Key results
low-margin SKUs identified that contributed less than 2% of revenue but accounted for 11% of logistics cost - delisted across 3 regions
hours/month of manual reporting effort eliminated by automating sales, finance, and trade spend dashboards
reduction in ineffective trade promotion spend by linking TPM actuals with real sales lift and ROI metrics
Real-time visibility into top and bottom line drivers through interactive variance bridge dashboards
About the Client
A US based packaged food company with a portfolio of iconic brands in snacks, baking, and dairy. The client operates across mass retail, grocery, and foodservice channels, with a high dependency on seasonal sales cycles and a complex national distribution network.
Key Challenges
Disconnected systems - sales data in Infor M3 and trade promotion data in BluePlanner with no unified reporting layer
Manual Excel-driven reporting across Sales, Finance, and Planning teams caused inconsistencies and long turnaround times
No consolidated view into promotion ROI, customer-level margins, or SKU-level profitability
Our Approach
- Built a centralized BI architecture by extracting and harmonizing data from ERP (Infor M3) and TPM (BluePlanner)
- Developed Power BI dashboards for executives, account managers, finance, and supply chain stakeholders
- Standardized business metrics and enabled drill-downs for real-time decision-making on margin, trade spend, and performance tracking
Implemented Solution
Profitability & SKU-Level Margins
- Combined gross sales, COGS, freight, and trade spend to compute true SKU-level margins
- Benchmarked performance by customer, region, and channel to isolate loss-making combinations
- Enabled SKU rationalization using contribution margin thresholds and volume-to-cost ratios
Sales & Trade Promotion Reporting
- Integrated promotional accruals and deductions from BluePlanner with actuals from Infor M3
- Built ROI dashboards for trade tactics across 60+ accounts, categorized by customer type and product family
- Identified trade spend leakage and improved promotion planning through side-by-side variance tracking
Finance & Variance Bridge Dashboards
- Automated monthly flash, customer P&L, and budget variance reports
- Built variance drivers/bridge views to identify top-line and bottom-line growth drivers/drainers
- Enabled business teams to trace revenue and margin shifts down to brand, customer, and SKU levels
Technologies Used
