SUCCESS STORY
Yoplait Story
How scorecard reporting can improve the relationships with your retailers
About Yoplait
Yoplait is one of the most
famous yogurt brands in the
world and sold in 75
countries globally. It is one of
the largest branded yogurt
and fromage frais companies
in the UK, making popular
brands such as Frubes,
Wildlife, Yop and, Petits
Filous, which is the number
one children’s dairy pot
brand. Yoplait also makes
under license, Weight
Watchers chilled yogurts and
fromage frais, as well as a
range of chilled pot desserts.
More recently Yoplait has
launched an indulgent pot
dessert called Perle de Lait.
Challenge
Today UK consumers are
spending over £250m a year
on children’s yogurts and
desserts, with portable
yogurts and fromage frais the
fastest-growing product type
for children. In this highly
competitive market Yoplait
wanted to be certain that its
field sales team were able to
maximize revenue potential
at all major retail outlets.
However, there was concern
that the field sales team
were spending too much time
trying to consolidate and
interpret disparate sales data
instead of being able to
quickly identify and prioritize
revenue opportunities.
The sales team were
receiving information from
three separate sources: from
Clear, concise scorecard reporting enables Yoplait’s field
sales team to improve relationships with retailers by
prioritizing revenue opportunities with stores
Yoplait’s retail sales data,
from IRI’s Infoscan service
which tracks product
performance by category on
a national level and from
TeamHaven, a web-hosted
field staff management and
data capture system. Every
week it could take each sales
person up to four hours to
manually merge and analyze
the different reports to help
them plan their sales
activities to fit into a fourweekly meeting cycle.
Bharti Parsotam, Chief
Operating Officer at Yoplait
UK, explains, “Our sales
people weren’t seizing the
opportunity to maximize
sales instore. So it was clear
that we needed to better
support them with more
meaningful information that
is already consolidated into
an easy-to-understand,
simple format and gives
visibility of the key areas to
focus on.”
Solution
Yoplait commissioned IRI to
develop a solution with the
ability to present one single
view of all the relevant data
with automatic weekly
updates. The Technology
Solutions Group at IRI in the
UK extracted and modelled
the three sets of data from
the existing sources and
further enhanced it with
market information gathered
from its retail analysis
insights resources. The
resulting key metrics are
presented in an Excel-based
scorecard that highlights
performance challenges and
potential revenue
opportunities, presented in
easy to view graphical
reports.
Benefits
“The scorecard solution has
completely transformed the
way Yoplait works,” says
Bharti Parsotam. “It has
helped us to strengthen
SUCCESS STORY
relationships with retailers
instore and maximize sales
opportunities for the best.”
Regional Field Sales Manager,
Tracey Koulouriotis adds, “My
team have noticed that sales
and availability in store has
improved. They can now
engage with fresh trading
managers and store
managers to show how their
store performs compared to
other stores, against national
and regional averages.
Decisions are faster based on
accurate incremental value
sales, the team are
empowered to run graphical
sales reports and we can now
make selective call planning
priorities.”
Store visits now
prioritized
Store visits are now
prioritized and field sales no
longer adhere to the fourweekly call cycle. Instead
stores are targeted by
opportunities to increase
business, future potential and
sales activity. The Yoplait
sales team can respond
quickly to offer support,
advice and initiate
promotions to generate extra
sales.
Increased Revenue
In the yogurts and dairy
desserts market where unit
sales have declined by 4%
year on year, Yoplait has
increased value sales by 2%
year on year. Yoplait’s has
increased by 3% to a market
share of 9.5%.
Source: IRI Major Multiples
52 w/e March 2011
Better decision-making
Accurate and timely data has
helped to improve decisionmaking. Before the new
scorecard solution, the data
was difficult to manipulate
and interpret and could be up
to a month out of date.
Strong relationships with
store managers
In the past the field sales
team were focusing on
auditing and compliance
within stores and dealt
mainly with provisions
managers. Now that they can
present meaningful
information, such as
comparisons with other
stores and benchmark
against regional or national
averages per outlet, they
have gained the attention of
not only the fresh trading
managers, but the senior
store managers too.
Bharti Parsotam emphasizes,
“For me, it is all about field
sales spending more time
with the store managers to
build strong relationships to
increase sales for both
Yoplait and the retailers. We
now have much better
quality, informed discussions
and interaction with senior
level decision-makers.”
Saving up to four hours
per week
Report review and analysis
has been reduced from four
hours down to thirty minutes
per week. This thirty minute
preparation time for
meetings is now focused on
producing targeted actionoriented client presentations
based on the weekly
scorecard reports, charts,
and graphs.
More valuable sales team
meetings
Internal sales meetings have
become more interactive and
productive since the
introduction of the
scorecards. Now that the field
sales team can rely on
accurate information they
have become more proactive
about suggesting
improvements, sharing
knowledge with each other
and leveraging the data to
gain further insights into
performance.
Speeds up new recruit
training
The new scorecards have had
the added benefit of helping
new field sales recruits to get
up to speed more quickly,
enabling them to plan
relevant, targeted activity
from day one.
For me, it is all about
field sales spending
more time with the
store managers to build
strong relationships to
increase sales for both
Yoplait and the
retailers.We now have
much better quality,
informed discussions
and interaction with
senior level decisionmakers.
Bharti Parsotam
Chief Operating Oficer,
Yoplait UK
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