Company Background & Mission
Photos Photiades Group was founded in Cyprus in 1942 and since then, it has grown into one of the most successful and fastest evolving groups of companies operating in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
Over 1,100 people work for the group, which has a strong leadership presence in the fields of beverages production and distribution.
The Group has diversified interests including the brewing of Carlsberg beer under license and the distribution of Spirits and Beverages in partnership with Diageo, Campari, Moët Hennessy, Jose Cuervo and many others serving On-Trade, Off-Trade and Wholesale customers.
Commercial Objectives
Photos Photiades Distributors (“PPD”) aims to transform its Execution Standards by introducing data-driven Sales Planning, Sales Execution and Order Capture. PPD is seeking to operationalise a richly segmented customer strategy with the ambition to drive an increase in Numeric Distribution and Execution Standards Compliance that will directly impact both Top-Line and Bottom-Line outcomes.
With its primary focus on Cyprus, PPD seeks to standardise the way Revenue Growth Management and Sales work together. PPD wishes to address the optimum assortment, touchpoint, segmentation and to dynamically apply the optimum Execution Standards for both its On-Trade and Off-Trade customers.
Today’s approach is no longer viable as it relies on overly manual spreadsheets, back-office SAP and manually created BI dashboards with continuous training required to improve sales visit outcomes.
Challenges Faced
1. Visit Planning and Dynamic Visit Management:
PPD needs to enable sales to perform the right task at the right time in the right place. This is a continually moving objective that is dependent on the time of year, location and consumer demographic.
2. Field Sales Execution:
PPD would like to introduce a mobile Retail Execution application. This will automate daily plans for Sales to easily follow, uncover critical Sales KPIs and capture Outlet Assessments to measure how each Outlet adheres to pre-agreed standards to drive the best consumer experience. Every single visit to a customer should be set according to the execution standards decided to type of customer and the mobile solution must drive the salesman in an easy way to follow the steps of a successful visit to a customer.
3. Order Capture, Collections & Credit Management:
When capturing new Orders, field sales reps need to be able to ascertain the credit position of the customer, capture Collections and drive the optimum commercial approach during a Visit. A lack of visibility currently results in greatly increased Order Administration, unwanted Customer Satisfaction issues & adversely impacts delivery times.
4. Sales Intelligence Memory:
PPD wants to build a digital customer footprint. Armed with greater insight into sales history and buying patterns, Van Loading & Routing can be optimised. Improved survey-based intelligence will drive highly targeted sales activity and Promotions.
5. Cross-Sell & Up-Sell:
PPD is seeking an approach that prompts Sales Reps with a narrative about what they should be advising the customer to purchase and stock in addition to their regular orders.
6. Reporting & Analytics.
Reporting is currently an administrative overhead for PPD. Flexible reporting will free-up sales leadership to focus more on sales strategy and less on reporting admin.
The Aforza Solution
To meet this need Aforza is rolling out new Mobile and Head Office solutions across three phases:
- Phase 1: Cyprus – Sales Visit Planning, Segmented Execution & Collections: This initial phase will directly Improve Standards in Sales Execution and introduce real-time visibility allowing PPD to act quickly to market needs.
- Phase 2: Cyprus – Order Capture, Segment Discount & Trade Promotion Management: This phase will enable PPD to ensure that the right brands are sold into the right venues at prices that optimise the true value to the customer of each brand and format.
- Phase 3: Indirect Markets in Central Europe: This will connect Wholesalers across the region enabling the tracking of real-time stock levels and sell-out information. It will automate payment accruals for promotions agreed to by wholesalers and customers and will build a real-time understanding of investment and payback by category for each individual market and the region as a whole.
What’s Next
Executing the Standards set by Revenue Growth Management teams is the first step towards PPD’s digital transformation.
Having proven the real-time and segmented execution strategy with the sales teams, PPD will replicate the gains in visibility and agility across the Central European region with the different Routes to Market and commercial models.
PPD is also partnering with Aforza to investigate Machine-Learning driven predictions to optimise how ‘whitespace’ opportunities can be captured in new categories, changes to assortment and predictions of the perfect Order and pricing.
The Aforza platform delivers a comprehensive combination of insight generation that is fed directly to the users whether in the field or office-based to enable data-driven decisions that directly impact profitability and investment decision making.
This innovative vision serves to elevate Photos Photiades Distributors as leaders in their market, serving customers in a way that proactively drives value for all stakeholders across their network.