Helping a US food manufacturer save $100K+ annually with a data-powered trade promotion system

USING DATA TO SAVE COSTS AND DRIVE REVENUE: WHERE DID WE START?

As a food and beverage company with a complex supply chain, our client had a data goldmine. They wanted to use this data to cut costs, make more sales, and confidently enter new regions. This called for a data strategy that prioritizes clean and organized data — a key to accurate data analytics.

That’s where Yalantis came in. Our data team built the client’s data infrastructure, focusing on sales data, and saw an opportunity to optimize trade promotion management (TPM).

WHY GO FOR A DATA-DRIVEN TRADE PROMOTION APPROACH?

By using data to drive their trade promotion management processes, the client could:

But to reap these rewards, the client needed a change — a full trade promotion management system (TMPS) to turn their data goldmine into a revenue powerhouse by storing relevant data in one place. 

Yalantis developed a custom trade promotion management system, which:

To ensure a smooth transition, the Yalantis team held product demos and regular Q&A sessions for the client’s staff. The new system includes the following features:

#1: REAL-TIME PROMOTION PERFORMANCE VISIBILITY WITH SALES DASHBOARDS

Problem: Limited visibility into sales data and forecasting due to disconnected promotion data across the ERP system and Excel files.

Solution: The Yalantis data team optimized sales dashboards in Power BI. These now collect internal and external data, including competitive insights from a third-party data provider (sales statistics by category, state, etc.). They also used AI analytics to help the client better understand seasonal demand, sales trends, price elasticity, and market competition.

Benefits: The client can now view real-time sales metrics and trends. They can adjust promotions based on overall performance by country and state, top-selling product types, and seasonal impacts, which helps them:

• plan production schedules efficiently
• identify ideal pricing spots
• minimize stockouts and overstocking

#2: AUTOMATED PROMOTION CALENDAR WITH REAL-TIME UPDATES

Problem: Reliance on the expertise of specific staff members for promotion planning led to limited knowledge sharing across the team and inefficient planning.

Solution: Yalantis added an automated promotion calendar to the custom TPMS, centralizing key promotion planning data.

Benefits: This solution helps with the following:

• Saving marketing managers hours of manual work each week by automatically populating schedules and metrics from the promotion details entered in local files.
• Encouraging knowledge sharing as all information is centralized and processes no longer depend on a single specialist.
• Enabling quick employee onboarding by providing all relevant historical data in one place, automatically suggesting information like warehouse stock and past campaign costs.

#3: OPTIMIZED BUDGETING WITH TEMPLATES AND ROI CALCULATOR

Problem: Managers manually allocated budgets across many documents. They also used the costly SaaS trade promotion tool solely to calculate ROI, which led to thousands of dollars in unnecessary expenses annually.

Solution: The Yalantis team added these elements to the custom TPMS in Power BI:

• ROI calculator
• Budgeting templates pre-filled with historical data
• Dynamic budget optimization features that use advanced analytics to intelligently distribute funds

Benefits: By eliminating the SaaS TPM tool, the client saved $100–200K annually on software costs (that would have increased with new hires). The integrated solution also:

• saves 3+ hours of marketing managers’ time on manual budget allocation
• frees up time for strategic tasks like planning marketing campaigns
• provides budgeting templates pre-populated with historical data
• helps managers allocate funds where they are most needed or likely to generate the highest returns