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Tupperware parties to get mobile tech

A change in workforce demographic has forced Tupperware to consider using mobile technology for its popular storage parties.
Written by Suzanne Tindal, Contributor

A change in workforce demographic has forced Tupperware to consider using mobile technology for its popular storage parties.

Tupperware

(Harvest image, by Katy Warner, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Tupperware has thousands of people in its sales workforce presiding over Tupperware parties to sell the product in the home sphere.

Currently, they have to hold the party and note down orders on a piece of paper. They then have the option to enter orders into an online system when they get back to a PC.

The company is overhauling this online system to make it more user-friendly. The next step in the company's strategy is to make Tupperware's online systems "more portable" for its sales force, according to IT Operations Manager Con Sardellis.

He wants to make it possible for the team to be able to access everything on mobile devices such as tablets or phones.

He said that until now, there hadn't been much interest really in using mobile technology, but the demographics of the company had been changing

"The type of people we've attracted is now much younger," Con Sardellis, IT Operations Manager for Tupperware. "what comes with that is the technology."

He believed that the move to mobile was only coming at this point because the company had wanted to avoid the technology getting in the way of the party atmosphere.

"Our parties are very personal," he said. "Sometimes technology can interfere".

Mobile functionality wasn't going to happen overnight, according to Sardellis, who said it would still take some time to get the necessary technology up and running.

Enabling the tech

Over the last three years, those in the sales force using the online ordering system rose from 1850 to 6000.

This increase spurred a hardware upgrade, with the company deciding to replace its older IBM kit with two IBM Power 750 servers and six IBM System x3550 servers in the lead-up to the Christmas rush.

Tupperware has always been an IBM shop, according Sardellis: so much so that Tupperware would "pretty much change the colour of the building" in honour of its technology provider.

The reason Tupperware stayed with IBM was good support and the knowledge that the servers would keep operating, he said. When Melbourne had a long 40 degree heat wave last summer, two air conditioning units had failed and temperatures had soared, but IBM's kit "just kept powering on".

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