My name’s Jennifer Moore. I work at Concord Foods and I’m the Sales Planning Manager there, and I also oversee our pricing function as well as our new business team.
So, Concord Foods is a CPG. We have three different segments of our business. We support a food service segment which includes restaurants. We also have an industrial side of our business which is also ice cream and confectionary. And then, the third segment is our retail business.
So, starting at Concord Foods, I was actually brought into a brand-new role that had no sort of forecasting intact, really. It was all within Excel and it was quite literally a phone call. We really needed something that was user-friendly, had reporting available, and, also, was something that we could grow within.
So, we were very confident in our first few conversations with the organization, knowing that there were some subject matter experts that would be advocating and helping us not only implement the tool, but help us gain buy-in from our organization.
We had a very tight timeline – we say three months, it might’ve even been two and a half months – to sign a contract and, also, get our sales team trained and using the system. So, to be able to do all of that and be able to say that we stayed on budget was really very impressive.
Also, we’ve seen much clearer and better collaboration between our teams within our organization. Everyone can be on the same page and have that cross-functional compatibility.
Everyone knows exactly the name of the platform within the building, it’s not just sales.
But I think the biggest improvement that we’ve seen and biggest thing that’s come out of it that we can measure is our ability to, within the pandemic, talk real-time throughout the organization, and really mitigate any risk.
An “aha” moment, and probably the most fulfilling for any sales planner who has to go out and choose some sort of platform to utilize, is getting a call from a salesperson and having them be just so excited that a retailer or a customer is taking something new or expanding their distribution because we’ve been able to provide them with the data to support that decision. So, helping gain business and expand our business has been probably the biggest “aha” and fulfilling moment.
