Crescent Crown Tracks POS Signage Success
Posted 1/12/2012
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Crescent Crown Distributing (www.ccdaz.com), a leading beverage distributor in Arizona and Louisiana, began the process of deploying Point-of-Sale (POS) signage tracking software roughly three years ago – and they had no idea just how beneficial it would be for their bottom line today.
The company sells and delivers more than 26 million cases annually throughout its distribution territories, making Crescent Crown one of the top five largest beer distributors in the country as well as a leading MillerCoors distributor. With thousands of locations where their products are sold, they spend a substantial amount on POS signage to help promote brands and increase sales.
In 2009, John Thompson, Crescent Crown’s Chief Information Officer, set out to find a tool that could track the effectiveness of each sign they made and delivered to their customers. The system of choice was offered by OnTrak Software (www.ontraksoftware.com), a provider of Web-based solutions to help beverage suppliers and wholesalers and consumer goods manufacturers, track, measure and manage their POS marketing campaigns and materials.
Today, Crescent Crown has deployed two Web-based tools called SignTrak and PermaTrak. SignTrak tracks and manages the entire custom and temporary POS signage process from order, through production, to display, measures POS investment versus sales results, and improves supplier bill-back recovery. PermaTrak provides central inventory control and real-time asset management for permanent POS signage including neon, plastic and metal signs, coolers and displays.
Thompson said the results were quite immediate and positive back in 2009, leading to a nearly company-wide deployment this year that now has more than 200 Crescent Crown employees using SignTrak and PermaTrak to order and track signage.
“I’ve always wanted to know what works and what we’re really spending money on,” Thompson said. “We spend a tremendous amount of money on signs, but there was previously no tracking mechanism in place to find out if, for example, we’re spending more on signage at an account than is justified based on sales. One of the biggest advantages to OnTrak’s solutions is that the systems are much more organized and the tracking of orders, signs and POS is much improved. Errors are all but eliminated with SignTrak.”
He continued to explain how the new solution brings truly helpful business data to management’s desk in a consistent and easy fashion. “Prior to SignTrak and PermaTrak, there just wasn’t much of a tracking system in place. These tools give us the ability to really get the insight to know how much were spending, where signs are going, and if we can bill it back to the supplier. At the end of the month, with their report writer feature we can simply go back and run the analysis for ourselves. That was next to impossible before. This alone is a huge benefit for Crescent Crown.”
As an asset management tool, Thompson said OnTrak gives him the ability to greatly increase efficiency and, for example, if an account closes, Crescent Crown knows exactly what POS items should be returned.
“Before, POS signage was simply an expense line item with an ineffective paper-based system,” Thompson said. “With SignTrak and PermaTrak, our signs go out faster because requests are placed online as needed, versus our representatives filling out paper work. With the quality of the signs having really improved with flatbed printers, the quality is just spectacular now. The cost to create signs has increased in the last several years, but we’re using more signs and we’re selling more, too. Due to SignTrak and PermaTrak, we know where and why POS efforts are successful.”
Case Study: Silver Eagle Distributors Increases Their Point-of-Sale (POS) Promotion Efficiences
Posted 4/20/2011
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Silver Eagle Distributors (www.wideworldofbud.com) has deployed an Internet-based solution from OnTrak Software to better track its promotional signs’ processing and production and help sell more beer at retail locations.
With more than 1,200 employees serving nearly 13,000 accounts throughout 16 counties in Texas, Silver Eagle stands as the nation's largest distributor for Anheuser-Busch and the second largest overall beer distributor in the United States. The company also distributes a broad selection of import brands, microbrews, craft beers and several non-alcohol beverages and waters. With sales of this magnitude, effectively managing point-of-sale (POS) signage for Silver Eagle’s retail customers is essential.
After all, POS signage is a key element in selling alcohol beverages — especially beer. Silver Eagle wanted to know what they’re actually getting from its POS investment, as POS promotion is a significant expense for the company.
Camilo Rojas, senior director of Marketing at Silver Eagle Distributors, noted that without the tools to effectively manage POS processes from request to internal billing, he wasn’t getting all of the information he needed to sell more product, increase profitability, or capture more market share.
Three years ago, Rojas deployed Internet-based software called SignTrak throughout his sales and sign shop teams in Houston and San Antonio, Texas. Sales Managers input orders on laptops or other handheld devices, and from that point on all aspects of the sign’s lifecycle from ordering to production and placement are captured.
SignTrak helps beer distributors quantify the return-on-investment for marketing campaigns, and recoup billback recovery dollars.
No longer are Silver Eagle’s sales representatives or sign shop personnel forced to rely on hard copy notes and orders that are prone to costly errors and reworks. Rojas said it dramatically changed the way his company viewed retail signage.
He said it transformed Silver Eagle’s POS marketing strategy into an integral part of the business that is now measured and managed using actual data gathered and reported by SignTrak.
“We have been using SignTrak for more than three years now, and we are extremely happy with the system’s ability to arm us with data we didn’t have before,” said Rojas. “In addition to helping us be more efficient, provide solid data for process improvements, and manage budgets and expenses, we are able to provide great internal customer service and keep the sales teams selling more and more beer.”
SignTrak is designed to take the guesswork out of POS marketing to help improve Silver Eagle’s ROI by streamlining ordering and production processes. The system provides analysis and reporting tools that can help get more from custom POS signage by applying a standardized methodology to its entire lifecycle that increases accountability, accuracy and profitability. SignTrak logs vital information and provides Silver Eagle with a single point of control for everything associated with the process. SignTrak has also helped to greatly diminish wait times for POS production from 5-10 days to 24-48 hours, from request to completion.
