How do multi-national brand marketers use software to help them spend and save money?

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1 How do multi-national brand marketers use software to help them spend and save money? ProProcure, The Marketing Spend Management Company, explores point of sale marketing spending to find out what is helping brand managers manage the budget and the brand.

2 How do multi-national brand marketers use software to help them spend and save money? ProProcure, The Marketing Spend Management Company, explores point of sale marketing spending to find out what is helping brand managers manage the budget and the brand. The concept of marketing spend management might be an anathema to creative marketers whilst offering nirvana to procurement professionals but it isn t all about the money. Evidence suggests that multi-national brand organisations are equally concerned with managing brand quality and consistency as well as making budgets stretch further and being able to combine these two delivers a win-win situation for all. All marketers have to be clever with their budgets and it is a new generation of web based software that is enabling them to deliver this, allowing marketing to focus on being creative with less, whilst ensuring multi-national brand delivery & consistency so that now Brand Marketers and Marketing Procurement Professionals can be collaborators. The great thing about this is that it is both an optimised one-stop solution for the SABMiller Global Brand teams and a fundamental beneficial resource for our markets. It provides the better, cheaper option, ensuring the best suppliers, premium quality products, consistent brand look and feel but crucially a platform for collaboration and faster decision making within our decentralised global business with local markets. Take a business like SABMiller, a global company with four big prestigious global brands, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Grolsch, Miller Genuine Draft and Pilsner Urquell, premium beer products that are recognised and sold throughout the world. Imagine going into a bar anywhere and recognising that brand because of the fount, the bar coasters, the drip trays, the ice buckets, the fridges that hold the bottles, the t-shirts worn by the bar staff - consistent, high quality brand look and feel. All these point of sale items deliver the super premium brand experience to the consumer and the value of this is immeasurable. However businesses like SABMiller that run on a decentralised basis often have challenges around delivering consistency of the brand locally whilst achieving purchasing economies of scale. One of SABMiller s strategic priorities is developing strong, relevant brand portfolios that win in the local market and which includes a focus on both local and global brands. SABMiller took on this challenge and spearheaded a global initiative around developing the Global Brand portfolio, one that within a year is delivering results that make its markets happy. For its Global Brands, SABMiller has delivered a centralised Point of Sale Web Shop (based on ProProcure s Marketing Spend Management Platform) that offers the full range of branded point of sale materials at the best prices to all their local markets on a global scale. Recognising that there are many challenges associated with getting traction with the local markets this initiative thrives because it is a totally collaborative platform. All markets can get involved. Global teams design and develop a core range and subsequently make this available to local markets ensuring consistent look and feel, and the benefits of aggregated volumes. However, local markets are also able to put unique locally sourced PoS and branded collateral materials on to the web shop for approval, and once approved, these are then available to the rest of the world. This achieves better economies of scale than those offered merely within the local market and enables the brand owners to ensure the consistency in quality and premium experience demanded by their brands. Every market gets access to the creativity whilst benefiting from the ability to buy higher volumes at lower prices that can only be achieved by global buying budgets. Ewan Davenport, Head of Decision Support, Group Marketing & Technical An Insight Paper from ProProcure Ltd Page 2

