Breakthrough SMB - December 2004

According to AMR Research, trade funds investments can account for 15 percent of a consumer goods (CG) company's revenue, and the total spent on advertising, marketing and promotions by CG companies is an estimated $250 billion annually. In an increasingly competitive market, small to midsized business (SMB) must learn how to produce more out of each dollar spent and understand that automating the trade promotion management (TPM) process can be a valuable means to that end.

Birds Eye Foods took home the Breakthrough SMB award from this year's Consumer Goods Technology Conference for its success following a strategic decision made in January 2004 -- to embark upon a TPM solution implementation that would allow greater control of a multimillion dollar trade spending process and smarter decision-making.

Promoting Change
Coming in at $1 billion in sales annually, Birds Eye Foods makes more than 40 of America's favorite brands, from Birds Eye vegetables to Snyder of Berlin chips to Godiva chocolates, all sold under well-known regional and national brands as well as under private label and store brands. To promote its brands and increase incremental sales, hundreds of promotions per brand are planned and executed annually for each of its customers.

Birds Eye Foods needed to replace its manual, excel-based system of planning and tracking promotions with an automated and integrated solution for evaluation and management of all trade promotion activities. The objective was not to necessarily spend less, but to spend trade funds more efficiently and effectively.

TPM in 90 Days
Under the TPM initiative, Birds Eye Foods enlisted Verisync Trade Solutions' TradeLync -- an ASP version of the MEI Trade Management Solution. A cross-functional team was formed including an executive steering committee, a project leader and a project team composed of representatives from sales, trade marketing, IT and finance. In order to properly align Birds Eye Foods business with TradeLync, the project team worked closely with VeriSync Trade Solutions/MEI on business mapping and planning, data integration and training.

The implementation of TradeLync followed an extremely aggressive timeline, deploying the solution in time to meet the 90-day implem-entation deadline. The most fundamental change and improvement is that the company now has a tool that provides broad, accurate visibility of its trade spending. "TradeLync will significantly increase the level of visibility and control in our trade planning execution and analysis," says Tom Studer, VP of Commercial Operations for Birds Eye Foods. "Our sales team will benefit from real time, on-line funds tracking and merchandising planning that will replace our current process of manual spreadsheets. Our marketing team will benefit from one of the most innovative features of TradeLync, the Promotion and Marketing Calendars that summarize merchandising activity planned for their brands, by customer, in real time. TradeLync's powerful analytic capabilities will allow Birds Eye to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of our trade spending and ultimately lead to smarter spending and increased sales," says Studer.

With real-time and actionable information reaching the sales, marketing, trade marketing, finance and production departments, Birds Eye Foods can now ensure that no money is left on the table.