Danone Takes a Standard Approach to TPM in China
With few exceptions, trade spend management is generally less mature in the Asia Pacific region than it is in the western part of the world. This was true for Danone Waters China, the maker of Chinese bottled water brands Mizone, Health and Yili, where an unintegrated, siloed approach to monitoring trade expenditures was generating variances and inconsistencies in the company’s trade budget and promotional plans.
“Businesses efforts that are focused on growth to increase market share and guarantee product availability, as they are in Asia, can sometimes be to the detriment of tighter controls,” admits Pierre Lacour, CIO for Danone AsiaPac, who is in charge of developing organizations, solutions and processes to support Danone business growth in AsiaPac.
No longer satisfied with its poor process control, Danone Waters China required a trade spend management system that would meet several requirements associated with the complex Chinese market. For example, it operates through a wide network of 1,500 distributors, serving tens of thousands of retailers, wherein integrating different levels of spending, payment and analysis posed a significant challenge. The system would also have to overcome multiple obstacles linked to change management: the cultural gap, the complexity to reach a large user base scattered across China, and the adoption of a system that would impose more control to users. One more thing, the system had to be available in Chinese.
Danone Waters China embarked on a six-month pre-assessment of possible systems for trade spend management. One of the systems was UpClear’s BluePlanner software, which had been used by its parent company, Group Danone, since 2005 to manage sales planning and trade promotions in several business units worldwide. In January 2012, the web-based BluePlanner software was identified as the best solution to adapt to local requirements, complete with language competency in Chinese, Thai, Japanese and so on.
A rigourous change management program was critical, with more than 100 users, including customer service and sales force reps who manage trade terms either in-house or externally with varying degrees of system automation and integration. UpClear opened a new office in Hong Kong to provide assistance on the strategy and necessary support material for deployment in China as well as to support its growth in Asia.
Not long after, BluePlanner was selected by another Group Danone subsidiary, Danone Aqua in Indonesia, to handle a high volume of trade promotions for its leading beverage brands.
The most important underlying factor for both implementations, which were up against aggressive timelines, was the involvement of project champions, who were selected by key business leaders and trained to lead change management execution.
“Acceptance is based on the motivation of executives and business functional teams — like Finance and Supply Chain — to automate such processes, as well as the use of demos and workshops to explain the stakes and added value of the solution,” says Victoria Evans, controlling and project lead for Trade Term Solutions in Asia.
Lacour adds that the transition depends on the country: “China is usually very good in execution, so once the solution is accepted, the roll out is quite easy despite the size of the team. Indonesia is different, and if acceptance of the new application is welcome, it requires a tight monitoring after implementation to ensure a proper execution of trade term processes in the system.”
Project champions took part in workshops, prototype walkthroughs and key user training. This allowed UpClear to detect problems or missing requirements early, and thus avoid any delay to the planned go-live dates. In Indonesia, an awareness campaign complete with print materials and even apparel was launched to convey to users the message of how the new system would benefit them.
With BluePlanner deployed cost-effectively and rapidly to improve control in trade spending in both regions, the next step is to deploy the solution throughout the rest of Danone AsiaPac; then enlarge the scope to include promotional planning and analytics.
“Even if Danone’s strategy is to deploy a unique template everywhere,
we would have a lot of bespoke
development for Asia due to the more complex layered route to market.”
—Pierre Lacour, CIO, Danone AsiaPac
“Businesses efforts that are focused on growth to increase market share and guarantee product availability, as they are in Asia, can sometimes be to the detriment of tighter controls,” admits Pierre Lacour, CIO for Danone AsiaPac, who is in charge of developing organizations, solutions and processes to support Danone business growth in AsiaPac.
No longer satisfied with its poor process control, Danone Waters China required a trade spend management system that would meet several requirements associated with the complex Chinese market. For example, it operates through a wide network of 1,500 distributors, serving tens of thousands of retailers, wherein integrating different levels of spending, payment and analysis posed a significant challenge. The system would also have to overcome multiple obstacles linked to change management: the cultural gap, the complexity to reach a large user base scattered across China, and the adoption of a system that would impose more control to users. One more thing, the system had to be available in Chinese.
Danone Waters China embarked on a six-month pre-assessment of possible systems for trade spend management. One of the systems was UpClear’s BluePlanner software, which had been used by its parent company, Group Danone, since 2005 to manage sales planning and trade promotions in several business units worldwide. In January 2012, the web-based BluePlanner software was identified as the best solution to adapt to local requirements, complete with language competency in Chinese, Thai, Japanese and so on.
A rigourous change management program was critical, with more than 100 users, including customer service and sales force reps who manage trade terms either in-house or externally with varying degrees of system automation and integration. UpClear opened a new office in Hong Kong to provide assistance on the strategy and necessary support material for deployment in China as well as to support its growth in Asia.
Not long after, BluePlanner was selected by another Group Danone subsidiary, Danone Aqua in Indonesia, to handle a high volume of trade promotions for its leading beverage brands.
The most important underlying factor for both implementations, which were up against aggressive timelines, was the involvement of project champions, who were selected by key business leaders and trained to lead change management execution.
“Acceptance is based on the motivation of executives and business functional teams — like Finance and Supply Chain — to automate such processes, as well as the use of demos and workshops to explain the stakes and added value of the solution,” says Victoria Evans, controlling and project lead for Trade Term Solutions in Asia.
Lacour adds that the transition depends on the country: “China is usually very good in execution, so once the solution is accepted, the roll out is quite easy despite the size of the team. Indonesia is different, and if acceptance of the new application is welcome, it requires a tight monitoring after implementation to ensure a proper execution of trade term processes in the system.”
Project champions took part in workshops, prototype walkthroughs and key user training. This allowed UpClear to detect problems or missing requirements early, and thus avoid any delay to the planned go-live dates. In Indonesia, an awareness campaign complete with print materials and even apparel was launched to convey to users the message of how the new system would benefit them.
With BluePlanner deployed cost-effectively and rapidly to improve control in trade spending in both regions, the next step is to deploy the solution throughout the rest of Danone AsiaPac; then enlarge the scope to include promotional planning and analytics.
“Even if Danone’s strategy is to deploy a unique template everywhere,
we would have a lot of bespoke
development for Asia due to the more complex layered route to market.”
—Pierre Lacour, CIO, Danone AsiaPac