SlimFast turns to the cloud and achieves high-level transparency into trade promotion and deduction management process

Customer:
Glanbia Nutritionals

Industry:
Food manufacturing industry

Group 15895

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SlimFast, a nearly one billion dollar weight loss brand at its peak, was acquired by a private equity firm in 2014 with one business goal: deliver one of the biggest brand turnarounds in recent CPG history. The acquisition positioned the brand to hit the reset button and develop a seamless trade promotion and deduction management process to organize 150 retail partnerships across a dozen distribution channels. The task of achieving a highly accessible, multinational financial sales platform that easily integrated with its Sage ERP X3 and Salesforce CRM tools led SlimFast to CPGvision.

“The brand was making a shift to spend more marketing dollars and that required us to find a better way to operate in a complex marketplace,” says Karen Van Dongen, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at SlimFast. “We needed a TradePromotion Management (TPM) solution that could deliver effective, transparent and timely promotional planning and settlement processing.”

“-1

The CPGvision TPM solution makes the complex process of deduction management very simple. Upon streamlining our systems and processes, the SlimFast brand is well equipped to address audits and deduction payments.

Group 15895

Karen Van Dongen, 
Vice President of Sales and Business Development, SlimFast

 

With trade representing nearly 25% of gross sales, the decision to adopt a cloud-based TPM solution built on the Salesforce platform was a major step in achieving the organization-wide transparency SlimFast desired. Following a quick 120-day deployment, the brand gained instant visibility into real-time business information allowing a streamlined and collaborative approach to business planning, promotion planning and deduction management.

SlimFast experienced significant benefits from its new ability to record and track promotion and non-promotion deduction types such as shortages, damages, late shipments and handling fees. According to Van Dongen, the immediate and daily access to such granular data enabled the brand to perform root cause analysis on deductions and make adjustments in the supply chain accordingly.

After implementing CPGvision, SlimFast had the tools to better manage and maximize its national decentralized sales network. The high-level of transparency provided by the TPM tool empowered brokers with the critical information needed to strike more profitable deals, while dynamic dashboard reports enabled senior management to easily review broker activities.

The promotional calendar within the CPGvision platform also provided an integrated view of the brand’s marketing spend to more effectively evaluate the real-time ROI of media dollars.

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This is an intuitive tool that puts a host of critical information at our fingertips, enhancing our existing Salesforce platform with CPGvision was a cost effective investment that will ensure we have continuous control over where and why dollars are being spent.

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Karen Van Dongen,
Vice President of Sales and Business Development, SlimFast

 

As ongoing efforts are made to strengthen the brand, SlimFast is working towards optimizing and automatically feeding syndicated data directly to its dashboard reports to obtain next level insights into trade spend.

 

 

The results

Vector-2 Centralize TPM data to gain companywide transparency and improved communications

Vector-2Automate and streamline deduction management processes

Vector-2Manage, maximize and monitor its national decentralized sales network

Vector-2Analyze promotions and ROI to plan future events more efficiently

Vector-2Gain financial visibility for increased profits and cash flow management

Vector-2Redirect time and efforts towards effectively managing promotions and accounts, not manipulating data in static spreadsheets

Vector-2Generate and access real-time business intelligence and analytics to better plan, manage, track and forecast trade promotions

About PSignite

Meet CPGvision: the best-in-class fully connected and integrated RGM solution suite for the CPG industry, built on the Salesforce platform. With the most advanced functionality in the industry, CPGvision equips you with real-life problem solving applications for TPM, TPO, RGM, and beyond. CPGvision proudly provides a dedicated customer service team staffed with CPG industry professionals. Regardless of where you are in your RGM journey, you’ll be fully equipped with the solutions you need for profitable revenue growth.

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