In fact, SignTrak orders, tracks and manages the entire POS signage process on through business reporting and analysis. With tracking capabilities that provide on-demand access to all pending and completed orders, SignTrak allows sales and management teams to track signs by brand, type, representative, customer, designer, or any other criteria.
Rojas said SignTrak serves as a comprehensive monitoring tool that “watches” a sign from creation to placement and provides information that was previously unavailable.
“SignTrak enables us to better serve our sales teams, which then take that value to our retail customers,” he said. “That gives Silver Eagle a significant advantage.”
Case Study: Chas. Seligman Distributing Uses SignTrak to Improve Signshop Operations
Introduction
Changing the business process of POS and collecting data on the cost and effectiveness of POS can be challenging. It requires vision, top management support, and buy-in from all the stakeholders.
Chas. Seligman has been a wholesale distributor in Walton, Kentucky since 1933. They wanted a more efficient sign request process in order to eliminate the frustrations of a paper-based system. Salespeople sometimes wrote POS requests on bar napkins or slips of paper then left the trade to rush an order to the sign shop. Faced with oddly-shaped signs or unclear orders on bits and pieces of paper, reworks were common, orders lost, and the A-B brand message was inconsistent. The sign shop frequently changed paper types and sizes, or machines, to keep up with demand. It was difficult to know in advance any day’s workload, so scheduling manpower was hit and miss. Tracking sign status and cost was even more difficult, leaving management in the dark. How much was being spent was a guess, and which brand messages worked best for sales and their customers was largely unknown.
At the outset, Chas. Seligman wanted a simple to use system to:
- Reduce written mistakes
- Speed the request process
- Eliminate lost requests
- Provide tracking mechanisms
- Promote easy to produce signs
- Keep salespeople in the trade
Solution
SignTrak® was installed in February 2005 on ChasNet, the company network or LAN. Implementation and user training took less than a week.
Chas. Seligman personnel explain how SignTrak works:
Mike Rapp, Sales supervisor…
“from any computer or hand-held device, our salesperson or sign shop staff can bring up the SignTrak® homepage and choose the customer accounts list. Using drop-down menus, he chooses the customer’s preferred POS Type, Image and Size. They can choose standard sizes or custom sizes to fit the customer’s space requirements. Next they choose the direction the sign will point (right or left), where it will be located, and its brand and package. If clips are brackets are needed, they choose those. The template is then previewed for completeness. Then they either choose another type of POS, change the brand, and preview the new template, or simply submit the order. Once an order is input it instantly appears on the sign shop’s computer.”
“We can submit orders using mobile devices, but in most cases the salespeople input a day’s worth of orders at the end of the day right here in the office or from home. Order are always accurate, so our salespeople have much more time in the trade doing what they do best– selling beer.”
Cris Suesz, Sign Shop Manager…
“The sign shop coordinator reviews orders immediately, checks the pending order list, and prepares the next day’s work schedule and manpower requirements. In the morning, we review all orders for the day. We prioritize by date and type of POS. We save time and material by running all similar jobs at once. For example, all inside signs can be printed; then the paper changed for outdoor signs. The best thing is that with the computer, we no longer have to look high and low for orders scribbled on pieces of paper or bar napkins. We just look up the information online. It has relieved a lot of stress and the sign shop runs much more efficiently.”
“The salesperson previews the templates before sending in the order”, says Cris, “which improves accuracy. The order form also has a field for special notes to the sign shop. Our salespeople are the experts on the accounts and can communicate the customer’s expectations to us in such a way that we are all on the same page. With the historical tracking, we can notify our salespeople when their orders are ready for pick-up.” Mike adds, “This frees them up to have more time to sell.”
Kristin Tracy, Public Relations Director…
“SignTrak® takes the burden off both the sales force and our administrator. Admin updates the system database every ten days with seasonal or new POS templates and material items. We track our cost of signage by account and are able to see at a glance all sales requests. Since SignTrak® encourages templates that are easier and less costly to produce, we have eliminated a lot of inefficiencies, saved time, and given our sales people more time to sell more beer.”
Eva Callen, IT Manager...
“Tracking gives us the ability to see requests by date ordered and where the sign shop is in the process of producing. It tells us when we can we spare an employee in the sign shop, how much it costs by customer and type, how many signs we have produced in the past month and year, and what outstanding sign orders need processed. We know in advance if the sign shop needs additional staff or not.”
“Because SignTrak® provides a visual of the graphics, the salesperson simply chooses a template and associated information like size and price. The sign shop gets clear instructions and errors are dramatically reduced. It’s a simple process, but unless you know how to write programs or know a company familiar with your back office system, you are left with salespeople putting their thoughts on paper and getting with the sign maker when they can. You have to be willing to the spend money to make it happen, but with SignTrak® the system pays for itself quickly.”
Summary of Benefits
- Provides a snapshot of POS activity
- Tracks cost and customers
- Documents data and generates custom reports
- Shows management where the POS money goes and if it's effective
- Creates a collaborative effort between sign shop and sales team
With SignTrak®, Chas. Seligman is now all over their game, getting POS out efficiently, allowing their salespeople to get out and hit the trade and creating better brand awareness and increased sales for their customers.
For More Information, or to request a demonstration, please call - 800-513-9194
Source: A-B Marketing Custom POS On Target