Leading beverage company slashed its review and approval time for initiatives by 50% by integrating disparate trade promotion processes via Promax solution 

Client Background

The company is a leading food and beverage maker, with a customer base of over 290 million. This European FMCG leader, with operations in more than 10 countries, markets non-alcoholic drinks to customers across continental France, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Great Britain, etc. It has more than 24,000 employees on board and features 20 billion-dollar brands. 

Industry Landscape

The food and beverage (F&B) industry has been grappling with challenges related to Trade Promotion Management (TPM), Trade Fund Management, Trade Promotion Optimization and Volume Planning activities. The market, which is highly competitive and fragmented, needs TPM solutions to keep a check on trade spend and make the most of the trade dollars.

Opportunity

The client, which operates in the fast-moving consumer goods industry and is exposed to price and demand volatility, was facing issues in managing Trade Promotions. There was absence of a granular process for their overall and individual promotional P&L (where trade promotions rate high as an item), making analysis of pre- and post-event evaluations cumbersome. The client had manual, effort-intensive processes, that varied by country, for updating yearly promotional and trade spend plan. This made the entire planning cycle cumbersome. Multiple reviews and approvals were required for each trading term or promotional initiative. Sales teams lacked consistent visibility across promotional performance metrics. Conflicting forecasts hindered clear decisions on finance, sales and production. The client needed a comprehensive TPM solution to overcome these challenges.

Solution

Wipro’s Promax has long partnered with many global brands in the F&B industry. Our Promax Advanced^TM solution helps track, predict and optimize Trade Promotions Management, Trade Fund Management, and Volume Planning activities. Promax’s interface and other functionalities helped the client:

• Get a holistic view of their promotions by consolidating their business functions
• Standardize and expand P&Ls to include promotional components at all levels of customer and product hierarchies, providing further accountability to account managers
• Get up-to-date data that can be used for pre/post promotion evaluation by feeding KPIs, such as sell in and sell out, into the system
• Transform and standardize the planning process across countries, resulting in efficient and timely updates of promotional plans
• Synchronize systems and connect demand planning, sales, finance and manufacturing processes to arrive at an accurate sales and demand forecast throughout business
• Streamline and automate approval and payment processes for investments
  

Business Impact

Promax delivered significant improvements in standardization, efficiency and reduction in time required for each account manager to enter their plan.

• Integration of P&L visibility led to a 60% reduction in time spent in locating errors in planned spends in one of the largest grocery customers
• Annual plan data entry time was reduced by more than 50% for large, complex customer accounts. Time required for executives to review and approve an initiative was reduced by 50%
• The planning method transformed from a static process of enter, wait and review to a continuous and responsive model
• Promax united trade spend planning with S&OP for better forecast accuracy. The solution provided a single environment where all business factors were combined, correlated and compared to determine one demand and sales forecast 

Following implementation of Promax Advanced^TM solution, the client’s account managers have more autonomy and are more accountable to the spending they implement. The executives can now spend time, that was previously spent in approving each single investment, on core business requirements. 

“At this level, the client has access to data that will enable them to stand out in the marketplace. The Promax Advanced^TM solution supports their profitability goals by providing the tools and resources we need at every stage of their business cycle”

- Pat Zalewski, Global Delivery Director at Wipro