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Nature's Own
International Direct Sales Company Runs Its Operations on FileMaker
"We handle records regarding several thousand distributors and
several thousand orders per month,” Said Lars Mürbeck, President of
Nature's Own. "As a multi-level marketing company, we're dealing
with bonuses. We pay bonuses every week. Our sales generate roughly
100,000 records that have to be summarized, sorted, printed, and
sent to our distributors on a weekly basis.”
If you haven't heard of multi-level or "Network” marketing, you're
not alone. Network marketing transforms sales representatives into
"distributors.” Each sales rep both sells products, and recruits
new distributors for his or her "downline.” Whenever someone in
your downline makes a sale, you get a bonus. The result is a
concept Nature's Own calls "leveraged income.” Distributors aren't
just trying to sell face creme or Elite Sport Performance Drink,
they're also building an organization and helping people who
they've recruited. At the end of every week, depending on the
orders of each person in a downline, everyone gets a bonus.
So, how does a company with distributors in the United States,
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Germany, the former
Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states manage to keep track of every
single order, total up all the "Gross Sales Points,” and write
bonus checks to more than ten thousand distributors?
"That's why we need a good database,” Lars Mürbeck said. "It's the
heart of the company. If you don't track everything, the whole
thing falls apart within a week.”
From the beginning, Mürbeck turned to FileMaker Pro database.
FileMaker Pro software is a relational database application
designed to help manage and share information in the real world.
Starting with raw data, it's fast and easy to create working
databases on Macintosh, Windows 95, Windows NT, or Windows 3.1.
"I like the simplicity of FileMaker Pro,” said. "I still do all the
programming. I don't have a background as a programmer. I'm a
businessman, but I'm very interested in computers.”
As an international corporation, Nature's Own also uses their
FileMaker Pro Server database to manage the varying sales taxes for
each product in each nation. Each country has its own set of
sub-programs within FileMaker. So, in Sweden, the software tracks
sales the difference between the sales tax on tanning cream and
nutritional food-supplements. In the United States, sales tax
differences between Massachusetts and New York city are calculated
automatically.
According to Mürbeck, FileMaker Pro's flexibility has been key in
developing and growing his organization. Adding a new country into
the program only takes a day or two before changes can be
implemented.
"We're saving a lot of money,” Mürbeck said. "All the programming
is done in-house. We have been in contact with other companies here
in the United States running the same kind of multi-level marketing
business. They have bought a complete system designed specifically
for Multi-Level marketing, but they are more-or less locked-in.
There are times when I need to change something in the program.
They have to get the person from the software company to make the
changes. Here we make it momentarily. With FileMaker Pro, we can
just open up the file and add what we want. I think that's
happening every day.”
Then, at the end of the week, once all the orders are entered, the
100,000 records are imported into a Power Mac 9500 and crunched to
produce the weekly bonus reports. It only takes 20 minutes.
FileMaker Pro even prints the checks.
"I can't see any limits in FileMaker Pro,” Mürbeck said. "We don't
have it implemented today, but in the future we'll be able to
telephone people directly from within FileMaker. In Sweden we have
one guy right now working on the connection between the Internet
and FileMaker. So actually I don't have any limits on I can do
within FileMaker.”
Filemaker Contact:
Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com
- Nature's Own, an international operation selling high-quality beauty creams and vitamins, needed a system to organize their orders -- as many as several thousand orders per month. Their FileMaker Pro-based system totals orders, calculates bonus checks owed to distributors, and manages varying sales taxes for each product in each nation.
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