posted Oct 17, 2009 7:44 PM by Benny Toh
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updated Dec 8, 2010 10:09 PM
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"Milking a paperless system"
When IT executives sit down with their management colleagues to resolve business issues at Fonterra, the results can be spectacular. And rewarding too, especially when one particular IT project won a CIO Award for 2008.
Jack Loo
Fonterra Brands Malaysia employee Yeoh Guan Beng used to encounter teething problems whenever he had to budget for trade promotions and campaigns every year.
A lack of visibility into the spending process meant that Yeoh, who is regional sales manager (South), was unable to keep track of the incurred costs and ultimately over-spent his budget. Typically, his company ended up breaking the promotions and campaigns budget by at least 10 per cent.
Promotion and campaigns are major facets of Fonterra’s marketing strategy. The dairy products company, which is headquartered in New Zealand, spends an average of RM20 million (US$6.25 million) annually on promotions and campaigns. Competitors are investing heavily in trade promotions to attract consumers and market their brand awareness.And Fonterra had to match their efforts, resulting in a jump of 35 per cent in expenditure of its promotions and campaigns activities over the past five years....(details attached) |
posted Oct 17, 2009 7:43 PM by Benny Toh
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updated Dec 8, 2010 10:11 PM
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"Thirst for analysis"
The food and beverage (F&B) manufacturing industry is ruthlessly competitive. The entry barriers are not very high. It is not, for example, difficult to import soft drinks and packaged beverages into most markets. What adds to the challenge is that the F&B industry is continuously subject to shifts in market demand, which often puts manufacturers and their distributors into stressful situations, as they have to constantly monitor their markets for the slightest change in moods and tastes.
That is why Malaysian F&B manufacturer YHS Sdn. Bhd.—better known as "Yeo Hiap Seng" to consumers—had to implement a business tool to analyse and track its sales performance, identify emerging business opportunities, quickly spot new trends and, with all this information, to help it develop more focused marketing and sales strategies. To help it achieve these capabilities, YHS last year implemented a sales-profit management solution, based on a software called Margin Minder. Says Ritchie Lim, YHS's head of IT: "Margin Minder creates flexibility for managers to interact directly with information sources, in analysing market data." ....(details attached)
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