Hovis, one of the UK’s most established bakery brands, has been leveraging UpClear’s BluePlanner for over 10 years, using the platform to support the entire sales cycle — from annual planning and long-range forecasting up to 18 months in advance, through to managing customer investment, volumes and financials in a year.
To mark this milestone, we spoke with Tom Pook, Senior National Account Manager at Hovis, who has been using BluePlanner for the past five years, to understand how the platform supports him in his role and helps drive better commercial outcomes for Hovis’ customers.
For Tom, one of BluePlanner’s key strengths is its ability to support the creation of a realistic and defensible plan for the next financial year and beyond.
Rather than working from assumptions alone, BluePlanner helps him build a robust base plan that provides a clear view of where volume is likely to land. This gives him a strong starting point for early customer discussions and the development of initial Joint Business Plans (JBPs).
An important part of this process is aligning plans to customer financial years and key dates, while still maintaining a clear Hovis perspective. This alignment improves the quality of conversations both internally and externally, and ensures plans reflect how customers actually operate.
Having the ability to review past and predicted promotional activity, helps Tom identify the best promotional programme for Hovis and his customers.
“Post promotional analysis allows us to understand the right products and right promotional mechanics to drive future growth.”
–Tom Pook, Senior National Account Manager, Hovis
BluePlanner helps Tom & Hovis understand how incremental spend translates into volume, rather than viewing promotions in isolation.
By modelling expected outcomes upfront and comparing them to actual results in-year, he can assess whether the commercial decisions made were the right ones. This creates a learning loop that improves planning quality over time and strengthens accountability for investment decisions.
Operationally, Tom regularly checks whether promotions are delivering the volume originally expected. This visibility allows him to validate assumptions, adjust where needed, and build confidence in future plans.
As BluePlanner supports the entire commercial process, it also gives Tom & Hovis clear visibility on his latest estimate, combined actuals and forecast for volumes and spend, so he can proactively manage this total trade investment with control and confidence.
BluePlanner plays an important role in monthly S&OP meetings, particularly when demand assumptions are challenged.
By providing a clear baseline and a transparent view of planned activity, Tom is able to explain the volume he is requesting using data rather than opinion. This supports more constructive conversations across sales, supply and demand planning teams at Hovis.
Hovis has recently launched a sourdough bread range, a category that brings additional operational constraints compared to the rest of the portfolio. While Hovis was already planning 12–18 months in advance, sourdough offers less room to manoeuvre in the short term due to longer production timelines.
Rather than requiring a fundamental change to the planning horizon or approach, this launch required the organisation to adapt internally to a new commercial reality. BluePlanner was already in place, providing the structure, visibility and data needed to support this increased level of rigour.
This allowed teams to plan with greater confidence, ensure demand assumptions were well supported, and manage short-term decisions more carefully where flexibility is limited.
BluePlanner continues to evolve, delivering tangible operational benefits alongside commercial rigour.
Recent improvements to Invoice Matching have had a direct impact on efficiency. As Tom puts it:
“BluePlanner’s smart matching has cut the admin time required to match promotions in half.”
–Tom Pook, Senior National Account Manager, Hovis
By significantly reducing manual effort, BluePlanner frees up time that can be reinvested into analysis and decision-making rather than administration.
For Tom, BluePlanner is a critical functional tool that supports accountability, particularly when working closely with RGM and cross-functional teams. It provides a shared view of performance and ensures commercial decisions are clearly owned and understood.
As a SaaS platform, BluePlanner continues to evolve, with enhancements made available to clients from day one. Hovis has benefited from this ongoing innovation, reinforcing BluePlanner’s role as a long-term partner in delivering structured, data-led commercial planning.
At UpClear, our mission is to empower Consumer Goods brands to maximize revenue performance and trade investment returns through intelligent, collaborative software—providing a single source of truth, streamlined automation, and actionable insights.
BluePlanner Revenue Management software supports end-to-end processes, from Annual Operating Planning to Account Planning and Execution.
