CGT Reveals 2012 Business & Technology Award Winners
The importance of transformational business and technology initiatives cannot be underestimated in the consumer goods industry. That’s why CGT is once again recognizing three consumer goods companies for excellence in supply chain, customer management and mid-market growth strategies.
The awards process started in May, when nominations in three award categories — Customer Management, SMB Market and Supply Chain — were collected from consumer goods executives, industry analysts, consultants, and technology providers. These nominations were then narrowed down to a group of five finalists by CGT's editorial staff based on multiple award criteria, like project scope, goals and results. This shorter list was then sent to CGT's Editorial and Research Advisory Boards, which elected one “winner” in each of the three categories.
So with the votes tallied, CGT would like to proudly reveal the Business & Technology Award winners for 2012.
CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT AWARD
This award is presented to the consumer goods firm that is best leveraging a solution to manage customer relationships, trade promotions, marketing and/or consumer insights.
WINNER: Kimberly-Clark Corporation
Kimberly-Clark Consumer Products has implemented TPM, TPO, DSR and modeling services for North America, covering 100 percent of the business. The project has transformed the organization and is used by all Kimberly-Clark stakeholders and brokers, providing a single forecast for trade spend, volume and sales. The initiatives goals include increasing profit for the company and retail partners, leveraging all data and tools now available, including the integration of POS data for predictive planning, and enabling consistent forecasting process across all account teams. In addition, the implementation allows account teams to focus on account management rather than administration and to turn off legacy applications and embrace “off-the-shelf” solutions. The project was implemented on time and on budget and went live in June 2012; it is now being rolled out globally. Benefits include enhanced consumer insight, which creates significant lift on certain product categories, and increased forecast accuracy.
Finalists in this category are BIC, P&G, Sara Lee (now Hillshire Brands) and Seventh Generation.
SMB MARKET AWARD
This award is presented to the small to mid-size consumer goods firm that is best utilizing technology to achieve substantial growth in size and/or revenue.
WINNER: Phoenix Brands
With a portfolio of widely recognized laundry care brands, including Niagara Spray Starch, Rit Dye, Final Touch Fabric Softener and Fab, Dynamo, and Ajax laundry detergents, Phoenix Brands taps into universal household needs such as caring for clothes. Phoenix Brands needed to gain better overall control of trade promotion spending to generate better efficiency and, therefore, reduce costs. The company implemented an easy to use, web-based trade management solution and focused on improving open deductions, budgeting, accruals, as well as data synchronization between systems. It implemented a new technology platform that enabled HQ and field sales to function as a team and achieved significant benefits:
1.Over 90 days, deductions were decreased 98 percent from $7.9M to $121K.
2.Overspending of $1 million was identified and corrected at multiple key retailers.
3.Trade accruals are now calculated by fiscal year down to actual sales by customer at the brand family level.
4.Variances in monthly P&L trade accruals were eliminated, finally bringing various systems into balance.
Now that Phoenix Brands has a more sophisticated accrual, budget and trade deduction settlement process, they are looking at ways to significantly improve overall trade promotion effectiveness and ROI.
Finalists in this category are David’s Tea, Massimo Zanetti, Popcorn, Indiana, and Summer Infant.
DICK CLARK SUPPLY CHAIN AWARD
In honor of the late supply chain visionary Dick Clark, this award is presented to a consumer goods firm for excellence in executing improvements in supply or demand planning, warehouse management, transportation management, S&OP processes or supply chain network design. This award is presented to the small to mid-size consumer goods firm that is best utilizing technology to achieve substantial growth in size and/or revenue.
WINNER: Coca-Cola Refreshments
The Coca-Cola Freestyle Vending machine is set to revolutionize the beverage fountain and vending industry. Instead of only eight flavor choices from the standard fountain machine, this innovative machine offers the consumer more than 125 flavors. While this machine itself is revolutionary in the fountain business, it also provides valuable data collection to customers. On a daily basis, each dispenser can gather data related to machine performance, micro-dose cartridge usage and beverage consumption which can then be leveraged throughout the supply chain as a pure demand signal. By innovatively using the data in its ERP platform, the company can react for the first time in a pure demand driven supply chain ecosystem for rapid replenishment to keep the flavor cartridges in stock. The innovative blend of the Freestyle Machine, the data collection capabilities and the facilitation and execution of the reorders all being automated is a tremendous benefit.
Finalists in this category are Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Nestl, Scotts Miracle-Gro and Unilever.
