POS Marketing Dashboards: A Look into What OnTrak Software is Planning for its POS Tracking Software

How to Turn Your at-Retail Marketing Data into Sales Results

Beer, wine, and spirits distributors spend millions of dollars on Point-of-Sale (POS) marketing promotions — Including printed signs and menus, permanent POS and beverage sampling.

However, many of these same distributors have no real way of knowing exactly how much they spend at individual retail customers, either by brand, sales representative, or some other important measurable criteria. But most importantly they don’t have the capability to track and measure the return-on-investment (ROI) of their promotions.

So, ask yourself the following question:

“Did your investment in POS increase your sales results?

If you answered “No” to this question, then please read on.

Beverage distributors now need to keep track of all the key performance indicators (KPIs) pertaining to their businesses — including POS. Of course, many distributors tell us they want to know — at a glance — how much is being spent, where, by whom, and on what products, but that there’s no quick and simple way to get this information.

In addition, with POS now becoming a significant expense for most distributors, the interest level in knowing how much POS is in inventory, how much is in each customer location, and how much is being placed by brand, has itself become “key.”

Promotions are often “static” in time, having been predetermined by the brewery (See Note below).

Normally, there is no easy way for distributors to efficiently and effectively communicate marketing statistics internally, with their suppliers, or with their on- or off-premise customers effectively and efficiently.

I’m here to tell you that OnTrak Software is now in the process of changing all of that.

New OnTrak Dashboard Features

We’re currently developing additional features for our point-of-sale (POS) tracking, measuring and managing suite of software applications for the market we serve — beverage alcohol distributors.

Recently, perhaps due to the increased financial pressure being placed on beer, wine, and spirits distributors, the interest level in using our products for much more than POS ordering, inventory control, and work-flow tracking has taken a rather sharp turn north.

Our top customers are telling us that they have a “need to know” the relevant financial information in order to facilitate decision making. We’re listening and taking a new approach with all our products.

Dashboards often provide the most valuable views of KPIs relevant to a distributor’s financial objective or business process. If you’re perhaps new to the term, "dashboard" you can think of it as a graphical report providing virtually instant insight into “how your business is doing”.

Another definition says that dashboards are “visual representations, such as charts and graphs, typically placed at the top of business applications’ software.”

PermaTrak — Permanent POS Tracking Software

Our PermaTrak product controls permanent POS inventory from receipt, to order, through picking and placement. The system creates a real-time photo catalog for the sales team, tracks locations, POS costs and retail value, and assists with compliance to local regulations.

Here’s an example of a dashboard that is being developed for PermaTrak to help track and manage your inventory of permanent POS:

This PermaTrak "dashboard" will be linked to your permanent POS data managed within PermaTrak. Your dashboard may contain several panes depicting, for example:

1. A Bar Graph showing POS inventory by type and brand in the market (Example Above)

2. A Pie Chart showing POS inventory by type in the warehouse

3. A Bar Graph showing amount of POS ordered by each sales rep

Of course, each chart or graph segment would then be “clickable” to show the details that made up the underlying data.

Not Just Data — What’s Really Going On!

Our POS Tracking software collects a significant amount of data on all of you POS activities and investments. Sometimes the amount of data can be overwhelming. With Dashboards we will give insight into all that data, to help you select the appropriate information to better manage you POS investment. Here’s an example:

Imagine having the ability to have your POS data and your sales data shown in the same graph allowing you to “see” the correlation between your POS investment by brand to sales; or POS spend by sales rep to their sales results.

Wouldn’t that be valuable? When your POS and sales data are used together, your sales reps would be armed with the information that they could use to place the most effective POS at their customers.

Bottom line, digital dashboards can show distributors, at a glance, what they’re doing with respect to POS and where they’re most effective. Dashboards allow distributors to focus on key indicators and be poised to take advantage of otherwise overlooked opportunities.

Conclusion

As we begin to implement OnTrak’s application dashboards later this year to both current and future customers, we’re confident your POS initiatives will benefit from the ability to visualize where you’re spending your promotional budget. You will also be able to see if you’re focusing on the opportunities with the greatest likelihood of helping you grow both your and your customers’ beverage alcohol sales.

We will be rolling out more information on our dashboard development in the Fall. Please subscribe to our blog to stay connected to updated and useful information about our progress.

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Note: “Report on Advertising spending of selected beer manufacturers in the United States”

www.statista.com/statistics/264998/ad-spend-of-selected-beer-manufacturers-in-the-us/

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For more information on how OnTrak’s POS Tracking Software helps distributors track, measure and manage their POS Marketing campaigns click on either of the following two links for find out what we know about:

Beer Distributors

Wine & Spirits Distributors

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To request a live, 30-minute demonstration of our POS Tracking Software, please call our product experts on 513-936-4041, or click the button and select the one or more products from the following list:

SignTrak - Custom Printed Signs

MenuTrak - Custom Beverage Menus

PermaTrak - Permanent Signs and Displays

SampleTrak - Beverage Samples and Tastings

*Integrated reporting and analysis tools are included in each of our POS Marketing software solutions

Request a Demo

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