Fini’s Merchandising Team excels with Involves Stage
The company managed to establish a fast, practical and complete information flow with the Perfect Shop Program
Involves Stage gave us a macro view. We can filter our operation by region or channel and identify where we are actually assertive, where we can improve and where there is a critical sign that we need to act more rationally. I like to say that Involves Stage is my MBA. Involves Stage provides professional training for those who are looking for information and who are really interested.
Marcos de Carvalho – Merchandising leader – Fini
Fini supplies South America with its candies from their 120,000 m² industrial complex. Tons and tons of colors, formats, and flavors reach the public thanks to the work of a team that boasts pride and admiration for the brand.
And it is precisely with this responsibility and commitment that the trade marketing and merchandising teams perform their functions in the company. However, working at that level requires hard work, and to pay attention to one crucial point for the success of the supply and implementation strategy: the recognition of those at the other end.
It is not enough to rely on a dedicated field team, which routine is to create opportunities, if it is not possible to acknowledge professionals and increase their visibility. In addition, until the integration of Involves Stage in mid-2016, the sales reps’ visit itineraries were planned without having accurate data, the events were not carried out in an organized manner and, obviously, the incentive campaigns was not engaging them as expected.
“Our biggest challenge was to put the merchandising team in focus, to challenge them and reward them on account of their indicators, of what really depended on them to happen”, explains Nathalia Rodrigues, head of Merchandising, referring to the period in which the team was evaluated by their sales indicators.
The challenge was to go beyond the information offered by the exhibition book and to act strategically, measuring the actions through even more specific data, such as the facing of the stores, out-of-stocks of priority items and the quantity of activated displays and extra points.
“With Involves Stage we started using reports, analyzing and reporting them at micro and macro levels. The director, the CEO, the owner of the company, the sales representative, all of them receive the report. Each one of them receives what they are supposed to, that’s why the Perfect Store program is integrated with Involves Stage. Several areas that are integrated to the Perfect Store program examine the reports and make the appropriate decisions in a faster and more practical way”, says Rafael Ruocco, Strategy and Merchandising coordinator, stating on how their sales reps deal with the app, and its relation to the program of excellence designed by Fini.
After the implementation of Involves Stage, which included training courses in regionals throughout Brazil, Fini began to measure their execution at the points of sale, and to develop KPIs and goals tailored to the company’s scenario. “From the moment we were able to measure all the Perfect Store indicators individually, by indicator and by region, our results evolved a lot” says Marcus Castroviejo, Merchandising supervisor.
The success of the Perfect Store Program alone is celebrated as a great victory by Fini’s merchandising team. Itinerary compliance hit the 97% record, an evolution of almost 60% compared to the previous scenario. Thanks to Involves Stage, the company established a fast, practical and comprehensive information flow, which was critical to the team’s ability to operate with clear objectives.
The merchandising team took the lead and started showing to the other teams the viability of maintaining a sales representative at certain POS, estimating the in-store time vs. the cost per hour, to balance their service and to not focus where there was no need. The satisfactory results prompted other areas, such as indirect channels, to adopt the strategies devised and designed in the trade marketing platform.