Ch. 7 Business Marketing

An example of business marketing and purchases in conjunction with Burt's Bees is the use of MEI software. Up until the point that the firm began using the software offered by MEI they were still using Excel spreadsheets to track sales, accounts, and project future sales based on data imported in Excel by a handful of people at the company. The shift enabled Burt's Bees to boost efficiency quickly and increased levels of productivity to new heights.

The purchase of the MEI software was certainly a business product vs. a consumer product as it would ultimately fulfill the needs of the business as a whole, to work better, faster, and with more accuracy. Tracking spending and managing sales forecasts could now all be done by using a single system with the capabilities to monitor, store, and compartmentalize all the data the Burt's Bees would input to run the company from supply and production costs, to future sales projections based on previous data. Additionally more Burt's Bees employees would use the services of the software, and instead of only a handful of people doing a job and knowing its components many of Burt's Bees employees would seamlessly use the same system to input and export data for the company.

It hadn't occurred to me how important this aspect is to a growing company until I began reading and learning of the changes that Burt's Bees has made in the last 20 years as a brand within a growing industry. It's interesting to have learned how the company continues to grow and innovates their products as well as seeing how they respond to changes while holding on to the core values of environmental sustainability, high productivity and quality products.