SUCCESS STORY

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE)

COMPANY:
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE)

INDUSTRY:
Retail, Entertainment

HEADQUARTERS:
San Mateo, California

PlayStation^® operates in the hyper-competitive worlds of retail and gaming. Produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) the PlayStation family of products and services includes PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, PlayStation Store, PlayStation Now and PlayStation Vue. Managing merchandising and inventory are critical to customer engagement and retail success. Keeping in step with retailers and consumers helps SIE create the right execution at the store shelf.

The Challenge

SIE field sales representatives are tasked with creating the optimal point of sale experience, installing and maintaining interactive displays, training retail staff, and ensuring appropriate inventory levels across all buying seasons. The company struggled using an in-house Windows 7-based merchandising tracking system that was heavily dependent on support from the SIE IT team for updates and enhancements and experienced considerable downtime.

The Solution

SIE turned to KloudGin for a solution that provided real-time visibility to inventory and field activity, could be easily configured and updated to meet their needs, and delivered an intuitive mobile application capable of capturing a diverse range of data in the stores. Using KloudGin, SIE field representatives complete over 50,000 store visits every month with system uptime averaging over 99%. SIE now has a unified merchandising process across all stores as well as greater visibility into operations across the USA and Canada.

Greater transparency across every aspect of the merchandising process has resulted in significant efficiencies and productivity gains for SIE. Time spent in-store, POS materials installed, a number of users trained, inventory consumed between visits and other metrics tracked by KloudGin provide a picture of operations that allow management to fine-tune strategies and processes.

KloudGin’s scheduling engine allows field representatives and their managers to plan their routes and schedules. Managers have real-time visibility to the route plan for each of their representatives which allows them to plan joint visits if needed. KloudGin is integrated with Google to track travel time and distance which helps keep sales reps on task and eliminates manual mileage expense filing. Pictures of POS installations and data on merchandising, training, and inventory are captured digitally for each store visit. The need for in-store visits by SIE supervisors has dramatically reduced as managers can remotely view pictures of POS displays to ensure compliance. Retailers also are reaping the benefits of process transparency. SIE field representatives, armed with Android tablets and the KloudGin mobile app, have access to data across a variety of SIE departmental systems allowing them to report and replenish store inventory more quickly as well as create tickets to repair interactive displays resulting in speedier repairs.

“With KloudGin, we’ve improved sales representatives productivity. KloudGin provides our sales and marketing teams with critical insights into retail execution in real-time,” said Christine Peterson, Director of Field Operations. “KloudGin brings information together from multiple systems so data isn’t siloed in different departments or markets, but provides a true 360 view.”