One Blog |February 15, 2013 | POS Tracking Software

POS Marketing Management - OnTrak Customer Success Stories (Part 2)

Mark Fullerton

The benefits our customers have achieved using our products

This is Part 2 of a blog about OnTrak’s customer success stories.

In Customer Success Stories - Part 1 our customers described the point at which they realized or decided that they needed a system to manage and control their Point-of-Sale (POS) Marketing Communications processes; and the problems they have avoided now that they have an automated POS Tracking solution.

In Part 2 of this blog you will learn why our customers decided to subscribe to OnTrak’s POS Marketing Communications Management software. We have compiled a list of the answers to the questions we asked several of our largest beer, wine and spirits wholesalers. They also shared some of the key benefits they have achieved with our software.

Operational Benefits

Elimination of errors and reworks - One universal benefit from using an automated system to track (order and produce) POS marketing communications materials is the virtual elimination of reworks. Before using our system, order errors often caused as much as one rework per sales representative per month. For a distributor with 75 sales reps, it was not uncommon to find that over 70 signs per month had to be re-created due to errors on the paper form (or napkin) that was submitted to the graphics department. At an average cost of $40 per sign, reworks for such a distributor cost nearly $3,000 per month, plus the sign maker’s time lost, and the sales rep’s time required for the second pick up. In addition, when a sign has to be reworked, you lose the advantage of getting the sign placed in the trade before the competition.
Consistent and complete order process — An automated system has the ability to improve ordering efficiency, making the order process consistent and yielding a faster time-to-market. One customer remarked, “What used to take us up to three weeks, now takes only three days!” When POS ordering and production tracking are automated, virtually nothing slips through the cracks; and an automated system also captures accurate POS costs, and maintains bill-back rules and filing for recovery. A further benefit, sales reps could know the POS costs as well as the available recovery bill-backs prior to the order submission allowing reps to make better marketing decisions based on a positive return on investment.

Financial Benefits

POS Costs vs. Sales Results Analysis - All OnTrak products include a management approval process which allows sales managers to review and approve or reject orders based on POS costs vs. customer sales vs. supplier bill-back allowances. Additionally, an automated POS tracking system offers built-in, rules-based work flow which enables improved decision making with respect to retail promotions.
Faster Time-to-Market - Naturally we wanted to know if our customer’s customers perceived any benefits from the distributor using an automated POS tracking system. We found that retail customers enjoy faster delivery turnaround when they selected signs and other marketing communications materials from the distributors. Our systems squeeze time out of the entire POS fulfillment process. So not only are our customers happy, their customers are happy.
Accurate Bill-back recovery - Since our customers are beverage alcohol distributors in over 25 states, we also found that our customers, especially wine & spirits distributors, were able to more easily keep up-to-date with the recovery programs of their suppliers in different states. State rules and regulations often complicate supplier’s bill-back recovery claim procedures. OnTrak makes the supplier bill-back recovery process less complicated.

Customer Quotes

At the end of each conversation we asked our customers to give us a one-line statement which describes how they felt about using one or more of the OnTrak products. Here are some of their responses:

“. . . [With SignTrak] our graphics and sign shop have stopped being a bottle-neck."
“Our sign shop now has all of the information regarding POS, including labor and material costs, recovery rules and POS campaign ROI.”
“Recovery filing is completed in hours rather than days — and we’re now confident we’re reporting using current and consistent bill-back rules.”
“Our finance department is able to use [MenuTrak’s] reporting tool to slice all of the retail/restaurant marketing information allowing our various business units to adapt their marketing spending based on current data.”
“. . . [SignTrak] provides us with a competitive advantage in the half-dozen markets we serve — if you even try to take it away from us, we’ll put out a hit on you!”
“We don’t want anyone else in our territory to have the OnTrak applications; they allow us to stay a step ahead of our competition.”
“SignTrak returned control of the black-hole that used to be our sign shop!”
And, then there’s my favorite: “We can’t go back to the way it was before MenuTrak; we can’t even remember what it was like before . . . “