Two Years of Partnership, One Bold Step Forward for Field Sales
Nearly two years ago, Unilever Professional (UPro) partnered with 1Channel to digitise its field sales journey, helping teams identify, onboard, and engage more institutional and key accounts.
Over time, as the business and field realities evolved, teams from Hindustan Unilever and 1Channel went back to the ground, through multiple discussions, market visits, and field interactions, to understand what more the platform needed to solve.
Those learnings shaped a new roadmap for UPro, combining AI-led capabilities with several important workflow and usability enhancements.
Two Years of Digitizing Field Sales for Unilever Professional
When Unilever Professional set out to strengthen its institutional and key account business, the goal was straightforward: build a structured, digital way to identify new opportunities, onboard accounts efficiently, and keep field teams engaged with the right accounts at the right time.
That is where the original partnership between UPro and 1Channel began, nearly two years ago. The 1Channel platform was deployed to bring visibility and consistency to a field sales motion that had depended heavily on manual coordination and fragmented data.
Listening to the Field to Shape What Comes Next
Digitizing a field sales process is rarely a one-time exercise. As UPro's business priorities and on-ground realities evolved, teams from Hindustan Unilever and 1Channel went back to the market together, sitting through field visits and candid conversations with the sales force to understand where the existing workflows needed to do more.
Those sessions surfaced clear patterns: a need for more intelligent decision support, tighter workflows around account identification and onboarding, and a simpler day-to-day experience for the people using the app in the field every day.
Those insights fed directly into a new product roadmap, one that combines AI-led capabilities with meaningful improvements to workflow design and usability.
Training Day: Rolling Out the New 1Channel App at HUL Gurugram
On 25 August, the UPro and 1Channel teams came together at the Hindustan Unilever Gurugram office to complete training on the new version of the 1Channel app.
For the 1Channel team, this milestone represents more than a scheduled product upgrade. It reflects a working model where technology continues to evolve alongside the people who rely on it every day in the field, rather than being redesigned once and left unchanged.
See the Announcement on LinkedIn
Read the original announcement and see the UPro team with the new 1Channel app:
What Continuous Field Sales Evolution Looks Like
The UPro rollout is a useful example of how field sales platforms should be built and maintained over time. Rather than treating a go-live as the finish line, teams that stay close to the field, through market visits, structured feedback loops, and ongoing training, can keep adapting their systems as business needs change.
For organizations managing large institutional and key account portfolios, this kind of continuous partnership can help ensure that AI-led capabilities and workflow improvements translate into real adoption on the ground, not just features on a roadmap.
A Partnership Built on Collaboration
None of this would be possible without close collaboration between the teams involved. A big thank you to the teams at Hindustan Unilever and Unilever Professional for the collaboration, candid feedback, and continued partnership.
We're excited about this next phase for UPro and look forward to seeing the new 1Channel experience create an even stronger impact on the ground.
Build Your Field Sales Program With 1Channel
If your organization is looking to digitize and continuously improve its field sales operations, 1Channel can help you build a platform that evolves with your business and your team.
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