Trade Promotion Solutions

Challenge

Spartan, a regional grocery / drugstore retailer and wholesale distributor, owns and operates 100 supermarkets and 25 deep-discount drugstores in six states throughout the Midwest and Southeast. For 85 years this company's growth has reflected its management's commitment to deliver savings and services to customers.  Spartan has demonstrated a progressive attitude about growth through the addition of subsidiaries and acquisitions. Most recently, the company merged with Seaway Food Town, adding 47 supermarkets and 26 discount drug stores — under The Pharm banner — to its retail base.

Spartan successfully focused on maintaining premier quality and customer service throughout this rapid growth.  However, accounting management was increasingly challenged to maintain its high standards for promotion processing given the existing legacy system and related IT support and maintenance requirements. 

Solution

Spartan turned to Carolina Services' e-PS solution — a hosted promotional funds tracking, reconciliation, and reporting system for trade promotions. The ASP model enabled Spartan to move their process from the legacy system, reducing IT support costs and enabling Spartan to allocate IT resources to high value corporate projects.

e-PS provided promotion performance reconciliation and invoicing within an average of six business days from receipt of data. e-PS also integrated financial data with Spartan's accounting systems which facilitated management of promotion receivables.  

Impact

With e-PS in place, process cycle time was reduced, improving cash flow.  Additionally, the flexible e-PS reporting tools have enabled more proactive management of vendor handling fees. Finally, e-PS customer service support for vendor inquiries has proved to be a valuable e-PS benefit.  "It is difficult to quantify the specific value, but the support we get for our vendor inquiries from e-PS has been great." (Jennifer Christie, Accounting Manager, Spartan Stores).