ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE
Performance doesn’t pour itself. Volume is only part of the story.
Pricing, portfolio mix, promotions, inventory, route execution and cost-to-serve influence whether growth creates – or diminishes – value.
Salient connects the operational, financial and market context behind alcoholic beverage performance so your people can understand what’s changing, investigate why and focus their attention where it will make the greatest impact.
Trusted across alcoholic beverage
PERFORMANCE IN A SHIFTING MARKET
A shifting market changes more than demand.
It changes the economics of the business.
Alcoholic beverage organizations manage beyond meaningful changes in category mix, consumer preferences, promotional pressure and operating costs. What creates value in one part of the portfolio may look completely different in another. And the assumptions that guided yesterday’s decisions don’t always hold as the market moves.
For suppliers, that means understanding if distribution gains translate into velocity, how pricing compares with expectations and whether joint business plans produce intended returns.
For distributors, the questions move closer to the economics of execution: which customers and routes remain profitable, what the true cost-to-serve is and where inventory, delivery or promotional decisions put pressure on margin.
As the market evolves, the way performance is measured should too.
BUILT AROUND YOUR BUSINESS
Alcoholic beverage performance has its own rules
Pricing structure, portfolio hierarchies, customer relationships, route economics, incentive programs and the way margin is defined varies significantly from one organization to another. The technology used to manage performance should account for those differences, not flatten them into a generic model.
Salient starts with how your organization creates and measures value, then structures the data, business rules and technology around it. As your portfolio, priorities and market evolve, the solution can evolve with them.
PURPOSE-BUILT IN PRACTICE
Different responsibilities demand different performance answers
Suppliers and distributors influence different parts of performance. The questions they need to answer should reflect that.
Salient builds around those differences, structuring the data, measures and operating context each organization needs to understand performance on its own terms.
FOR SUPPLIERS
See what’s happening beyond the shipment
Shipment and depletion data only tell part of the story. Salient connects distributor activity with pricing, retailer performance, syndicated data and other market signals to give suppliers a more complete view of how their brands perform.
- Compare suggested pricing against market conditions
- Pinpoint where margin is gained or lost across distributors, channels, packages and geographies
- Connect distributor execution to retail performance and market share
- Understand where distribution gains translate into velocity and where they fall flat
- Evaluate joint business plans against actual performance and identify where action is needed
FOR DISTRIBUTORS
Know what it really costs to move the business
Route accounting captures the movement of product, but doesn’t always capture the full economics behind it. Salient connects sales activity with financial, payroll, inventory and routing data so distributors can understand profitability behind top-line numbers.
- Calculate true dead-net cost by product, customer, route or territory
- Identify the customers and products that create profitable growth
- Understand where delivery requirements and service patterns erode margin
- Quantify the financial impact of shrink, overstocks, out-of-stocks and excess inventory
- Connect sales and incentive performance back to volume, margin and execution
DESIGNED TO GO FURTHER
A change in performance gives you a place to begin. It doesn’t guide you where to go next.
The cause of a performance shift often sits several layers beneath the headline number. Getting to the answer may require moving through a particular market, customer, package, route, price point or transaction. It typically takes knowing where to look, how to investigate and it’s a path that’s different every time.
Salient gives business users the freedom to investigate performance as questions arise. Start with the variance, explore the factors contributing to it and keep moving into the underlying activity until the cause becomes clear.
The goal isn’t more reporting. It’s the ability to follow the question as far as the business requires.
BUILT DIFFERENTLY FOR A REASON
Salient understands profitable growth is decided in the details – from the price of a case to the cost of getting it to the customer.
The deeper the question goes, the more likely the answer lives across the business.
Salient brings each piece together, structuring around the measures, relationships and business rules your organization uses to define performance. The results go beyond consolidated views to reveal the context to understand how activity contributes to the outcome you’re investigating.
Your performance view should reflect how these factors work together. Not how your systems store them.
PERFORMANCE IN PRACTICE
See what purpose-built performance looks like at 7G Distributing.
For 7G Distributing, managing performance means understanding what’s happening across customers, routes, products and retailers without losing sight of the economics behind each decision.
Salient gives 7G the ability to move beyond high-level reporting, investigate performance in greater detail and use that understanding to strengthen the execution and protect margin across the business.
