Premier Nutrition Gains Visibility into its Trade Spend
In the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, rapid growth is a sure fire way to identify insufficient business tools and outdated processes. Premier Nutrition Corporation’s revenue and customer base grew seemingly overnight gaining heavy distribution into national food, drug and mass channels. The manufacturer of protein shakes, bars and powders and joint supplements quickly realized Trade Promotion Management (TPM) happens in real time, while spreadsheets don’t.
“With the company now operating in various trade channels and running promotions more frequently, it was critical to understand if we were actually making a profit,” says Anne Spalding, vice president/ controller of Premier Nutrition Corp. “Tracking data on spreadsheets and chasing down the sales team for information was not an efficient way to analyze the financial impact of a promotion.”
Its overreliance on manual spreadsheets to track trade spend for approximately 40 SKUs was no longer sustainable for the expanding business. The nimble manufacturer accustomed to operating at a fast pace and without an internal IT department, turned to cloud-based CPGToolBox to transition from managing spreadsheets to managing trade promotions. Adopting TPM technology in the cloud allowed Premier Nutrition Corp to avoid the hassles of slow servers and onsite IT maintenance, without sacrificing functionality, flexibility, scalability or speed.
“We don’t have to wait for our data to upload to a server or live in fear of a server crashing,” notes Spalding. “CPGToolBox offered a new, agile approach to the other antiquated TPM systems requiring high costs and IT demands.”
With the company’s data now stored in one centralized system, Premier Nutrition Corp has gained considerable visibility and control into its trade spending. Critical financial information is neatly organized by customer, SKU, promotion and pricing making the former process of verifying invoices, correcting errors and manually updating spreadsheets a thing of the past.
CPGToolBox seamlessly integrates with the manufacturers’ NetSuite ERP system allowing deduction settlement processing to be handled automatically and in a more timely fashion keeping aging accruals accurate and highly visible. The built-in price validation functionality has also enabled Premier Nutrition Corp to catch price discrepancies between customer orders and issued invoices. By utilizing reports in the CPGToolBox platform, Premier Nutrition Corp automates its monthly accruals and successfully streamlined the company’s annual planning process.
“As planning for fiscal year 2016 begins, we don’t have to start from scratch and re-enter everything,” says Spalding. “We have so much better information available to us now, allowing us to simply clone the 2015 plan, make updates and build on it for the coming year.”
Extracting key trade spend data into visual dashboards and custom reports has enabled Premier Nutrition Corp to truly see the financial impact of both active and future trade promotions. The manufacturer has immediate insight and data visualization into promotion activity, dollars spent and sales volume increases during a promotional period. The compilation of data further empowered the Finance team to set up accruals and satisfy auditor requirements.
“The cost effectiveness and power of CPGToolBox has allowed us to do more with the same resources,” says Spalding. “The entire company can see trade deals that happened, what’s coming down pipe and the expenses incurred from trade, which is critical information we had to once manually gather and compile from the sales team.”
Premier Nutrition Corp has be able to:
“With the company now operating in various trade channels and running promotions more frequently, it was critical to understand if we were actually making a profit,” says Anne Spalding, vice president/ controller of Premier Nutrition Corp. “Tracking data on spreadsheets and chasing down the sales team for information was not an efficient way to analyze the financial impact of a promotion.”
Its overreliance on manual spreadsheets to track trade spend for approximately 40 SKUs was no longer sustainable for the expanding business. The nimble manufacturer accustomed to operating at a fast pace and without an internal IT department, turned to cloud-based CPGToolBox to transition from managing spreadsheets to managing trade promotions. Adopting TPM technology in the cloud allowed Premier Nutrition Corp to avoid the hassles of slow servers and onsite IT maintenance, without sacrificing functionality, flexibility, scalability or speed.
“We don’t have to wait for our data to upload to a server or live in fear of a server crashing,” notes Spalding. “CPGToolBox offered a new, agile approach to the other antiquated TPM systems requiring high costs and IT demands.”
With the company’s data now stored in one centralized system, Premier Nutrition Corp has gained considerable visibility and control into its trade spending. Critical financial information is neatly organized by customer, SKU, promotion and pricing making the former process of verifying invoices, correcting errors and manually updating spreadsheets a thing of the past.
CPGToolBox seamlessly integrates with the manufacturers’ NetSuite ERP system allowing deduction settlement processing to be handled automatically and in a more timely fashion keeping aging accruals accurate and highly visible. The built-in price validation functionality has also enabled Premier Nutrition Corp to catch price discrepancies between customer orders and issued invoices. By utilizing reports in the CPGToolBox platform, Premier Nutrition Corp automates its monthly accruals and successfully streamlined the company’s annual planning process.
“As planning for fiscal year 2016 begins, we don’t have to start from scratch and re-enter everything,” says Spalding. “We have so much better information available to us now, allowing us to simply clone the 2015 plan, make updates and build on it for the coming year.”
Extracting key trade spend data into visual dashboards and custom reports has enabled Premier Nutrition Corp to truly see the financial impact of both active and future trade promotions. The manufacturer has immediate insight and data visualization into promotion activity, dollars spent and sales volume increases during a promotional period. The compilation of data further empowered the Finance team to set up accruals and satisfy auditor requirements.
“The cost effectiveness and power of CPGToolBox has allowed us to do more with the same resources,” says Spalding. “The entire company can see trade deals that happened, what’s coming down pipe and the expenses incurred from trade, which is critical information we had to once manually gather and compile from the sales team.”
Premier Nutrition Corp has be able to:
- Gain newfound visibility and eye opening insights into trade promotion activity
- Automate processes for planning, deductions and monthly accruals
- Eliminate guesswork as to which promotions were profitable
- Compile and organize all trade promotion activity and data into one centralized location
- Provide the entire company with immediate access to real-time trade spend activity and data
- Reject the need to implement an antiquated TPM system requiring servers and IT maintenance
- Visually and quickly analyze data on customized dashboards, charts and reports
- Cost effectively implement an agile TPM technology solution that is easy to use