Hindustan Unilever (HUL) will manage the entire back-end chain of its distributors and has tied up with a third-party logistics service provider for the same.
The initiative will help distributors in managing stocks and supply chain. HUL has already begun a pilot exercise in Mumbai.
Hindustan Unilever executive director (sales & customer development) Sanjiv Kakkar told an economic daily that the outsourced function is “a crucial element in the company’s distribution chain”. “The initiative will help the distributor and our teams to focus on customers. At present, a lot of distributors get constrained by factors like concentrating on the back-end in areas like finance, logistics and space management. The task is to create a distributor organisation that is customer facing rather than inward looking,” he said.
HUL is encouraging its distributors to become entrepreneurs and run the business as a professional distribution house and take on the onus to deliver growth.
