Our client faced an overwhelming reality. They ran over 1,000 promotions every year. Each one required perfect coordination between many teams.
The company supplied branded and own-label products to major UK and European supermarket chains. Promotions weren’t just marketing activities. They were a cornerstone of profitability.
Managing promotions meant balancing impossible equations. Account managers needed to negotiate viable prices. Brand managers had to project demand. Procurement had to calculate manufacturing costs. All while coordinating timing, logistics, and inventory across many retail partners.
The complexity was staggering. At any moment, dozens of promotions were running simultaneously across different accounts. Unexpected demand spikes hit individual stores. Inventory needed instant redirection. Marketing materials had to arrive on time.
The company made a smart strategic shift. Instead of selling individual brands to retailers, they moved to account-focused selling. Now key account managers could offer the full portfolio to each major retailer.
The strategy was brilliant. The execution revealed a nightmare.
Their promotion tools were built for the old world. Brand-focused systems couldn’t handle portfolio-wide coordination. Fragmented systems couldn’t talk to each other. What had been manageable chaos became complete disorder.
The problems weren’t new. The strategic shift exposed and exacerbated everything that was already broken. Suddenly, coordinating promotions across their entire portfolio for each retailer became impossible.
Financial planning became guesswork. Brand managers worked in isolation from procurement teams. Manufacturing costs were calculated separately from sales projections. Nobody had real-time visibility of promotion profitability.
Operational coordination was worse. Marketing, merchandising, manufacturing, and supply chain teams couldn’t collaborate. Promotional materials arrived late. Inventory was in the wrong places. Successful promotions ran out of stock while failed ones left warehouses full.
The company could only track their top 40 promotions. Analysis took two weeks. Even then, teams argued about data accuracy. With over 1,000 promotions annually, they were flying blind on 96% of their activities.
The complexity spiral was tamed. Over 1,000 annual promotions now ran through coordinated systems instead of fragmented chaos. Teams collaborated instead of working in isolation.
The company could identify better-performing promotions. This growing intelligence improved decision-making about promotion viability and expected results. They negotiated better deals with key accounts and drove greater profitability.
The Group IT Director’s satisfaction with avoiding “over-engineering” while getting functionality and cost control says it all. Sometimes the best solutions don’t add complexity – they organize it.
Promotions drive significant profit. Transforming chaos into coordination meant unlocking both operational efficiency and competitive advantage.
The Group IT Director needed a solution that avoided over-engineering, while handling massive complexity. Pivot proposed using SAP Advanced Planning and Optimisation with SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence.
Pivot created a single version of truth for all promotion activities. Financial and operational information lived in one system. Everyone involved could see the same data at the same time.
Workflow prompted participants to take appropriate actions at the correct time. Brand managers created sales projections while procurement calculated costs. The information integrated automatically to establish realistic prices and profitability.
Marketing, merchandising, manufacturing, and supply chain teams collaborated on operational aspects in real-time. The system co-ordinated and tracked all necessary activities.
The solution’s beauty was its responsiveness. When forecasts changed or prices shifted, everyone involved was informed straight away. The closed-loop system enabled proactive action instead of reactive firefighting.
Post-promotion analysis transformed completely. Previously, analysing 40 promotions took two weeks and generated arguments about data accuracy. Now they could analyse all 1,000+ promotions by product, account, and business contribution.
The complexity spiral was tamed. Over 1,000 annual promotions now ran through coordinated systems instead of fragmented chaos. Teams collaborated instead of working in isolation.
The company could identify better-performing promotions. This growing intelligence improved decision-making about promotion viability and expected results. They negotiated better deals with key accounts and drove greater profitability.
The Group IT Director’s satisfaction with avoiding “over-engineering” while getting functionality and cost control says it all. Sometimes the best solutions don’t add complexity – they organize it.
Promotions drive significant profit. Transforming chaos into coordination meant unlocking both operational efficiency and competitive advantage.
