Our client is a global consumer business that tries to build strong win-win relationships with its retail customers. Customer development teams are at the forefront of this activity in the countries in which they operate. Such teams have access to business intelligence applications including the trade profitability system which helps them collaborate effectively with the retailers to increase profitability. For a growing number of their markets, the customer development strategy and this supporting application are central to driving volume and profitability.
The Vision
The vision was for a system that would support the extension of best practice in the management of customer relationships across multiple markets. To achieve this the development team had to maintain the integrity and stability of the system while it grew in complexity. Over time it needed to encompass more data from more data sources, more complex measures, more users in more markets, more entities and many more retail customers.
Delivering the Vision
The key to user satisfaction has been direct communication between the team members and system users in different countries, the mutual understanding which it has created and the proactivity of the team in suggesting and implementing improvements to help users get the most from the system.
The system combines data from SAP and other sources onto a SQL Server data mart and presents insights to users in Tableau. Users can access data by volume, gross and net value, examine sales, customer margins and trends, and can compare to Nielsen offtake data.
The system was first developed by Thorogood for a single market, but has since been progressively developed for more and more markets including Spain, Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, UK, Greece and Belgium.
The system has been adapted to the individual needs of each market by a Thorogood team, who manage the data and support users of the application from the UK and India.
Many thanks for delivering a more than great Dashboard. I admire your will to make the best possible dashboard. This will have a very big impact on how we are doing business.
Next Steps
The Thorogood support team continues to roll out the application to additional markets; helping to drive company growth across the globe.