For more information about these winners and finalists, read CGT’s upcoming December issue.
Click here to read about CGT’s 2012 Innovation Award Winners.
The awards process started in May, when nominations in three award categories — Customer Management, SMB Market and Supply Chain — were collected from consumer goods executives, industry analysts, consultants, and technology providers. These nominations were then narrowed down to a group of five finalists by CGT's editorial staff based on multiple award criteria, like project scope, goals and results. This shorter list was then sent to CGT's Editorial and Research Advisory Boards, which elected one “winner” in each of the three categories.
So with the votes tallied, CGT would like to proudly reveal the Business & Technology Award winners for 2012.
CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT AWARD
This award is presented to the consumer goods firm that is best leveraging a solution to manage customer relationships, trade promotions, marketing and/or consumer insights.
WINNER: Kimberly-Clark Corporation
Kimberly-Clark Consumer Products has implemented TPM, TPO, DSR and modeling services for North America, covering 100 percent of the business. The project has transformed the organization and is used by all Kimberly-Clark stakeholders and brokers, providing a single forecast for trade spend, volume and sales. The initiatives goals include increasing profit for the company and retail partners, leveraging all data and tools now available, including the integration of POS data for predictive planning, and enabling consistent forecasting process across all account teams. In addition, the implementation allows account teams to focus on account management rather than administration and to turn off legacy applications and embrace “off-the-shelf” solutions. The project was implemented on time and on budget and went live in June 2012; it is now being rolled out globally. Benefits include enhanced consumer insight, which creates significant lift on certain product categories, and increased forecast accuracy.
Finalists in this category are BIC, P&G, Sara Lee (now Hillshire Brands) and Seventh Generation.
SMB MARKET AWARD
This award is presented to the small to mid-size consumer goods firm that is best utilizing technology to achieve substantial growth in size and/or revenue.
WINNER: Phoenix Brands
With a portfolio of widely recognized laundry care brands, including Niagara Spray Starch, Rit Dye, Final Touch Fabric Softener and Fab, Dynamo, and Ajax laundry detergents, Phoenix Brands taps into universal household needs such as caring for clothes. Phoenix Brands needed to gain better overall control of trade promotion spending to generate better efficiency and, therefore, reduce costs. The company implemented an easy to use, web-based trade management solution and focused on improving open deductions, budgeting, accruals, as well as data synchronization between systems. It implemented a new technology platform that enabled HQ and field sales to function as a team and achieved significant benefits:
1.Over 90 days, deductions were decreased 98 percent from $7.9M to $121K.
2.Overspending of $1 million was identified and corrected at multiple key retailers.
3.Trade accruals are now calculated by fiscal year down to actual sales by customer at the brand family level.
4.Variances in monthly P&L trade accruals were eliminated, finally bringing various systems into balance.
Now that Phoenix Brands has a more sophisticated accrual, budget and trade deduction settlement process, they are looking at ways to significantly improve overall trade promotion effectiveness and ROI.
Finalists in this category are David’s Tea, Massimo Zanetti, Popcorn, Indiana, and Summer Infant.
DICK CLARK SUPPLY CHAIN AWARD
In honor of the late supply chain visionary Dick Clark, this award is presented to a consumer goods firm for excellence in executing improvements in supply or demand planning, warehouse management, transportation management, S&OP processes or supply chain network design. This award is presented to the small to mid-size consumer goods firm that is best utilizing technology to achieve substantial growth in size and/or revenue.
WINNER: Coca-Cola Refreshments
The Coca-Cola Freestyle Vending machine is set to revolutionize the beverage fountain and vending industry. Instead of only eight flavor choices from the standard fountain machine, this innovative machine offers the consumer more than 125 flavors. While this machine itself is revolutionary in the fountain business, it also provides valuable data collection to customers. On a daily basis, each dispenser can gather data related to machine performance, micro-dose cartridge usage and beverage consumption which can then be leveraged throughout the supply chain as a pure demand signal. By innovatively using the data in its ERP platform, the company can react for the first time in a pure demand driven supply chain ecosystem for rapid replenishment to keep the flavor cartridges in stock. The innovative blend of the Freestyle Machine, the data collection capabilities and the facilitation and execution of the reorders all being automated is a tremendous benefit.
Finalists in this category are Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Nestl, Scotts Miracle-Gro and Unilever.
For more information about these winners and finalists, read CGT’s upcoming December issue.
Click here to read about CGT’s 2012 Innovation Award Winners.