How Nintendo of America uses Natural Insight to streamline field execution and improve visibility
Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto. Nintendo is one of the world's largest video game companies by market capitalization, creating some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon.
Nintendo has a field team of 150 dedicated field representatives who are in charge of maintaining all Nintendo kiosks, cleaning up displays, changing games, and training sales associates in retail locations across the country.
The team is structured with different hierarchy levels, including field representatives and district supervisors. In addition to the field team, the retail operation team also comprises a corporate office team that supports the field team.
For close to 15 years, Nintendo had been using a software solution developed internally by their IT team. While the solution had allowed the Nintendo team to execute many product launches over the years, it was becoming difficult to maintain, and the retail operation team was looking to switch to a cloud-based retail execution and workforce management software. The Nintendo retail operation team wanted to improve communication between their field teams and corporate office and increase transparency to continue to delight customers with superior store execution.
While looking for a solution, Natural Insight kept being mentioned by industry leaders. After reviewing different vendors, Nintendo chose Natural Insight because it provided the most robust and flexible workforce and task management solution combined with a superior user experience.
To get ready to transition to the new system, Nintendo partnered with Natural Insight to equip their teams both mentally and technically on adopting the new solution. As a result, the team experienced a seamless rollout and a 100% adoption rate.
Supporting Strategic Product Launches
Nintendo product launches are strategic for the company and have a significant impact on the company's brand experience and reputation, as well as sales. Nintendo has developed expertise in creating exciting product launches that get their community engaged, from online forums to retail locations.
With Natural Insight, the Nintendo team can ensure that field teams are given correct instructions to be at the right place at the right time and have all the information they need. This allows Nintendo teams to roll out large projects in a short amount of time and deliver amazing experiences to their customers in stores.
Recently, the retail operation team was responsible for a major launch, for which they had to install 6500 interactive retail kiosks displays in a six-week time frame. It was a major success for Nintendo, as the product launched seamlessly and delivered excellent ROI for the both the company and retail partners.
In addition to providing the right tools to deliver seamless execution, Natural Insight provides Nintendo with unprecedented visibility into store activities and field teams' productivity.
The retail operation team can quickly pull reports and create insightful dashboards to inform conversations with the sales and marketing team.
And with over 250,000 pictures of store execution taken in 2016 alone, the corporate team can instantly get a better understanding of the implementation of their merchandising projects in stores.
