CASE STUDY - BPM Solution Gives Rust-Oleum Canada Maximum Visibility into Product Performance
Commentary by Matt Roher, Category Manager, Rust-Oleum Consumer Brands Canada
Known for its protective aerosol paints, Rust-Oleum Consumer Brands Canada, a Canadian subsidiary of RPM International, also distributes a wide range of finishes, brush-grade paints, and floor coatings. Used by both professionals and “do-it-yourselfers,” Rust-Oleum’s brands—including Rust-Oleum®, Mono®, Tremclad®, and Varathane®—are widely distributed across Canada through independent hardware stores and large “big-box” retailers such as Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, Rona, and Home Depot. Rust-Oleum is constantly challenged to optimize its product lines and develop new product categories to maintain its market leadership.
Eliminating the Manual Grind
Prior to implementing Hyperion Performance Suite™, the process of evaluating product performance was extremely time-consuming, requiring the category management team to analyze huge volumes of point-of-sale (POS) information contained in binders shipped from retail partners monthly. “I was entering information instead of analyzing it, and as a result was in no position to act on this information,” says Matt Roher, category manager, Rust-Oleum Consumer Brands Canada.
Improving Productivity with Actionable Information
The task of creating a report, which once took two weeks to complete, is now accomplished in less than one hour. Retail partners now transmit POS data to a server housed in Rust-Oleum’s Illinois headquarters. From there, the data is posted to a Microsoft SQL Server database. The Canadian category management team then uses Hyperion Performance Suite to access, view, and manipulate reports, with the ability to track SKUs down to the individual store level. SAP R/3 data, which includes Rust-Oleum’s outbound sales and shipment data, is also accessed via Performance Suite for comparison purposes and trend spotting.
Using Historical Sales Trends to Drive Future Performance
Summary reports that highlight total and specific product sales information are e-mailed to brand managers, forecasting managers, and sales and marketing executives. Brand and category managers review consumer purchases and calculate “what-if ” scenarios on how different shelf positioning of products might affect sales, and they make these findings available to retail partners. “Thanks to Hyperion, our general manager can be confident that the sales force has the information they need to build stronger and more credible relationships. Our retail partners love the fact that we can provide them with extremely useful, timely information which can have a tremendous impact on product sales,” declares Roher.
Increasing Promotion Effectiveness
Using Hyperion Performance Suite, Rust-Oleum developed templates that brand managers use to receive reports identifying sales of new products and the status of related promotions for new product SKUs. With these reports, the category management team identifies factors affecting product sales. Given the resources Rust-Oleum commits to bringing products to market, the ability to quickly measure launch and promotion progress and fulfill demand has been vital to continued launch success.
We’re using Hyperion reporting as a competitive advantage, which has had a huge impact on our ability to serve our retail partners and their ability to serve consumers.
—Matt Roher, Category Manager, Rust-Oleum Consumer Brands Canada
Within just a week after Epoxy Shield first shipped from the warehouse, Rust-Oleum presented retail partners with actual sales figures that attested to the popularity of this product, thus encouraging retailers to increase their orders. Thanks to Rust-Oleum’s immediate visibility into sales data combined with rededicated marketing resources, Rust-Oleum quickly boosted Epoxy Shield’s sales. “Thanks to Hyperion, we were able to prove that the Epoxy Shield marketing efforts were already working, even without additional marketing support and advertising,” says Roher.
Conclusion
“We can’t just say that ‘our brands are good’ to our retail partners, we must prove it,” continues Roher. “With Hyperion Performance Suite, we provide them with quantitative analyses and a solid business review based on their own sell-through data, which makes a phenomenal difference to our credibility. We’re using Hyperion reporting as a competitive advantage, which has had a huge impact on our ability to serve our retail partners and their ability to serve consumers.”