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ManLog
Construct a superior system
 
Client
The client is a global CPG leader engaged in the development, manufacture, and sale of a wide range of products - blades and razors, batteries, electric shavers and small appliances, and oral care products.
 
Situation
For the client, increasing profitability required a better understanding of the effectiveness of its Trade Promotion spends. The client hired Cognizant to help create a comprehensive trade promotion solution that optimized spend and maximized the effectiveness of trade promotions. This in turn helped the client in increasing customer focus and achieving operational efficiency.
 
Measuring effectiveness of trade promotion spends and deploying marketing best practices across the organization was a business challenge. Multiple promotional campaigns across product lines and across geographies were not synchronized to provide intelligence on the true ROI of these programs.
 
Solution
The client selected Cognizant based on Cognizant's proven technical ability, extensive experience, Consumer Goods industry knowledge, and cost-effective global delivery model. Cognizant helped the company develop a trade promotion solution that served as a central repository for all promotional campaigns. While the solution helped planners simulate scenarios to derive useful insights from past promotions and to make better decisions, a work flow and alert engine reduced the planning to execution time.
 
The solution was easy to use and found greater acceptance from the sales force to capture POS data that could be syndicated and later mined by the system. Powerful reporting features enabled evaluation of and control over trade spend across the organization. The solution tied demand to marketing programs, thereby optimizing inventory and increasing supply chain efficiency.
 
Technologies used included Unix (HP/UX), Weblogic 6.1, EJB, Java, JSP, XML, HTML, VC ++, VB, Oracle 8i, and Reporting tools such as Actuate Formula One.
 
Customer Focus and Operational Excellence Enabled
The project team worked closely with marketing personnel to bring together disparate trade promotion programs to a central repository and clarify the KPIs for effective promotions.
 
The solution is improving marketing effectiveness and has resulted in substantial dollar savings. Better customer focus and operational excellence have translated to top-line growth and bottom-line impact.
 
"We continue to deepen our relationship with Cognizant because they are team-oriented, highly responsive, provide flexibility and scalability to quickly ramp up large project teams, and have multiple competencies."
Tim Brennan,
IT Director, US Cold Storage