Breakthrough SMB -- December 2006

In August 2004, The Sunny Delight Beverages Co. (SDBC) was established when J. W. Childs, a Bostonbased private equity firm, acquired Sunny Delight brands from The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G). SDBC inherited a strong platform --a brand that was well-established, had a strong advertising history and a strong history of product innovation.

 

What the company did not inherit, however, was the solid infrastructure and supporting systems it needed to establish itself quickly as a separate entity even though P&G agreed to provide infrastructure until such systems were in place.

 

In addition to developing, implementing and managing a new IT applications infrastructure, SDBC needed to reconcile trade spend data to make decisions quickly and take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace.

 

This year, CGT recognizes The Sunny Delight Beverages Co. with the Breakthrough SMB Award for leveraging MEI's Troubadour trade management system to improve trade spend controls after breaking ties with P&G.

 

THE RIGHT FIT
As a new entity, SDBC's biggest challenge was an inability to get customer-level spending data combined with other measures such as revenue and volume in one place in a timely fashion.

 

"We were using spreadsheets to track spending that were published once a month and not granular in detail," says Eddie Young, VP sales planning, SBDC. "The lack of good spending data made decision evaluation very challenging."

 

Having on demand data would help facilitate the decision-making process. In addition, SDBC looked for a trade promotion management system that would meet the needs of its employees -- a lot of whom were just meeting for the first time -- and were compatible with other systems. SBDC implemented MEI's Troubador as part of its trade management system in April 2005, eight months after it parted ways with P&G. Troubador, combined with work process improvement, allowed SBDC's field managers and headquarters team to have real-time access to spending data, which enabled better business analysis and decision making.

 

"Troubadour helped create an identity for trade spending in the organization. It aligned all functions to one system for trade projections and reporting," says Young. "Our meetings became much more efficient as we spent less time deciphering numbers and more time discussing business issues."

 

A BRIGHT FUTURE
While SBDC still has work to do in regard to tightening its trade management processes, the company can now say with confidence that it has trade spend under control to support growth at impressive rates.

 

"You can always get better at the 'blocking and tackling' of trade fund management, but our upside is in trade efficiency," says Young. "We now have the data to get much better at evaluating promotions to determine where we are using our trade dollars wisely; improving promotions that are underperforming and increasing frequency of our efficient promotions. This improves our ability to partner with customers to develop an efficient trade plan and increase shared ROI."

 

Today, SBDC is a well-known producer of juice-based drink brands, with annual sales in excess of $550 million, and does business in eight countries across North America and Europe.

 

 

American Italian Pasta Company
Besides being the privatelabel manufacturer for major U.S. grocers, foodservice giant SYSCO and food processors Kraft and General Mills, the American Italian Pasta Company (AIPC) now offers retail brands via the purchases of the Mueller's pasta brand from Bestfoods, seven brands from Borden Foods, Italy's Lensi brand and two smaller brands from Archer Daniels Midland. The company complements its growing portfolio with technological advantages courtesy of Interactive Edge's XP3 software.

 

"Implementation of Interactive Edge's XP3 technology has allowed AIPC better efficiencies and time savings, which lets us create a better 'sales toolkit' for our team," says Jennifer Halliburton, category management,AIPC.

 

Using XP3, AIPC now covets the ability to deliver up-to-date, presentation- ready decks to its time-starved sales directors and vice presidents. With a means for standardization of the delivery of information, AIPC can be assured of a more professional and consistent "message" and selling platform to its customers. The company also benefits from a basic structure for helping train the steps into consumer analytics, which translates into better business managers and a better selling organization.

 

"We are excited that we're already experiencing efficiencies using this tool, yet we have only scratched the surface of its full capabilities," says Halliburton.

 

Litehouse Foods
Litehouse Foods has more than tripled its product offerings, which include refrigerated dressings, dips and sauces, in a five-year period. Since 1998, this mid-market firm has measured improvements in order fulfillment and reduced inventory carrying costs and product spoilage using CDC Software's Ross enterprise resource planning system. Current service levels average 95 percent for the fill rate and 97 percent on-time delivery.

 

More recently, Litehouse worked with CDC Software to create more accurate and timely demand forecasts to ensure the right amount of inventory was available at the right time. Litehouse went from using spreadsheets to forecast more than 1,000 units at the category level on a monthly basis, to forecasting at the product level on a weekly basis. "In the future we are looking at ways that we can reach back into our supply chain [our suppliers] to receive better information on raw materials, and out into our supply chain [our customers] to capture better information about our performance," says John Shaw, IT director, Litehouse Food. "We will accomplish this through a series of portals and data synchronization projects. We are also looking at ways that we can get more accurate and realtime information on our performance within the four walls of our plants." CG