Blacksmith Applications: Analytics to Manage Trade Spending

One of the biggest challenges faced by the foodservice industry is the lack of visibility into the transactions between the distributors and the operators that span trade spending, deduction and price management. As materials flow through the supply chain from manufacturer to the distributor to different outlets, the lack of visibility to secondary transactions is blocked as it requires sophisticated data models and tools to integrate within the ERP.

The challenges become complex when the requirement of reasonable share arises among the operators and the distributors. Blacksmith Applications focuses on solving the unique needs of foodservice manufacturers through software solutions that help them plan, execute, settle and analyze trade spending and pricing initiatives while centered on visibility, accountability and profitability, thereby saving time and labor for the company.

Blacksmith’s flagship product “FORGE” integrates with manufacturers' ERP and other systems for master and transactional data such as product and product hierarchy, customer and customer hierarchy, invoices, claims, payment requests, payment information, deductions and pricing. The three primary solutions utilized to coordinate execution across both internal and external touch points include—FORGE Trade, a trade spending and price management solution for management, marketing and sales that centralizes the program data; FORGE Settlements that provide an automated workflow based environment which helps to settle trade events; and FORGE Analytics that provides both online and offline solutions to analyze customer and foodservice division profitability. "Many of today's trade spending software solutions are simply repositories for pricing and trade spending programs; they don't allow manufacturers to evaluate if an opportunity is profitable or if there are available budget dollars," says Paul Wietecha, President, Blacksmith Applications. "With FORGE Trade, manufacturers, sales representatives and brokers have a robust, easy-to-use application that calculates the expected profitability of an opportunity and ensures the available budget,” he adds.