Tata Consumer Products is a multinational consumer goods company and the world's second largest manufacturer and distributor of tea. Its UK business, home to flagship brand Tetley, serves a broad range of retail customers across a mix of modern and traditional trade channels. 

Since 2018, the FMCG brand has partnered with UpClear to build and run its commercial operations. Leveraging Blue RGM, Tata has built a system that supports tighter collaboration, greater efficiency, and more informed decision-making across the commercial function.

The Path to Value for Revenue Management: 2018 to Now 

When Tata Consumer Products UK onboarded BluePlanner, now the Blue RGM platform, the goal was straightforward. They wanted to replace a fragmented, manual system with a single, integrated platform that commercial teams could use day-to-day. 

The team had a clear sense of what they were looking for from the outset. "BluePlanner was industry leading, had the best fit to our UK business and gave us the opportunity to add additional functionality and even expand to other countries within our business," said Paul Christopher, the BI Project Manager at the time. 

"Our assessment found UpClear to be particularly strong in supporting our key processes, usability and accessibility, implementation methodology, cultural fit, and future proofing." 

However, despite all of the promise of the platform, there was still some startup work to realize its full value. Naresh Joshi, Tata UK's Commercial Finance Controller, joined the business right as the system went live. "It was quite the journey," he recalled. 

Beyond getting up to speed with the business as a new joiner, Naresh had to get to grips with the platform, align internal data inputs, and bring colleagues across the function on board. This started with feeding in clean, accurate data. "Like with any system, it's garbage in, garbage out," he said. 

His efforts paid off. Over time, the team moved from managing the system to leveraging it — building workflows and structures that unlocked a new level of commercial insight. "It's been quite fruitful," Naresh said.

Navigating the Changing Landscape of RGM

On CPG and FMCG commercial teams, few roles fit neatly into a box. As Tata UK's Commercial Finance Controller, Naresh operates across almost every part of the business, leading a team of three internal and three external contributors. 

"We are an extension of every department within Tata Consumer Products," he explains. "From planning stages, ideation, all the way through to forecasting, through to production, through to delivery, to the shelf."

With this team structure, having a solution that connects departments and surfaces the right information at the right time is essential. Blue RGM has proven its value in providing a shared foundation that supports collaboration across sales, finance, demand planning, and beyond. 

The flexibility of the platform enables them to pursue their goals without a prescriptive process, which is essential for their agile commercial model. While the objective of RGM is simple, it often involves complex problems that require creative ways of thinking. 

"The key measures will always be driving share and growth," said Naresh. "Be it through innovation or core, managing our portfolio, margin enhancement, revenue growth, and overall profitability and profit delivery." 

Blue RGM gives the team a reliable, configurable foundation to support strong decision-making, even as they test new approaches.

Building a Stronger System Together

The initial value realized with Blue was just the beginning. In the years since onboarding, Tata has continued to work with UpClear on projects that iteratively improve their day-to-day workflow. One of those was a joint initiative in 2024 to enhance financial governance and reduce the manual effort involved in managing deductions. 

The project centered on activating Blue Planner's Payments module, which integrates directly with Tata's ERP system to provide a centralized workspace for reviewing, matching, and reconciling deductions. Previously, teams had to switch between their ERP, BluePlanner, manual invoice trackers, and various other documents just to track where money was going and what invoices were expected. The new setup brought all of that into one place. 

"It took a lot of collaboration back and forth to get things set up in the right manner," Naresh recalled. After four months of gathering requirements, followed by a few more weeks of go-live testing, the results were clear. 

"From the first instance, we saw an immediate improvement," said Naresh. "Once people got familiar with the system, they could go in and start easily matching their invoices." 

The results extended across the business. Finance teams benefited from fewer corrections and amendments. Audit alignment improved. Finally, with invoices now linked directly to promotional spend, accrual accuracy increased. Overall, the team gained a more reliable picture of actuals for forecasting and financial planning.

The results extended across the business. Finance teams benefited from fewer corrections and amendments. Audit alignment improved. Finally, with invoices now linked directly to promotional spend, accrual accuracy increased. Overall, the team gained a more reliable picture of actuals for forecasting and financial planning. 

Getting Into the Detail 

The progress Tata has made hasn't been accidental. Naresh is a firm believer in getting into the weeds, both as a philosophy for managing the platform and for commercial performance more broadly. 

"You need to understand what drives a particular channel, a particular customer. You've got to understand your mix, your PPA, your pricing," he said. 

With that granular understanding in place, the next step becomes clearer. Naresh shared the value of using those insights to test, iterate, and improve. "Where you've got strong customer relationships, that's where you test and learn," he said. 

Having a vendor that supports a nuanced, dynamic approach is part of what makes these improvements possible. "The UpClear team have been very understanding and very supportive, finding solutions for the way businesses work." 

No two businesses operate the same way, and it's important to find a solution that covers the nuances. Naresh pointed out the variance across the industry, from different P&L formats to different ways of calculating things. "Having a solution that covers 60–70% of that, and then tailoring things over and above to get closer to where you need to be, has been key," he said. 

Moving Forward: A Vision for the Future 

For Naresh and the Tata commercial team, good RGM is less of a destination than a continual pursuit. As such, they've already discussed future undertakings, including how to leverage AI to further improve their invoice matching process. "As AI comes along and machine learning comes in, and the system gets used more and more frequently, that should hopefully become a lot easier," said Naresh. 

UpClear’s industry conferences have helped them in their continuous growth efforts. Naresh has attended several of UpClear’s RGM Summits and has come away with valuable learnings. “You're always learning something new and trying to understand how to better manage performance through the information and insights we get,” he said. 

“Having the RGM summit, with the caliber of speakers, just fuels that learning and growth. Something you may not have thought of, or a different perspective or angle to tackle something, always comes out of these forums.” 

Looking forward, Naresh is optimistic about what’s ahead for Tata’s partnership with UpClear  

“It's been a great journey so far, and I expect it to continue to grow exponentially from there.”

About UpClear

UpClear is a software company and maker of Blue, an intelligence platform used by Consumer Goods brands. We deliver a holistic Revenue Growth Management solution, including capabilities for TPM, TPO, IBP, and RGM. Our mission is to empower brands to maximize revenue performance and trade investment returns through intelligent, collaborative software— providing a single source of truth, streamlined automation, and actionable insights.

The Blue RGM Intelligence Platform supports end-to-end gross-to-net revenue management processes: Annual Operating Planning, Account Planning, and Execution. Solutions are woven together with analytics, artificial intelligence, and data management that connects teams and business systems.