Imperial Tobacco is upgrading its customer relationship management (CRM) platform to improve visibility and efficiency of its retail relationships.

The multinational tobacco firm has been working on the replacement of its legacy version of Oracle’s Siebel software since September last year and expects to complete the project by the end of this year.

“We want to ensure that we manage the relationships with the retail trade, adapt to constant market changes and become more proactive,” said Mohammed Jassat, UK salesforce systems co-ordinator at Imperial Tobacco.

“Other Western European regions are already using newer versions of the system and the UK is due for an update, so we are playing catch-up."

Ahead of the CRM software upgrade, Imperial Tobacco has also rolled out a new generation of Fujitsu pen tablet PCs following a nine-week trial with other vendors including Dell.

With the devices, sales staff can access information from the CRM platform while on the move. The version loaded on the tablet PCs is the legacy system, so the company expects to fully benefit from the hardware functionality once the software is upgraded.

“We expect our sales reps to be able to capture information on clients a lot faster once the upgrade is complete,” said Jassat.

The firm said it chose the Fujitsu devices because of their good battery life, robust design and easy maintenance.