Digging Deeper Into Sales Performance Data

Graham is a major merchant to the UK Plumbing and Heating Industry. Jewson is the UK market leader of building material distribution, they are both part of Saint-Gobain Building Distribution, Europe’s number one distributor of building materials.

Its UK marketing drive includes a promotional budget of several million pounds, and it’s therefore essential that the organisation can track its sales performance against this investment.

Since 1999, The Promotions Division of the Q Group has operated several customer incentive programmes, based on turnover targets for Graham customers. Having worked with Graham to create the campaigns, the specialist team was then asked to monitor all customer records to check how they relate to the promotional spend, providing longer- term tracking of sales figures against promotional activities.

We worked closely with Graham’s IT department to develop a system to manage customer sales data. First, this meant creating a Master Customer File for every open account, dealing with half a million customer records.

Then a solution was developed which tracks sales figures for every trading customer and this information forms the basis of monthly management reports for specific target segments.

Data management includes monthly downloads of all sales data, with historical information from December 1999. The system is currently tracking four million invoice transactions, and monthly updates can include around 140,000 transactions.

Segments of data are extracted so that sales figures can be plotted against promotional activities throughout the year. Graham may want to drill down into data by geographical or economical segments, or into a particular business sector, and we extract the correct data and then analyse trends and indicators that can be correlated to the promotional spend.

We check for seasonal variations as well as underlying trends that could shape future promotion schemes.

“Managing our customer data in this way means we can test the value of our promotional budget, and can justify it within our overall marketing spend,” said Scott Barnes, Customer Relationship Manager.

“We need to ensure that the money we spend on promotions is effective and hits the right target,” he added. “By having this specific sales information to hand, we have removed any guesswork and we know what really works.”

Jewson/Graham’s future plans include strengthening its relationships with customers, and we have taken on a consultancy role to help create the framework for a Customer Relationship Database. This includes a web application, with various levels of access for employees.

To contact us, telephone +44 (0) 1509 416677 or email us here.