Consolidating sales and back-end tasks yields efficiency and agility for L'Oréal division.

“Because you’re worth it.” Few companies have a more intimate relationship with customers than L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty company. With 28 global brands — including Lancôme, Maybelline, and Redken — L’Oréal helps millions of people feel pampered and beautiful each day. To protect and promote these all-important brands, the company uses Salesforce to keep operations coordinated and engage with customers. L’Oréal’s extraordinary growth included numerous acquisitions, but this success created some communications challenges. The company tapped Salesforce to consolidate sales efforts and back-end systems to help the Professional Products Division share data and coordinate brands, resulting in a jump in operational efficiencies across the board.

L’Oréal also built portals to provide product info, demo tips, and training materials for the distributor reps and beauticians that coordinate salon events. “We wanted to make sure that all of our brands could be as agile as possible, while working with salons in an orchestrated manner,” says Barry Gilmore, CIO, L’Oréal Americas. “Salesforce is a vital tool to enable our unending quest to understand our customers.” L’Oréal built on its initial success with Salesforce by adding an employee social network that helps reps and stylists work together to plan events on behalf of multiple brands, and share everything from hair colouring techniques to tips on reducing frizz or keeping hair shiny. And it’s easier for management to communicate with employees so everyone in the organisation stays aligned. With its new systems, L’Oréal can integrate acquisitions or roll out new brands more quickly, market more effectively, and help customers look their best.