Comprehensive Event and Merchandising Management System
Because of the uniqueness of their product and the size of their budget, a major national food company’s division’s strategy was to focus on grass-roots marketing, spending most of its marketing and promotion budget on in-store demos and events and merchandising. A system to manage demonstration and other events had been cobbled together with a series of spreadsheets, but it was not keeping up.
After many cycles of exploration and needs translation, we were able to design, develop, deplay and support a comprehensive end to end system using AKTAV that scaled in size and complexity from a few thousand demos per year initially to 125,000+ per year, from a hundred demonstrators to more than a thousand, from one national sales goal per event to a sales goal for each specific event based on product line and store sales history, and from two bonus structures to more than 10 different bonus structures.
The integrated event and merchandising management system featured:
Scheduling module with a graphical interface that Managers in the field would use to schedule demo events at stores. The interface included all of the information needed to effectively schedule an event, and, based on a real-time analysis, would highlight stores that were under-demoed and over-demoed
Event Type and Sales Bonus Scheme Module. The Manager could choose the type of demo event to schedule and the bonus scheme that was applicable. The system would calculate the demo-specific bonus goals for each event based on the bonus scheme structure and the history of the same type of demos at the store
Demonstrator Assignment Module. The manager could assign demonstrators (individually or in teams) and specify the hours they would work. Once assigned, the system would update bonus goals based on the number of demonstrators assigned.
Pre-Event Module. Each demonstrator would receive their individual schedules for the coming week that included the location of the event, the hours they would be working, the products they would be demonstrating and the bonus goals and amounts to be paid for exceeding the goals.
Event Module. Managers would record key performance indicators during the event using a custom IPAD app.
Event Results Module. After the event, the system would calculate the amount sold and the cost of the demo. It would calculate payroll (wages and overtime), expenses (mileage and out of pocket) and bonuses for each individual demonstrator and pass it to the payroll system.
Reporting Module. The system had over 20 operational, summary, analytical and detail reports that could be run at any combination of summary or granular levels of geography, customers, products, sales management, demonstrators and time periods (both fiscal and calendar).
Third Party Portal. Some demos were done by third parties, and the system had a portal that could be used by them to see their schedules and update their sales results and invoice.
Demonstrator Management Module. Because demonstrator turnover is traditionally relatively high, the system tracked demonstrators from new hire through leaving.
Merchandising Module. The system was used to plan and execute store-level merchandising calls, where field sales gathered information on product condition, display and pricing; competitor products and provided store management information about upcoming events using a custom IPAD app.
The system was mission critical and was considered a competitive advantage.