Soft Drink Manufacturer: Accenture CAS Integrated Customer Relationship Management and Trade Promotions Platform

Accenture CAS platform helped the company maximize its business value and drive sales and marketing effectiveness by providing improved information technology (IT) support for central and field sales, vending and dispensing machine service processes, and trade promotion, capacity planning and activity management.

The manufacturer wanted to improve its competitive edge in the face of tough price competition and changing consumer-spending pattern in the European soft drink and fruit juice retail market. It planned to address these challenges by implementing a new customer relationship management (CRM) software that would provide a single view of customers in all field service processes and enable higher sales force productivity.

In addition, the company wanted to:

• Eliminate redundancies in existing data and processes.

• Ensure that all employees dealing with customers—key account managers, sales representatives, sales support staff and members of the service, marketing and controlling teams—use the same integrated solution.

The company chose Accenture CAS for its advanced technology, comprehensive range of relevant functions and 100 percent specialization in the consumer products industry.

Accenture worked with the manufacturer to maximize its business value and drive sales and marketing effectiveness by providing improved IT support for:

• All central and field sales.

• Vending and dispensing machine service processes.

• Trade promotion, capacity planning and activity management.

Within one year, the team:

• Mapped all new requirements, such as advertising material, planning and service team support.

• Trained 50 back-office and 26 field service users on the Accenture CAS modules on strategic account management, trade promotion management, field sales management and execution, and reporting.

• Implemented solutions to address capacity planning and visit requirements.

Going forward, the platform will enable the transfer of master data on articles and promotional material from the SAP system to Accenture CAS. Sales representatives will be able to enter prospective customer data directly into the Accenture CAS system and it will be exported to the SAP system, leading to an automated workflow that will guarantee the professional handling of customer prospects.

The manufacturer completed the migration to the Accenture CAS platform and achieved its project objectives, which include the following:

• Optimize field sales capacity planning with reporting functions that adapt and create reports for all departments, such as weekly variance analyses of scheduled activities

• Allow the company to adjust its promotional content and timing, as and when required

• Connect the company’s field service user group with a single customer view

• Standardize customer targeting, including maintenance, repair work and performance data

• Improve the company’s effectiveness in responding to market requirements

• Enable faster processes, strategic and tactical planning, and monitoring of trade promotions