When Finance Director Manassen Foods Wayne McIntosh first saw what Inside Info could do with QlikView and company data, he was immediately impressed.
“QlikView provides our brand, sales, management and operational teams with complete business transparency,” McIntosh says.
“We have interactive visibility into sales, profitability, logistics and supply chain performance, to help our brands become number one in their field.”
“Our initial applications were delivered in just four weeks with excellent results.”
Manassen Foods is a leading Australian importer and producer of branded food products with over 350 staff, and an exceptional stable of the finest imported and local food brands.
Manassen Foods is today ranked among the top Australian grocery suppliers with a vast range of household brands in the retail and food service trade including dry groceries, confectionary, biscuits and cakes, perishables and frozen foods.
It is the exclusive brand owner or distributor of many brands such as Castello Cheeses, Trident, Carr’s Water Crackers, Margaret River Dairy Company, Mrs Fields Cookies, Wokka and Jelly Belly Jelly Beans just to name a few.
Manassen Foods handles well over 4,000 containers per annum, moving approximately 4,100 deliveries per week with five Distribution Centres nationally.
The company manages dry grocery, reefer, freezer and dehumidified storage in each location, and generating approximately 6,200 invoices per week, with five lines of data per invoice.
Manassen carries approximately 1100 product SKUs, distributing some 85 widely known brands to thousands of stores including retailers such as Coles, Woolworths, Metcash and other independents nationwide.
This data rich environment created the need for one consolidated view of performance across multiple Group companies (Manassen, Sunbeam Foods Group and Hutchinsons NZ) and the imminent go-live of a new Movex Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, required an enterprise-class analysis system across the Group.
In addition to a company-wide focus on profitability has been an enduring commitment to superior customer service and pride of place for its products and brands in the highly competitive FMCG food space.
Manassen was looking to build on its long term sustainability through intelligent systems and information availability.
Time to market for delivery of a business analysis and reporting system was critical for Manassen.
Inside Info with its QlikView solution brought to the table a best practice, pre-packaged application that allowed Manassen to see a working solution with their data within two hours.
Inside Info worked with the senior management team to evolve this pre-packaged solution to custom- fit the way Manassen work and measure business performance.
The plan was to gradually deploy QlikView, however due to its ease of use and ability to quickly deliver value, QlikView is now deployed to over 80 employees within the Group across sales, finance, operations and management teams, with both sales and margin and supply chain applications developed and delivering value within four weeks.
Manassen now develops QlikView applications in-house & views QlikView as its strategic analysis tool, improving decision making across the Group, replacing TM1 and Cognos.
From a consolidated dashboard showing daily, month to date, year to date and year-on-year comparisons of sales, discounts and margins to detailed customer and brand analysis, QlikView’s sales application serves the needs of senior management, brand and sales teams.
Incorporating detailed channel and brand targets the application gives unprecedented insight into Group performance, ensuring the sales team is continually aligned to the Group’s strategic growth plans.
The challenge to maintain one consolidated application, yet meet the specific needs of each business within the Group was met by QlikView’s customisable, flexible and easy to use front-end.
As any supplier to large retail chains will testify, the ability to analyse discounts, promotions and rebates is critical to understanding customer and brand profitability.
By piecing together different elements of Manassen’s ERP and promotional systems, QlikView presents a comprehensive analysis of profitability across operating structures which is not limited purely to financial dimensions.
Manassen ensures its sales teams are equipped to “service the industry” efficiently through the use of technology -QlikView is one such tool.
The first step to getting the right balance between customer service levels and inventory holdings is visibility.
Through QlikView’s supply chain application Manassen can immediately see whether customer expectations are being met across a variety of measures, such as full-order fulfillment, carton fulfillment, on-time delivery and order accuracy.
Within a couple of click’s any performance failures can by pinpointed by customer, by product, by location and by order. Lost sales can be quantified and customer activity levels measured.
Knowing what has happened is just the start. With a complex network of company and third party distribution centres, coupled with over 1,100 SKU’s, getting the right stock in the right location has always been a challenge.
Through QlikView’s supply chain application, a 360 degree view of inventory will show sales history, sales forecasts, stock position and purchase details such as ETA on one simple screen.
This coupled with a range of exception reporting such as likely future stock-outs, means getting the right stock in the right location can be better managed.
QlikView provides Manassen with a greater depth of insight from its data than ever before, with a self-serve capability that required little or no end-user training, and no time-consuming or costly infrastructure.
Manassen has improved short-term forecasting capabilities to identify and adapt to day-to-day demand changes and order flows.
Since implementation of the QlikView supply chain application, customer service levels have improved month on month, now to more than 97% (parcels delivered within the time and in full to customers).
Complete visibility of granular brand performance and profitability with, for the first time, a true reflection of promotions and their effectiveness in delivering profitable sales, in one consolidated application across and within three separate businesses under the Group.
QlikView provides the ability to use this information meaningfully and to improve decision making, easily.
“It was important for us to work with a partner on a long-term relationship based on open communication and responsiveness,” says Wayne McIntosh.
“Inside Info worked within an extremely short deadline to build sales, margin and supply chain analysis applications based on our business operations that generates an even better return on the investment we have made in our Movex ERP solution.”
“The Inside Info team demonstrated a keen interest in providing a solution based outcome that met our operating needs, rather than a product based compromise.”
“No matter where our inventory or sales people are, our staff can make quick decisions using QlikView to tangibly turn data into opportunity.”
Benefits for Manassen Foods:
- Manassen Foods rolled out the QlikView business analysis tool across management, sales, marketing, finance and operational teams, up and running with full integration into its new Movex ERP solution, within just four weeks, now used by over 80 employees across Australia & New Zealand.
- With QlikView Server Manassen easily handles the analysis of a large volume of sales transactions weekly across 1100 SKU’s delivered across multiple channels to thousands of customers.
- Complete visibility of granular brand performance and profitability with, a better reflection of promotions and their effectiveness in delivering profitable sales.
- Delivered in-depth analysis of subsidiary operations in one consolidated view.
- Improved delivery-to-promise month on month, now to more than 97% (parcels delivered within the time and in full to customers)
- Improved short-term forecasting capabilities to identify and adapt to day-to-day demand changes.
Data Source Systems Application: Movex ERP Other Data Source: Excel
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