Situation
Our client, a large Irish FMCG distributor were in a position whereby they had no oversight on annual promotional spend. As a result, they were unable to keep to promotional budgets often causing large over-spends. This left the organisation in a vulnerable financial position, committed to large promotion spends but with limited funds available to meet these.
The organisation had existing ERP systems in place but these were unable to manage promotional budget allocations and usage; a gap existed that, if allowed to remain unaddressed, would have left the business in an extremely vulnerable position.
Solution
Olas discussed the problem with the client, listening to their concerns. With careful planning and detailing, the Goldberg solution was developed to solve the problem.
Goldberg is a bespoke solution using existing in-house Microsoft technologies that allows their brand and customer owners to manage annual promotional budgets and prevent overspend.
Controls to prevent overspend were implemented to ensure that locked reserves can be withheld from budgets until approved and at the same time staff cannot exceed their allocated promotion spends.
The application integrates with the existing business critical ERP applications and provides the company with the “missing link” covering their current promotional spend.
Since it’s introduction, the application has not only provided insight into promotional spend but has also highlighted issues with data in their existing applications.
Key Benefits at a Glance
• Used by all management and sales staff on a daily basis
• Provides valuable insights into promotional spend
• Provision to lock away customer/ brand budget reserves
• Prevents overspend of allocated customer/ brand budgets
• “Ability to sleep peacefully at night”
Key Features:
• Promotion Approval by both Customer and Brand Owners
• Email notification of any changes to each promotion.
• Budget reserves held (released only by senior management)
• Clarity on planned promotion spend & volume Vs actual costs volume
Technologies Utilised
• User friendly MS Access based frontend.
• Data securely held in SQL Server
• Reports to MS Excel
• Data copied to/from the following sources:
- LiquiStat (automated)
- Infor (automated)
• Manual (validated) data entry
• Automated data export to other enterprise systems