Merisant Leverages SaaS for Sales Planning and TPM
For Merisant (www.merisant.com), the maker of Equal and Pure Via, managing information for more than 1,000 promotional deals every year became a near impossible task using Excel.In 2009, a year into a project to develop a custom system wrought with delays and budget overruns, Merisant called in a trade marketing consultant to assess the situation. After a two-month audit, the recommendation was clear: "There is no doubt that Merisant needed such a tool to optimize its promo spending and to support better demand planning, with visibility on promo volume fluctuations," says Yann Kervoern, Merisant vice president / managing director -- Americas.
The company chose the BluePlanner system by UpClear (www.upclear.com), a provider of sales planning and optimization enterprise-software to consumer goods manufacturers and distributors.
The project was kicked off in June 2009, and as early as July, BluePlanner was deployed to sales managers. Sales brokers were trained in September. The benefits of establishing set processes around the collaborative and comprehensive system became quickly apparent.
After hearing of the positive results in the United States, Merisant UK asked to see a demonstration of the tool, and by November 2009, the UK users were trained.
Because BluePlanner is a hosted solution, the software-as-a-service approach allowed Merisant to deploy the same system across countries extremely efficiently and at minimal cost. The company is even considering expanding the tool to Mexico.
With over a year of sales data in the system at this point, Merisant is looking at leveraging more advanced features, utilizing point-of-sale data.
Sourced from Nielsen, Merisant has started integrating end-consumer sales for 35 of its largest accounts. The Nielsen data will allow managers to identify forecasting errors, such as forward buying and diverted sales.
But most importantly, it will provide Merisant more insight into its promotions' efficiency by measuring ROI based on true redemptions and lifts from in-store sales.
FAST FACTS
Up and Running
Merisant runs SAP, and integrating BluePlanner with the financials and sales and operations systems proved to be easy. Within three months, all of the company's data was interconnected and its processes realigned.
Process Perks
The new solution has made the planning process between Merisant brokers and regional sales managers very effective. At one time, they can determine volume and spend rates by customer.