Client Stories

Process Simplification Delivered: Tata Consumer Products

Company Background

Tata Consumer Products UK Limited is a £238 Million CPG manufacturer with a primary focus in Tea, Coffee and beverage drinks.

The Parent Company, Tata Consumer Products Limited (“TCPL”) is a multinational company with headquarters in Kolkata, India. It is the world’s second largest manufacturer and distributor of tea, a major coffee producer and in the UK has recently launched a squash dilute range.   

TCPL globally has grown via acquisitions of businesses in new geographies and subsidiaries including Australia, USA, Czech Republic, etc, resulting in a wide variation of commercial processes and systems in each region. Operationally TCPL is more centralized and may service multiple markets from a single planning hub (e.g., the Eaglescliffe facility in England produces product for the UK and Canadian markets which each have their own commercial teams).   

TCPL’s United Kingdom business (TCPUK) started in 2017, a project to explore opportunities to move to a more integrated business planning process across both functions and geographies. TCPUK’s core objective with this initial project was to explore ‘best practices’ within other FMCG companies and to understand the tools that those companies utilize.   

In late 2017, UpClear was selected as TCPUK’s revenue management partner to deliver it’s BluePlanner “Software-as-a-Service” solution for sales planning and trade promotion management. UpClear  proposed deploying BluePlanner over a six-month deployment period for TCPUK. The configuration of BluePlanner included both standard “core” features and modules, plus more advanced features to meet TCPUK’s specific requirements as understood by UpClear, based on preliminary scoping discussions in early 2018. 

“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. Our assessment found Upclear to be particularly strong in Supporting our Key Processes, Usability & Accessibility, Implementation Methodology, Cultural Fit and Future Proofing.” – Paul Christopher, BI Project Manager 

Project Overview

TCPUK identified a need to support its Trade Promotions activities with an integrated, closed loop system that allows all aspects of Trade Promotions to be managed, tracked, and evaluated. ​ The objective was to roll out UpClear BluePlanner across all UK channels served by TCPUK with the aspiration to support their planning process through the new solution.   

The main benefits sought through the BluePlanner roll-out project would be to:  

  • Simplify the current system landscape  
  • Provide commercial teams with a “one-stop-shop” to manage their customers  
  • Enhance ways-of-working and business processes  
  • Removal of off-line and manual work  
  • Reduce re-keying of data  
  • Deploy a responsive and intuitive interface to drive solution adoption  
  • Deliver accurate projections of volume, spend and costs for latest estimates, forecasts and budget   
  • Resolve accrual tracking process with automation through BluePlanner   
  • Simplify the claims process  
  • Improve ROI insights across customers, brands and categories  
  • Ensure clear roles of authority, with enhanced governance and controls  

“UpClear had a strong understanding of SAP and what we were used to using and working from therefore transitioning over was made much easier than it might have been. Being able to work at our pace and the flexibility from Upclear on the outputs and support has been a huge plus for us” – Stephanie Henson, Commercial Strategy & Planning Manager 

Key Benefits Delivered

PLANNING 

  • Opportunity to manually plan baseline volumes while creating uplift through promotional management 
  • Ability to create and forecast for New Product Developments throughout the year 
  • Ability to review of the ROI and value of promotions and compare promotion forecast (evaluating the profitability with or without the promotion). 

 “The current BP has provided us with a much more aligned approach to planning and reviewing our forecasts and Budgets. The ability to report and review performance and forecasted costs in month has been incredibly beneficial to us as a business too. Flagging issues and opportunities earlier than we have been able to do before.” – Stephanie Henson, Commercial Strategy & Planning Manager 

CONTROLLING: 

  • To do list which allows for quick at-a-glance of promotions to approve. 
  • Promotional and invoice matching Audit Trail  
  • Custom integration of internal tracking numbers to ensure invoicing matches back to Tata internal systems. 

REPORTING:  

  • Ability to upload EPOS data for analysis of Sell-In and Sell-Out within P&L and Analytics Datasets. 
  • Revenue and Spend Analysis, with customized accrual calculations tailored for Tata Accounting processes. 
  • Reporting splits to provide a view of both accruable metrics, as well as non-accruable (live) metrics within BluePlanner 

 “Blueplanner is much easier to use for Budgeting and forecasting than before and the level and quality of reporting is significantly improved.” – Jon Kempster, Senior Business Manager  

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