3 The initiative works well for SABMiller because resource has been placed against this to drive and maintain the enthusiasm for the project both internally and through their solution partner, ProProcure. The web shop offers a buying experience akin to one experienced by all of us in our personal web shopping lives. The project is run on a not for profit basis but is currently enjoying significant sales growth as the solution continues to offer the best PoS products, at the cheapest prices, whilst maintaining the super premium nature of the brands and delivering a consistent brand experience to the consumers. The future of the web shop offers even more exciting opportunities and functionality, for example local markets with excess stocks can put them back on the system for re-sale to other markets, that perhaps need more - ebay style, ensuring they are not left with unused stock whilst there might be a need in other countries that have no stock. Ewan Davenport, Head of Decision Support, Group Marketing & Technical says of the solution The great thing about this is that it is both an optimised one-stop solution for the SABMiller Global Brand teams and a fundamental beneficial resource for our markets. It provides the better, cheaper option, ensuring the best suppliers, premium quality products, consistent brand look and feel but crucially a platform for collaboration and faster decision making within our decentralised global business with local markets. Other multi-national brands have looked to address the same challenges, seeking ways to stop maverick spend locally and create a single source for PoS, merchandising and print collateral purchase. The main criteria always appear to be brand protection but underlying this is the desire to reduce costs by achieving greater economies of scale in procurement. Pernod Ricard, a global brand leader in the wines and spirits marketplace faced a similar challenge and kicked off a project now branded Pernod Ricard emarket to improve the quality and consistency of materials and optimise the procurement of PoS materials across the group. Pernod Ricard operates as a decentralised organisation and one that recognises the need to improve the quality and consistency of materials locally whilst delivering visibility in spend management in a typically complex area. By centralising global PoS materials into a web shop (hosted on the ProProcure Marketing Spend Management Platform), Pernod Ricard have seen cost savings, group wide reductions in indirect spend and higher quality brand consistent products being made available to all local markets. We understand all the challenges associated with large procurement budgets, brand management, large scale ordering, localisation and the visibility and management of large budgets. We have built a solution that enables collaboration for everyone involved, those responsible for brand, for marketing collateral, for procurement, for sales and for management to have visibility, globally and locally. Multi-national brand companies are increasingly looking to centralise one element of their marketing, that of external PoS, merchandising and print acquisition onto web platforms that offer user friendly consumer like shopping experiences for the local markets to select and buy. In the past such an approach may not have worked in a decentralised organisation but with the ability to collaborate and upload local initiatives added to those sourced and approved centrally the benefits are being seen across the whole business. Adding to that the ability to re-sell products back to the market it seems that every part of the business is benefiting. Procurement is happy because they are finally achieving the economies of scale in marketing collateral and external marketing spend that can be afforded to multi-national brand businesses. Finance are happy because real costs savings are being made, budgets and spend are far more visible and brand leaders are happy because they can control the brand presence and quality on a multi-national basis whilst meeting the demands & nuances of local markets. Frank Treanor. CEO, ProProcure An Insight Paper from ProProcure Ltd Page 3

4 Frank Treanor. CEO, ProProcure says I have been involved in PoS and marketing collateral procurement for many years and it is this understanding of the needs of multi-national brands that led to ProProcure developing a web based procurement solution for marketers. We understand all the challenges associated with large procurement budgets, brand management, large scale ordering, localisation and the visibility and management of large budgets. We have built a solution that enables collaboration for everyone involved, those responsible for brand, for marketing collateral, for procurement, for sales and for management to have visibility, globally and locally. Brand Marketers may not need software to help them spend money but a new generation of Marketing Spend Management Solutions are helping multi-national brands to save money and more importantly to successfully manage brand consistency, a real challenge in a decentralised multi-national business. An Insight Paper from ProProcure Ltd Page 4

5 About ProProcure ProProcure Ltd is a leading provider of Marketing Spend Management Solutions working with multi-national brand owners. The ProProcure team are experts in delivering flexible solutions for the marketing services category. Clients choose to work with ProProcure to ensure multi-national brand protection, obtain total spend visibility and to achieve measurable reductions in cost, risk and waste. Established in 2000 by Frank Treanor and headquartered in the UK, ProProcure delivers Marketing Spend Management Solutions to some of the world s most famous brands including Absolut Vodka, Pernod Ricard, Chivas Regal, Jim Beam, Novartis, GEM Healthcare, SAB Miller and the Publicis Groupe. To speak to Proprocure please call +44 (0) or send an to contact@proprocure.co.uk For more general information, visit ProProcure Ltd. All Rights Reserved. All content included in this publication, such as text, graphics, logos, images and methodologies, is the exclusive property of ProProcure Ltd, or its partners, clients and where indicated third parties; and protected by United Kingdom and international copyright laws. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from ProProcure Ltd. ProProcure Ltd makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this briefing and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made An Insight Paper from ProProcure Ltd Page 5