Customer Management Award

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) racked up $9.6 billion in consumer sales in 2006 thanks to its broad range of products in the baby and kids care, skin care, oral care, wound care and women's health care fields, as well as nutritional and over-the-counter pharmaceutical products. Of the 10 major categories in which Johnson & Johnson consumer companies have a presence, it holds a top position in five.

 

The company's CAS CPWerx trade promotion management tool helped J&J to manage its brand presence and provide strategic value to retail partners, serving the company's five consumer divisions since 2000. But the business changed since the tool's initial deployment and was no longer fully meeting the needs of its users, which include almost 600 direct sales and marketing professionals as well as sales agency partners.

 

So in 2006, the company undertook a revitalization project for CPWerx, known internally as Sales PlaNet: a project that eventually earned it the 2007 Customer Management Award from CGT and its advisory boards.

 

Past experience had shown managers at J&J that a team approach was vital to attain the expertise necessary to make such a project a success, as well as to attain essential buy-in from all constituencies. As such, a steering committee included leaders from sales, finance and information management, who were charged with allocating the necessary resources and eliminating barriers, both important parts of the change process. In addition, leadership of the overall project came from the business, which was critical because the largest user group of the application is sales. J&J also engaged Booz Allen Hamilton and CAS staff to help guide the revitalization process.

 

Once implemented, the revitalized CPWerx application provided J&J's consumer companies the functionality to:

Manage trade promotions and spending across all franchises for key strategic customers

Automate financial controls to address SOX regulations and financial reporting requirements.

Provide robust promotion calendaring, along with the creation and maintenance of promotion plans

>Create real-time, accurate summary of trade promotion plans

 

With tight integration of CPWerx to its ERP system, J&J is able to provide consistent, enterprisewide information to sales, sales planning, sales finance and management teams, who can then leverage the information to reduce promotional expenses by intelligently controlling the allocation of trade funds.

 

Since redeploying the CPWerx, J&J is focused on reducing the time it takes to plan and organize individual trade promotions and improve customer account management. Increased sales productivity and efficiency has allowed it to redeploy this time to higher value activities and focus on improving customer relations, managing deductions better, improving employee welfare and optimizing resources.

 

All in all, the revitalization project was a great success. The J&J, CAS and Booz Allen Hamiltonstaffed steering committee focused on driving business value and communicating project progress on a consistent basis, which resulted in positive enthusiasm for the new Sales PlaNet.

 

"From the beginning, these three companies shared the common vision, provided the best and brightest people and communicated on a regular basis," says Jennifer Ceslak, director of trade promotions management for J&J. CPWerx is now a valued tool that supports key customer management and trade management decisions for J&J consumer companies.

 

 

Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages
The challenging task of delivering syndicated data into a form that sales people can use was causing unacceptable delays at Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages (CSAB). The cost of data extracts was in the six-figure range, and even then, data had to be replicated three times.

 

Then,ACNielsen began providing syndicated data in a more open and standard format, called DataBank. Craig Hodnett, VP of category management for CSAB, recognized that this data could be directly leveraged by Interactive Edge's XP3 Platform, an analysis and presentation tool.

 

Leveraging Interactive Edge's XP3 platform, his team's business and analysis expertise, and ACNielsen's latest database standard, CSAB established a direct connection between existing best-in-class selling tools and the data to drive them effectively. This new and innovative architecture includes SQL Server Analysis Services cubes on a server in CSAB's network, connected directly to ACNielsen's DataBank, and serves data in dynamic selling presentations for every member of the company's sales force.

 

Sales teams can now attain key account business insights within minutes versus days, with 80 percent of insights already being found thanks to Interactive Edge XP3's use of smart text.

 

"If category management had to build the business reviews and then analyze them, we would not be able to have the impact with our core competencies [efficient assortment and space management with strategic partners without adding headcount] that we currently enjoy," Hodnett says. "This is a key to our success."

 

VTech
Like most consumer goods manufacturers, VTech lives and dies by inventory levels. The company took a two-step process to ensure retailers were stocked with the right quantities for anticipated business due to a promotion or not.

 

Four years ago, the company deployed Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) -- an application now owned by Oracle -- which enabled VTech to consistently meet customer demand for on-time and complete orders, and reduce retailers' inventory up to 40 percent. VTech also reduced its cost of excess inventory by 75 percent.

 

Next, VTech deployed Demantra Trade Promotion Management -- now part of Oracle's solution portfolio -- allowing analysis and performance of what-if scenarios on promotions.

 

"One thing we did that was a little different was choose to integrate with the Real-Time S&OP," says Nick Delany, SVP, VTech. "That would integrate the channel marketing and supply chain processes.

 

Otherwise, two silos exist in house, with one team dreaming up great promotions and the other team wondering what they ought to be ordering."

 

The output of trade promotion processes is automatically integrated into Real-Time S&OP to ensure trade promotion plans are incorporated in production and inventory management decisions.

 

VTech no longer misses sales due to inadequate inventory. At a large account, VTech is now consistently 98 percent in stock when a promotion starts.

 

"We now have more profitable promotions and can make a more accurate determination of our inventory needs," says Kedar Kulkarni, director of supply chain for VTech. "We've learned how to mix products and promotions to meet our profitability goals."