Overview A FULLY INTEGRATED TPM SOLUTION IS CRITICAL TO HELP SAVE MONEY AND BE MORE EFFICIENT Trade Spending Is A Big Issue For CG Companies - You You know this. It represents 10-25% of total revenue and is the #2 line item after COG - so it's big $'s.
- What you may not know is that:
- 70-85% of CG companies are unhappy with their ability to manage their trade spending.
- 50-70% are still using Excel as the only means of tracking it.
You're Not Alone -You Have Probably Experienced These Same Pain Points - The Sales Team may not being using trade $$ effectively
- The Sales Team is spending too much time managing spending and particularly deductions
- There is a big issues reconciling deductions
- You don't have a sophisticated way to analyze promotions
- You can't reconcile actual vs. planned spending and often end up over or under spent
- Promotional planning takes too long
- Forecasting is very difficult
MEI SOLVES TPM ISSUES - IT GENERATES "RESULTS" & "REFERENCES" Simply Put - MEI Delivers Actual, Quantifiable Results:
Our clients have generated a range of results covering Key Performance Indicators e.g.: - Revenue increased 8-16%
- Open Deductions decreased 65-70%
- Actual spending within 1% of budget
- Trade spending savings 4-8% where savings was an objective
These Results Have Led To The Best References In The Industry - Our clients are our best sales reps - they are Evangelists because we have made their lives so much better - they're willing to speak to anyone about us
- And they are willing to quote results - no one else can claim that
MEI HAS ACHIEVED THIS SUCCESS FOR 4 KEY REASONS
1. MEI Team CG Experience vs. IT experience
While most software solutions are both designed and built by IT folks who don't know practicalCG trade spending issues nor TPM, MEI's solution was "designed" by CG executives who have worked in the CG industry managing trade spending. So it is the first solution designed for CG sales and trade management executives by CG sales and trade management executives. That's why it works so well. 2. Clients Drive Our Product Upgrades
From the beginning MEI has taken a "partnership philosophy" with our clients in the development of our solution: - MEI's has a focused product development plan and has and will continue to execute against this plan.
- MEI's development is completely focused on what our clients and partners recommend to include in our releases. After all it is our client's product and it will be your product as well!
- Over the last 18 months, we have had 3 complete releases and all of our customers have migrated to these releases. You will have the latest functionality based on the collective thinking of 15 clients.
- The MEI User Committee is a rotating group of clients each year to select and vote what new functionality they would like to have in the product:
- 20% of the R&D budget is spent by the MEI user committee
- The committee also provides feedback on functionality delivered
- An interactive process between MEI and the client base
- MEI Online Client Collaboration - includes online documentation, online training, newsletters, and group discussions within a community forum.
- Every year MEI "orchestrates" an Annual User Group - As an example, every client but one attended (conflict with a National Sales Meeting) and there were over 60 colleagues in attendance. Paul Eveland at Ruiz Foods (former Synectics client) called our 2006 User Group; "The best User Conference I have ever attended!"
3. MEI Concentrates On Usability
It's a pretty simple concept - if no one uses it TPM fails. There are horror stories out there of after millions of dollars and years of development, a solution was implemented that was so complicated no one could use it. Therefore, one of the guiding principles of MEI's TPM solution was that it had to be easy to learn and easy to use. The attached appendix has more quotes but here is just a sampling of quotes on "usability" from TPM system administrators: - "Out of the three systems that I work with, the MEI system is the easiest to useÉI can find deals very easily in the system when I'm clearing deductions and it makes clearing deductions a lot faster"
- "MEI is much more user-friendly than any system I work with.
- "It's a very self-explanatory tool. I didn't need a lot of training on MEI"
- "I like MEI, because it's easy to use, easy to navigate and I can find any useful information in a fast time frame"
4. MEI Is A Superior Product That Works
MEI created a Common vs. Customized solution that functionality meets market needs, exceeds competition, and is quick to implement. The beauty of the "Common" solution is that all clients are using it giving it both credibility and as discussed earlier, the ability for the clients to work as a group on future development. When a system is totally customized, there is no "verification" from one client to the next that it works and no "collaboration" on upgrades. The result: - Over 1/3 of our clients have aborted their existing contracts with our competition and implemented the MEI solution to make them more successful. In software this is quite dramatic; normally software locks up a client for an extended amount of years. For Palermo Villa this means you would be working with a proven solution that generates detailed results for our clients.
Give us a call and let us explain how MEI developed a TPM solution that really works, it's easy to use, quick to implement and generates results and an amazing ROI. And don't take our word for it - we have all of our clients using the same powerful and importantly "common" solution, so we encourage you to speak to them - they're our best sales reps!
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