Digitalising the Business Core at Nu Skin Enterprises

About Nu Skin Enterprises 

Nu Skin Enterprises is a premier anti-aging company in developing and distributing leading-edge beauty and wellness products. It is differentiated by a uniquely compelling business model and an expanding global sales force for solutions that support the health and longevity of skin and hair. For over three decades, Nu Skin has researched aging at the genetic level and incorporated premium and wholesome ingredients in its products. Scientific advances in the fields of dermatology, ethnobotany, and nutritional and cosmetic sciences have further enabled the business to leverage innovative ingredient technologies in its formulations. Today, Nu Skin is among the top direct selling companies in the United States and continues to deliver “all of the good, and none of the bad” in all its offerings. 

Time-intensive Paper Processes

As Nu Skin relied on a manual system for most of its business processes, it experienced a multitude of pain points. Employees spent a large part of their day performing tedious daily tasks such as preparing, filing and delivering physical documents. For instance, employees were required to generate paper-based sales orders, check them and make notations. Remote working was also not possible as paper documents were required to be submitted daily to the office where they would be scanned and manually dropped off at the warehouse. As a result of their reliance on paper, workflows were often brought to a complete standstill whenever documents were lost, or if there were processing delays. 

The business also had no visibility over all print, capture and routing activities as part of their daily operations, which hindered the auditing of usage data. Nu Skin thus identified the opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce administrative costs by moving towards digital document processing and management.

- Ricky Tan, IT Manager at Nu Skin

A Digital Workplace with Advanced Workflow Capabilities

FUJIFILM Business Innovation Singapore takes a long-term view of customer relationships beyond a single touchpoint. It delivers an unparalleled customer experience by regularly keeping in touch with its customers to check on their needs, even after a sale is made. It was the quality of these services rendered that compelled Nu Skin to choose FUJIFILM BI SG over its competitors as a partner in its digital transformation journey.

Having reviewed Nu Skin’s requirement to replace manual workflows with digital automation, a suite of digital solutions was proposed. DocuShare 7.0 is an intuitive, integrated and cloud-enabled platform that is ideal for Nu Skin’s everyday business use. It captures, indexes and stores unstructured and structured content on a central location, thereby enabling better sharing, connectivity and collaboration for Nu Skin. Through digital content management and workflow automation, DocuShare 7.0 empowers employees in accessing business critical information and collaborating online remotely.

This eliminates paper-based processes and reduces the need for human input, such as returning to the office and submitting physical documents to the warehouse. Most importantly, DocuShare 7.0 saves time and minimises document loss. The platform can also be customised and scaled up to address specific business needs, thereby eliminating important bottlenecks across the entire workplace. 

Nu Skin’s new sales and ordering processes were further augmented by Capture OnTheGo by PlanetPress Connect, a mobile solution that gathers real-time data remotely. This improves the speed of communication among remote workers and triggers document workflows automatically. As Capture OnTheGo is a fully customisable solution, it can be tailored to Nu Skin’s specific needs. For instance, forms can be customised to capture customer data, photos, signatures as well as time stamps on a tablet or mobile phone. This eliminates the need for physical forms and manual data entry. Documents stored on Capture OnTheGo can also be sorted and searched by client name or category to ease the retrieval of relevant documents.

FUJIFILM BI SG’s suite of digital solutions and services, when implemented end-to-end, helps businesses transit more smoothly and seamlessly into a digital workplace. As part of its digital transformation, Nu Skin decided it was timely to replace their existing printers in order to fully integrate FUJIFILM BI SG’s solutions into the process. The ApeosPort-VII is the very solution designed to accelerate business evolution for companies like Nu Skin and enable greater flexibility at work. Featuring a smart touch screen and intelligent automated processes, the multifunction device (MFD) redefines the entire user experience, enabling employees to create and distribute physical and digital documents print easily and securely even when away from the office. The series supports more efficient digitisation processes by enabling employees to scan and search multiple business cloud services seamlessly. Linking the ApeosPort-VII with Nu Skin’s existing document workflows and internal processes further helps the business achieve an optimum level of scalability for enhanced productivity.

Finally, to facilitate the audit of usage data across Nu Skin’s departments, FUJIFILM BI SG recommended the Equitrac Express® 5. Equitrac Express® 5 is designed for smart cost tracking and intelligent device management and was integrated with Nu Skin’s document management systems and databases. Instead of installing multiple terminals to enable the tracking of copies, scans and faxes, Equitrac Express® 5 simplifies tracking on a centralised system for Nu Skin. Equitrac Express® 5 also automatically routes documents to specific devices based on administrator-defined rules, thereby ensuring the efficiency of document workflows. This eases the auditing of usage data and tracks service costs automatically without sacrificing productivity.

Reimagining Work

Nu Skin’s reinvented work processes have resulted in a digital workplace with advanced workflow capabilities and benefits that go beyond raised efficiencies. Besides a 30% improvement in overall productivity, employees have benefitted from simpler workflows and were able to free their time up for higher-value activities that drive customer satisfaction. For instance, instead of spending time locating missing paperwork and dealing with processing delays, employees benefitted from smoother and more agile processes on DocuShare 7.0. Employees were also able to extract and send digital copies of documents, such as purchase invoices, to their email inboxes before extending an e-copy to their customers. With Capture OnTheGo, sales representatives and delivery personnel were able to access sales notes, make quick changes and ensure that the system remained updated with accurate and reliable information while working on-the-go. This benefitted both customers and sales representatives as communications are clearer and any requests or exceptions can be handled rapidly.

Nu Skin’s digital transformation has enabled it to stay competitive in an increasingly dynamic market.

By integrating the ApeosPort-VII series into Nu Skin’s digital environment, the business has realised unprecedented operability and scalability. The MFD’s seamless connectivity with mobile devices and various cloud services has made mobile printing and scanning a possibility for Nu Skin’s employees, enabling them to print on-demand and with simpler and fewer steps. Equitrac Express® 5 has also provided Nu Skin with greater visibility over the tracking of current and emerging business costs, thereby simplifying audits, maximising cost reduction and reducing wastages. On the whole, the shift towards a digital workplace has also enabled Nu Skin to respond quickly to the need for remote working especially during the circuit breaker while ensuring minimal business disruption and the provision of virtual services.

- Ricky Tan, IT Manager at Nu Skin