fact, access to data is regulated and pre-set, differing by position and need-to-know. Team leaders can, for example, look separately at Retailers; Northern Row (northern states' sales); Parent/Child data (which companies are owned by whom); sales by product and region; sales by grower; and more.

Data may be sent at night, processed by ARIES during the day and on-line the next evening. So data is only 24-48 hours old. Users may not write their own queries - they use pre-set queries, helping ensure that everyone is looking at the same data

ARIES may be adapted to any industry that uses EDI and wants to keep its marketplace informed and motivated. The database runs DB2 on an IBM AS400. No data conversions are needed; simply a Windows, GUI version of the same database is reflected. Programming takes one-third the time as SQL. ODBC conversion tools are run on other programs, which are not needed by this system.

People at Zeneca can examine No-Pay problems and, for example, make immediate exemptions and other fixes. "Reason no payment was made" is an actual field on one type of report. A "Bill to / Ship to" discrepancy might prevent a farmer from getting paid and it helps to be able to remedy this quickly. A Zeneca exec can survey the situation, see that credit for a sale was indeed earned, and authorize a bonus payment on-line.

These two presentations demonstrated more than the diverse uses of Intranets. They showed once again that Philadelphia-region marketers are solving problems creatively by tapping into the power of new technologies.
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Albert Fried-Cassorla is a direct response copywriter and president of Fried-Cassorla Communications, Inc. He also serves as chairman of the Philadelphia Direct Marketing Association's Database Marketing Council. He may be reached at 215-635-5189 or albert@fried-cas.com.

All contents © 1998 Fried-Cassorla Communications. All rights reserved.