C O M P A N Y O V E R V I E W
In Partnership With:
POISED FOR AN ERA OF RAPID EXPANSION MADE POSSIBLE BY I.T.
Written by John O’Hanlon Produced by Vince Kielty
Arbonne International is a company that helps change lives: to enable it to do that effectively it has to keep ahead of the way people think and live their lives - and that’s where IT comes in
B
y the time Petter Mørck died in 2008, he had seen the business that he founded in 1975 grow from a small Swiss provider of personal health products to a global giant with its base in California since it moved there in 1980. Today Arbonne International employs a direct workforce of some 800. However, its multi-level marketing (MLM) business model, whereby sales are effected through a network of independent consultants, makes it a lot bigger than this figure suggests. More than 250,000 franchised or licensed agents, each running their own business with the support of Arbonne testify to the success of that model in the marketplace. Yes, a quarter of a million businesses in the United States,
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Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand are established to market Arbonne’s range of health and nutritional products, made from natural, botanically-derived and pure ingredients. These products are 100 percent developed by Arbonne’s scientists, the formulae are all Arbonne’s own, and 50 percent of these products are manufactured in the company’s own facilities. Mørck’s vision was to make safe, high quality and natural health and wellbeing products available to the average person at affordable prices, and ‘pure, safe and beneficial’ remains Arbonne’s ethical mantra. Servicing the orders from so many consultants, each with a greater or smaller number of his or her own customers, is probably the most business critical part of a
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very large back office environment that includes all the usual business functions, as well as the supply chain for a complex manufacturing operation from procurement through to global distribution. Juggling all these balls is the challenge for Arbonne’s IT department, under
the leadership of CIO Guy Thier. Appointed in 2013, Thier had completed nearly 10 years as SVP at Bally Total Fitness where, combining the roles of CIO and COO he led an IT turnaround that saw operating costs cut by more than half. The two
about The idea to provide skincare products unparalleled in quality and effectiveness developed in Switzerland in 1975, when one man, Petter Mørck, together with a group of leading biochemists, biologists and herbalists, fulfilled his vision and founded Arbonne. Arbonne skincare products, based on botanical principles, became a reality in the United States in 1980 and are now shared throughout the world through the Arbonne network of Independent Consultants. Building on these same founding principles, the product line has since grown to include both inner and outer health and beauty products that are unparalleled in quality, safety, value, benefits and results. The wonderful thing about Arbonne is that it’s not just about great products, it’s also about great people. The Arbonne family is made up of thousands of individuals working to make their dreams come true. Through sales incentives and rewards, travel opportunities, a generous SuccessPlan and great products, Arbonne offers a unique opportunity that can help make anyone’s vision for the future a reality.
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GLOBAL BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION PROFESSIONALS We are a boutique consulting firm removing roadblocks to enable improved performance by leveraging methods developed through extensive entrepreneurial and industry experience.
GBTP operationalizes business strategy for clients across industry, size and structure. STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT
We provide business advisory services to validate, optimize and operationalize your strategic plans.
PROJECT EXECUTION
We provide professional program and project oversight to manage risks and ensure on-time, on-budget delivery.
BUSINESS AND IT ASSESSMENT
Our assessment methodologies measure your business and IT operations performance, risk and velocity against your target business plans.
ACQUISITION & DIVESTITURE: BUSINESS & IT ALIGNMENT
We rapidly evaluate your current state and create strategic & tactical roadmaps aligned to address acquisition and divestiture activities.
BUSINESS RE-ENGINEERING &TRANSFORMATION
We create and action a target roadmap for business or IT process improvement to facilitate your strategic alignment in a manageable and progressive fashion.
SOLUTION SELECTION AND INTEGRATION
We provide End-to-End vendor and solution integration from business requirements, to RFP management and post contract governance support.
As an advisory firm, we work directly with business and technology executives to align strategic business initiatives to develop or enhance short and long term strategies. We provide project execution oversight and specialists to deliver projects on time and on budget.
CLIENT SPOTLIGhT
Arbonne International ThE GLOBAL BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION PROFESSIONALS (GBTP) STORy Keith Chiavetta, GBTP’s President and CEO, saw an opportunity during a tough 2009 U.S. economy, to create a boutique management consulting firm providing both business and technology consulting. His vision included a small-team approach offering senior advisory and consulting services at a competitive rate. Today, as then, he focuses on providing significant value through establishing a trusted advisor relationships with an entrepreneurial spirit that extends well beyond simply making recommendations or providing advice. Over the past eight years GBTP has developed into a global advisory and consulting company with six core offerings. Clients range from start-ups to international organizations with thousands of employees. We serve both private and public firms, including many private-equity owned concerns and not-forprofits. Our approach balances “big firm” processes with an entrepreneurial mindset. Our team is a dedicated group of senior professionals from multiple industries. Their significant experience includes strategy, architecture, operations and IT consulting. We are proud of their work and the passion they have for excellence and client service.
