Case Studies

The Client

Lenovo acquired IBM's PC business in 2004, becoming the 3rd largest PC maker of the world. A relatively unknown brand outside China (maybe barring a few European countries), Lenovo engaged HGS Interactive for its e-CRM initiative in the year 2006.

The Brief

Lenovo needed a headstart in creating its brand awareness in India as the rights to use the IBM brand was to expire in 2009. Lenovo also needed to know more about its present & potential customers to segment & target them. Lenovo decided to launch a branding & e-CRM initiative and approached HGS Interactive for the latter.

The Approach

Lenovo had a corporate customer base in India & was planning a foray into the retail market. The e-CRM initiative was divided into B2B & B2C initiatives. While the B2B project was aimed at collecting as much information about corporate customers as possible, the B2C campaign was a dual pronged effort at building brand awareness among potential retail customers & collecting information about them.

The Solution

• Extranet: The B2B drive was aimed at distributors, retailers, exclusive stores & the sales force; in short everyone in direct contact with Lenovo's corporate customers. An extranet was developed for Lenovo where sales generated would be fed into the system by the entity affecting the sale. Incentives were in the form of reward points. The extranet was integrated with a portal where these points could be encashed by shopping online. Distributors & retailers were also provided with various sales & inventory reports.
• Online Contests: Online contests were run by HGS Interactive for Lenovo. Lenovo provided the URL in all its print, TV & outdoor ads. HGS Interactive created the contests in tune with the offline ad campaigns. Apart from creative skills, which is a given for an interactive agency, HGS Interactive has the distinct advantage of possessing cutting edge web based technical skills. This was put to good use in creating the contests, which uses AJAX to speed up the form filling exercise. HGS Interactive provided & managed the software, hardware, databases, etc. for the contests & created reports at the end of the day.
• Customer data was acquired, analysed & segmented. We worked closely with the global branding team to present them with analytics