While UpClear works with a wide range of consumer goods brands (such as Ripple Foods, Beyond Meat, Vita Coco, and Blue Buffalo to Ferrero, and Perfetti van Melle), an expanding area of focus has also been on working with agencies and other partner opportunities. Our work with C.A. Fortune is a great example of a unique offering where our solution BluePlanner provides benefits across both the agency and a number of their growing clients. Featured in this Client Story, we caught up with Brit Cattey, the Senior Director of Sales Operations at C.A. BUILD (A pillar of C.A. Fortune), to share how we work together for the benefit of the consumer goods brands under the C.A. Fortune umbrella.
Founded in 1983, C.A. Fortune has evolved from a small sales enterprise into a full-service, privately held consumer brands agency with a national scope that works in natural, conventional, and online channels. C.A. Fortune offers clients a comprehensive solution — from brand incubation, client strategy, sales management, marketing and branding, insights, retail activation, and more.
What types of brands does CA Fortune work with?
CA Fortune works with natural, specialty, and organic brands in the food, pet, and general merchandise space. We work across many grocery channels, including natural, specialty, conventional, mass, club, and omnichannel.
How did UpClear come into the picture?
- Up until 2021, CA Build had been forecasting and managing forecasts and trade spend in excel. This worked for a time, but we wanted to continue to service our clients’ complex and ever-changing needs. UpClear was able to solve that problem for us by becoming the solution for forecasting, trade spend management, and overall business management, saving many man hours in the process.
- UpClear had originally come to our attention as one of our team had worked with UpClear’s BluePlanner software at Beyond Meat.
What were the key reasons for selecting UpClear?
- The platform allowed multiple clients to be managed from one login (an issue that we had faced with many other companies), and the UpClear team was very willing to work with us to customize certain aspects of the software to meet our needs.
How does CA Fortune utilize BluePlanner?
- CA Build (a pillar of CA Fortune) manages BluePlanner for 10 of their clients currently, with plans to expand not only to more CA Build clients, but to CA Fortune clients as well. We use the platform to understand the client’s progress to goals, promotional spend and effectiveness, and ensure we understand where our risks and opportunities lie.
What value has a SaaS solution for trade promotion management delivered to CA Fortune?
- This solution has not only freed up many hours of tedious labor entering in data into Excel docs on a monthly and weekly basis, but it also allows us to view many aspects of our business at once, including promotions, trade spend, forecast, and actuals. Previously, these were all housed in different documents. Having more efficient tools allows us to serve our clients at a higher level. The vast reporting capabilities in the Analytics module has proved to be an amazing resource to not only our clients, but to our sales team as well.
What are CA Fortune’s goals for 2022?
- I will focus on CA Build goals for this question, as that is the pillar that is currently utilizing UpClear’s BluePlanner. CA Build’s primary goal in 2022 is client retention. We strive to be an agency that is not merely transactional but rather built upon relationships and trust. It’s no secret that 2020 and 2021 have been difficult years for clients and agencies alike, with limited resources, strained supply chains, and meeting/presentation restrictions. However, every new hire, new project, new process, and new program is geared towards ensuring our clients have the complete trust that we will take care of their brand as if it were our own. UpClear is a huge part of this initiative!