When Guy Thier, CIO of Arbonne International, joined the company’s executive team in 2013; Keith Chiavetta answered Guy’s call to help implement his vision. Keith understood Guy’s approach to aligning IT with the business. Guy had brought Keith on at his prior firm to help implement a customerfocused IT strategy, anchored by innovative technology. “Keith has long understood that a strong IT professional must understand every aspect of the business in order to be a good partner” says Guy.
The GBTP team works side-by-side with my functional leaders, focused on getting the job done. – Guy Thier
Over the last several years GBTP has been involved with Guy and Arbonne in several key initiatives focusing on IT strategic alignment, project execution, solution integration and developing innovative technology solutions. Guy states, “The GBTP team works side-by-side with my functional leaders, focused on getting the job done.
If you are interested in having a discussion with one of our professionals, please contact us via the link below.
www.gbtpllc.com
info@gbtpllc.com
Guy Thier, CIO Guy Thier brings approximately 20 years of CIO experience to Arbonne from public, private and private equity ownership business models with extensive experience in both IT strategy development as well as grass roots execution of complex projects. He joined Arbonne from Bally Total Fitness, where he served as Senior Vice President (SVP) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for 10 years, overseeing successful IT planning and execution, while achieving operational efficiencies for the $1 billion, 400-club organization. Previously, Guy led the IT functions at LINC Capital and Chernin’s Shoes.
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businesses operate on very different models, he admits; the one selling a service, the other a product; the one located in buildings, the other having very few physical assets. Nevertheless he saw it as a natural progression: “I wanted to work in an organization that really helped people to improve their life and their health.” With manufacturing operations and supply chain focused on stability and efficiency while sales and e-commerce require great flexibility and user experience, as well as the demands of product development, R&D and administration, it is like being the CIO of several companies at once, he adds. Reporting to him directly are some 50 Arbonne IT specialists, while the team is augmented to about 150 people when partners working on the Arbonne account are included. As well as the USA, he has people working for him in India, Hungary and other European countries. PARTNER POWER Back in 2013 the problem that cried out to be addressed may be familiar
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“I wanted to work in an organization that really helped people to improve their life and their health” – Guy Thier, CIO
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to CIOs. “In common with most MLM companies, a large percentage of sales occur toward the end of the month as people try to reach their targets, improve their ratings or maybe earn an incentive,” Thier reveals. “20 percent of our business comes in on the last couple of days in the month and the e-commerce platform we were using could not handle the spike in ordering. It would shut down, and everyone was very frustrated.” To address this
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problem, a partnership was entered into with Thatcher Technology of Naperville Illinois, a specialist in MLM software, comprising the purchase of their e-commerce platform, genealogy and compensation management as well as some back office functions to support the call center. Following nearly two years of intensive customization and modification to meet Arbonne’s business needs, the new platform was
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launched in March 2015. “We have a very tight relationship with Thatcher,” says Thier. “We have a daily call where we go over new requests and issues with their CEO and product development manager, so we really do work as a single virtual team involving key vendors, my own IT team and Thatcher.” Among the key partners in this virtual team is Keste, Arbonne’s Oracle partner. Keste’s role was to develop the integration between Thatcher, EBS and some other third party providers of functionality such as credit card processing, address
identification and verification and sales tax. Keste was recognized as the Arbonne IT Strategic Partner of the Year for 2013 and continues to serve as a consulting partner. Throughout this transformation journey Thier relied on a few tried and tested consultants he had worked with over the years, singling out for special mention Keith Chiavetta, with Global Business Transformation Professionals (GBTP) who came in at an early point to help prepare the IT organization for change and to subsequently drive it forward. Also valued was the input of Jim Jacoby and Laurie Martinelli whose input into the app design process from the point of view of customer experience was invaluable. Arusha Goyal, CEO of Goyal Consulting Group, has also been instrumental in helping Arbonne expand internationally with a successful launch of New Zealand and Taiwan. Arusha has led dozens of works streams supporting all aspects of expansion including product development, field development, customer service and technology work streams.
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WE ARE EXPERTS IN: Cloud computing IT modernization Multi-point integrations Complex e-commerce solutions Complete lifecycle order management
INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION The new platform, apart from stabilizing sales from month to month so the system could cope with rapidly fluctuating levels of business traffic and support sustained growth, was selected to allow Arbonne to expand internationally. “We wanted additionally to be able to open for business in non-English speaking countries,” says Thier. In anticipation of exponential growth into new geographies, the greater part of the – Guy Thier, CIO e-commerce platform has been moved to Amazon Web Services (AWS), a world-embracing suite of cloud-computing services that make up an on-demand computing platform. “Our level of business already scales fivefold at the end of the month, and with AWS within minutes we add five times the server capacity. The advent of cloud has been a
great addition to our infrastructure,” Thier adds. AWS Auto Scaling now ensures that no matter how large or unexpected the spikes in sales demand may be capacity will be automatically increased to meet them. The new system has delivered increasingly smooth month-end closes, the CIO reports, clearing the way for a rapid transition to introducing far greater flexibility in the market using the latest tools. “We began working towards a future where you are not tied to a website or to a laptop. These days there are many more innovative and creative ways of creating a shopping cart off a website whether with mobile device, Amazon Echo [the voice activated virtual assistant already available in the USA and being launched in the UK this year], Apple TV or a kiosk solution where you can have the personalized shopping experience of your choice
“We try to build things in a way that you don’t need training”
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but feeding the same compensation engine, the same genealogy structure. It’s letting people shop wherever they are, on whatever device is to hand, and of course it opens up to a broader range of potential consultants.”
benefits they have personally had from using the products – that’s how most of them start – and give them the twin opportunities of access to the products or of joining Arbonne. For them the company hosts more
Arbonne consultants are already used to doing business in innovative ways. Some are intense users of social media. Typically they share with family, friends and followers the
than 80,000 websites, and all the orders placed are processed through those consultants. “We also provide them with management tools to run their business,” says Guy Thier, “so
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Connecting In A Connected World
Today, every business needs to connect with customers and companies around the globe. To help you compete, we provide the ability to track and transform any widely dispersed and dynamic sales organization, driving sales productivity and recruiting effectiveness, while increasing retention. Visit us today, to see how our innovative technology, proven methodology and concierge support can enable you to drive sales, recruit new distributors and motivate your sales force around the world.
www.thatchertech.com
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each will have hundreds or even thousands of people below them. We have reporting tools that let them know how well their people are doing, and communication tools so they can e-mail their team.” He is also developing toolkits to help consultants purchase products on platforms like Facebook and Pinterest. MULTILINGUAL, MULTICHANNEL So far, all Arbonne’s business has been conducted in predominantly English, French or Spanish speaking regions, however this year the company is opening for business in Taiwan. Translation from and into Chinese has been a barrier. It’s perhaps simple enough to render text in both languages but when it comes to interaction it gets a little harder, Thier confesses. “We have software that will take a person’s address in Chinese and convert it to English or vice versa. And we have in-line translation tools in place so that any user can choose whether to see material in Chinese or in English.” As people choose to shop in different ways it’s a priority for
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Number of Employees
800 direct
250,000 consultants
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ANALYZE
UNCOVER
BRIDGE
people process technology
find the problem
strategize solutions develop a plan source team deploy
GLOBAL EXPANSION STRATEGY FIRM SPECIALIZING IN TECHNOLOGY At GCG, we are experts in the unique characteristics of countries around the globe and utilize our framework for innovative solutions to realize expansion benefits. We partner with your team and provide knowledgeable guidance on strategy, technology and processes to overcome new market challenges. CONTACT ARUSHA GOYAL:
t: 847.452.1148
e: arusha@goyalconsultinggroup.com www.goyalconsultinggroup.com
Designing A More Human Centric Experience For Software, Services and Communication s
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Arbonne to create new channels. For example to make it easier for consultants to access their figures an Amazon Echo version of their portal will soon be released so they can simply ask for the statistics and receive a spoken answer – soon it will be possible to do that from a smartphone too. Asked whether frequent upgrades don’t mean a lot of training, Thier replies that these apps are designed to be intuitive, “We try to build things in a way that you don’t need training. The first mobile app we launched in May was provided the same information as the internet portal for consultants
and we had zero training. In the first week we had 20,000 downloads of the app; now it’s running with about 35,000 users and not a few problems have been reported.” The company is poised for an era of rapid expansion, made possible by IT. For six years it had not moved into any new territories because of technology and language hurdles: now it is planned to move into at least five new countries over three years. The infrastructure is scalable, the model proven, and Petter Mørck’s vision of passing a legacy to the great great grandchildren he will never know personally is becoming a reality.
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9400 Jeronimo Road Irvine, California, USA, 92618 Tel. 001 9497702610 www.arbonne.com